20. Tabitha
Tabitha
The walk back to the Palace gives everyone far too much time to think, which in my experience is when the arguments start.
They think I’m asleep. I’m not asleep. I’m doing that thing where I lie very still in the furs with my eyes shut so they’ll talk freely, which is sneaky and I’d feel bad about it if it weren’t the only way any of them ever tell me the truth.
“...can’t keep going like this,” Luka’s saying, low, on watch. “Every day she’s closer to the edge. I feel it through the bond. The old Queen’s got both hands on the wall now, just waiting for a crack.”
“I know.” Valerian, tired. “Which is why we need the book, and the throne, and we need them soon. That’s what stops the fraying. Everything else is us buying time.”
“And how do we get the book?” Azaan. “It’s in Mordecai’s stronghold, behind wards none of us can break, guarded by the one thing in this realm that held all four of us with one hand. We can’t fight our way in.”
Silence. The fire snaps. And then Azaan says the thing, the horrible clever thing, that I know is coming before he says it, because I’ve felt it coming the way you feel weather.
“He opens the door for one person,” Azaan says quietly. “Her. If she went as Tabeitha...”
“No,” Luka growls, instant.
“Luka...”
“I said no. We are not inviting that thing to the front. Not near him. Not for anything.”
“Then give me a better idea,” Azaan snaps, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him snap, my easy, charming Azaan, and it tells me how frightened they all are.
“Because I don’t have one. I’ve got a Queen who’s fading, a book we can’t reach, an ex who wants her hollowed out, and a whole other dimension coming to switch us off.
I hate my idea. I hate it more than any of you.
But I don’t have another one, and if one of you does, now would be the bloody time. ”
Nobody does. That’s the worst part. I lie there with my eyes shut and I listen to the four men who’d burn the world for me run out of ways to save me. I feel Tabeitha shift, smug, delighted by their despair, and I make a decision in the dark that I’ll pretend to arrive at fresh in the morning.
Because Azaan’s right. It’s a terrible plan. And it’s the only one.
I let them think I’m asleep a while longer, and I do my own maths, cold and clear. I decide that if the only way to save my realm and my family is to hand the ghost the wheel for an hour and trust them to grab it back, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ve died twice for less.
In the morning I’ll act surprised when Azaan suggests it. I’ll argue. I’ll let them talk me round. And none of them will know I decided it first, alone, in the dark, because that’s what a Queen does, I’m learning. She carries the decision so they don’t have to.
I’m getting better at it. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.