Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
“What are you doing?” Delphine says with wide petrified eyes. “Get down! He’ll see you!”
“That’s precisely what I want,” I say, beckoning for her to follow.
After a moment of dithering, Delphine scrambles after me, tripping on the loose pebbles. “I don’t understand what you hope to accomplish by confronting him.”
“Who says I’m confronting him?”
“What else could you possibly do?” Delphine sputters loudly, but Alaric is still so lost in the past, he doesn’t seem to register our voices. He doesn’t even glance up until we’re looming over him—like a boot poised to squash a beetle.
“Y-you!” He gapes at me as he scuttles backward. “What are you doing here? And who’s that?” He points at Delphine,
With his darting eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, he looks nothing like the steely prince he portrays on the outside.
Just the lonely, broken boy he hides within.
Especially as he brings his fist to his chest, protecting whatever he unearthed from the ground.
My fingers itch to grab it—to force him to reveal what it is and how it works—and Alaric notices.
He slips the object into an inner pocket of his jacket and hurriedly yanks his gloves back on, hackles up and teeth bared like a guard dog.
I smile pleasantly and plunk down in the dirt beside him.
I don’t know whose eyes bulge wider, Alaric’s or Delphine’s.
“This is my maid, Delphine.” I pat the dusty ground beside me, but she shakes her head, blinking like I’ve completely lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
“Your maid?” Alaric repeats. “The same maid you begged me to protect you from just last week? The one you blamed for the disturbing carvings in your closet, who you were ready to condemn for Rowenna’s death?”
Delphine sucks in a breath, and I feel her wounded gaze.
“I was wrong.” I shoot her an apologetic smile. “We worked all that out.”
“How nice.” Alaric’s voice drips with sarcasm. “Unfortunately, I can’t work out what either of you are doing up here now.”
“We want to know what you’re doing up here, surrounded by all that golden light?” I gesture around, as if recreating the scene. “It’s a memory, isn’t it? The truth about what happened to your brother?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was only praying,” Alaric snaps.
I raise a skeptical brow. “Why hike all the way up here just to pray? It doesn’t make sense. Seeking privacy to watch such a harrowing memory, however, makes perfect sense. Especially since it paints your father in such terrible light.”
Alaric’s face grows redder with every word. “You followed me up here, didn’t you? You plan to blackmail me, is that it?”
“Indira, this is too much,” Delphine cuts in. “This isn’t what I agreed to—”
“Actually, our trip had nothing to do with you,” I continue calmly. “Delphine and I have been sneaking up this mountain most nights to look for clues about Rowenna’s death.”
Behind me, Delphine lets out another strangled breath—as if I’m betraying her, like Rowenna did—but I keep my focus on Alaric, praying my blunt honesty will catch him off guard. Maybe even encourage him to follow suit.
“We were searching a cave when we saw you slink past,” I explain. “It seemed suspicious that you were creeping around the very same mountaintop my sister was searching when she died. It seemed more like you had been following her, and I wanted to know why.”
Alaric blinks several times, as if I’m speaking a different language. “Rowenna came up here? When? Why? How do you know any of this?”
“Unfortunately, I still don’t have a clue why my sister did most of the maddening things she did on this mountain, but I’m beginning to realize it doesn’t matter. Knowing won’t bring her back. Just like watching that awful memory won’t bring Besnik back. So why do you torture yourself?”
Alaric scoffs and shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand—” he starts to say, but I cut him off.
“Actually, I know exactly how it feels to lose an older sibling—like a limb has been severed from your body. Like the scaffolding that holds up the sky has crumbled. You don’t know who you are or where to go without them, and you’re terrified you’ll never be able to fill their shoes.
You don’t even want to fill their shoes.
But, most of all, you’re terrified it was all your fault.
That everyone secretly wishes you had been the one to perish.
Sometimes you secretly wish it yourself. …”
The words rush out of me faster than I intended—and far more vulnerable. I brace for Alaric to mock me, but he simply blinks with large glassy eyes, which make him look younger, softer, and, aggravatingly, even more attractive.
“Except Besnik’s death was my fault,” he eventually whispers.
I scoot a tiny bit closer, pleased when he doesn’t shrink away. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. If what we saw is true, your father is to blame, no one else.”
“My father wouldn’t have lashed out if not for my mistakes.”
“You’re not responsible for his temper. No mistake, no matter how grave, justifies murder. He was the adult—the king, for seed’s sake. He should have been able to control his power and emotions.”
I expect my little speech to bolster Alaric, but his expression darkens, and he purposely leans away, reestablishing the distance between us. “Why are you trying to comfort me? What are you really after?”
The gemstone triad and your power, I think.
But I say, “Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Nothing about Vanzador is what I expected—including you,” I add, looking up at him from beneath my lashes.
Alaric searches my face through the dark, and I’m struck by how the moonlight paints the contours of his cheeks silver.
How starlight gilds the blackness of his hair.
It shouldn’t be possible for someone so outwardly intimidating to be so small and shattered within.
The disparity is unsettling. That’s why my stomach dips.
Not because I like the way he’s looking at me.
Or because my opinion of him has changed because of our shared trauma.
“How does it work?” I nod down at his coat, where he hid the mysterious object. “Delphine told me memories can be siphoned into objects, but how do you bring them to life?”
Alaric tosses his head back, and his acidic laughter echoes around the mountaintop. “You honestly expect me to open up and share my secrets after you ran out of our solarium when I expressed interest in your magic?”
“I’m sorry. You caught me off guard,” I try to explain. “I wasn’t ready to share then.”
Alaric stands and folds his arms over his chest. “Well, I’m not ready now.”
A flare of irritation burns through me. I’ve been bending over backward to appease him, yet he’s still acting like a petulant child.
I could do the same. I could pester and pressure him or threaten to tell Soren about Alaric’s siphoned memory if he refuses cooperate. But neither of these plans will earn his trust or get me closer to the gemstone triad, so even though I’m screaming on the inside, I bow my head and step back.
“Very well. I’m sorry we disturbed you. Let’s go, Delphine.” I take her hand and pull her forward.
We only make it a few steps before Alaric calls after us. “Where are you going? The Fortress is back that way.”
“We came all this way. It would be a waste not to scour the mountaintop for clues about Rowenna. But don’t worry. We won’t disturb you again.” I smile sweetly and bob a curtsy, which makes Alaric splutter.
Delphine’s gaze bounces back and forth, torn between duty to her prince and her desperation to find a cure for Cloudia.
Alaric starts after us with an exhausted sigh. “I’m serious. You can’t go that way. It isn’t safe.”
“Because we’re physically in danger, or because we might find something that incriminates you?” I can’t stop myself from needling him, just a bit.
“Stop, Indira. We’re near the cliff’s edge, and the ground up here is unstable from overmining. It could give way any second.”
“Wouldn’t it be convenient if I fell?” I ask, taking another deliberate step.
“Stop!” Alaric lunges forward with shocking speed and drags me back several paces. “I refuse to let anyone fall on my watch. Even you.”
The emphasis he puts on the word you drips with disdain, but the expression on his face is terrified, his breath ragged as he holds me against his chest.
Delphine loudly clears her throat. “We should be getting back, Miss Indira.”
Alaric lets go, and we fly apart. But even when I’m several paces away, I still feel the press of his arms around me. Still feel the dangerous buzz of electricity zapping through the air.
I rack my brain for something snappy to say, to prove his heroics didn’t affect me.
Or something contrite, to remind him I can be kind and trustworthy.
But my brain can’t seem to form a coherent thought.
Even if it could, my teeth are clenched too tight to speak.
So I settle for an awkward half bow, before Delphine tugs me sharply back toward the caves.
“You shouldn’t goad him like that,” she scolds once we’re out of earshot. “What were you thinking?”
I don’t answer.
Because I honestly don’t know.