Chapter 33
Ivy
Rheave tucks his arm around my waist in the wagon, pulling me even closer than he did earlier on this journey. “Do you think Lothar knows what we’ve been doing?”
I can’t help pricking my ears to the warble of city noise beyond the vehicle, as if I might hear something to inform my answer. I get nothing but a blur of rattling wheels and jumbled voices.
I swallow thickly. “I don’t know. We have been at it for a few hours now. His people could have already noticed that a bunch of their captured daimon have left rather than following orders. But with the sorcery on them waning, that could have happened eventually without us interfering.”
The daimon-man makes a rough sound. Everywhere our bodies touch, his muscles are tensed. “Should we leave instead? While so many people are distracted by the announcement?”
I’ve already thought that question through more than once since we made our first hasty decision to have our driver direct the wagon toward the inner wards. The answer comes automatically now. “No. If it’s a matter of life or death… we need to know what’s going on. Especially if it has anything to do with Petra or our efforts to see her on the throne.”
Rheave nods, accepting my statement without argument. For just a second, I wish he would push back, insist that we get out of here, even though I’d have to stand firm.
I’m not sure I really want to. Something about the messenger’s call in the square has left a clammy sensation seeping into my skin.
But what I said is true. If Lothar is about to unleash some new horror, we have to know as soon as possible so we can protect ourselves. Even if the Black Talons have people listening in, we don’t know how long it’d take them to get a message to us.
The Order’s leader could be counting on us thinking that way, though. He could suspect that members of the resistance have infiltrated the city and want them to find out just how awful things could get for them next.
With that possibility in mind, I have the driver stop a couple of streets shy of the old city walls that border the inner wards. Rheave and I remove our charms, keeping them in our pockets where they’ll stay inactive.
We don’t want there to be any chance of the scourge sorcerers seeking out their magic.
I smear some grit from the side of the wagon across my face as if I’ve been doing grunt work in the outer wards all day without a bath. Rheave follows suit. Then we pull on our cloaks, tugging the hoods low over our heads.
Spring is creeping closer, but enough winter crispness lingers in the air that plenty of other civilians are wearing their own cloaks. Once we emerge from the wagon and merge with the current of figures flowing through the streets to the Temple of the Crown, we blend in perfectly.
I spent twenty years of my life in this city and seven of those making the streets my home, but somehow the territory I’ve roamed through more than a hundred times feels like foreign territory today. I know the twists and turns of the roads, the steep slope that takes us the last short distance to the huge courtyard outside the grand temple, and yet nothing looks quite as familiar as it should.
Maybe it’s the murmurs passing through the growing crowd around us—not eager with anticipation the way they might have been for past events at the city center, but hushed and uncertain. My fellow citizens can’t have any more idea what their self-proclaimed ruler has in store for them than I do.
We’ve been sowing doubt and fear throughout the country as well as we can. I’m sure plenty of Florians have heard the claims against the Order. Some who first supported them will now wish them gone along with their horrific sorcery.
But how many have the means to stand up to the scourge sorcerers? How many would be prepared to risk their lives speaking out when even the queen has only done so through stealth?
They’re waiting for us—waiting for someone with real power to stand with.
My lungs tighten with the thought.
We’re working on it, I want to tell them. We’re coming to rescue you from these villains. We just have to make sure we do it right, or we’ll be lost too.
The stream of pedestrians we’re caught up in spreads out at the mouth of the courtyard. The vast space is already teeming with bodies pressing close together to make room for more. Other figures peer from the windows and balconies of the stately buildings around the courtyard.
I suspect by the time Lothar begins his announcement, even the side-streets will be packed with spectators. All of them poised to spread the word back to their neighbors who didn’t make it in time.
I grasp Rheave’s hand and lead him through the jostling bodies to one spot that is still familiar. Nothing’s changed about my favorite alcove where months ago I watched the execution of the last apprehended riven sorcerer.
The daimon-man’s height means he doesn’t need much of a vantage point to look over the milling crowd. I clamber up to my usual perch so I can peer over his head.
The sun has nearly completely set. The daimon we shook out of their sorcerous bindings will be gathering near Crow’s Close for the Black Talons to collect. Casimir hasn’t sent any signal through my locket, which should mean his end of the plan has gone smoothly.
He’ll be waiting for our wagon to pick him up. I hope he’s heard about this announcement and realizes we’ll have delayed to learn the news.
To my relief, no corpses dangle from the walls of the temple like they did the last time we visited this place. Dark stains still mar the pale marble where the murdered clerics and devouts once hung, a stark reminder of the penalties for drawing the Order’s ire.
As lights start to glow on the balcony where King Konram used to speak to the masses, my magic wriggles in my chest. If Lothar appears directly—if I can set my eyes on him and know exactly where he is—I have a chance to end this now, before he says anything at all.
But when the head scourge sorcerer’s looming, lopsided form appears by the stone railing, I’m not surprised to catch a faint flicker at the edges of his body. The former advisor isn’t taking any chances. He’s projecting himself as an illusion again.
Before he even speaks, the crowd below falls into an ominous silence. Clothing rustles as the spectators shift uneasily on their feet.
“People of Florian,” Lothar says, his voice resonating through the courtyard as if it’s coming from all sides at once, “I’ve gathered you tonight to make two important announcements. The first is one we can rejoice. You may have heard rumors that a series of kingship trials will be happening soon. That’s true—the ones the Order of the Wild will enact. We’ll determine the best ruler of Silana and discover whether the supposed princess will participate in a fair competition or forfeit the crown.”
I can almost hear Julita scoffing. Fair? Fairly rigged, I’d imagine.
No doubt. But any dark amusement I can take from that thought vanishes with the former advisor’s next words.
“You can look forward to witnessing the spectacle of royal worthiness in just four days, when Creadenala is upon us!”
My entire body goes cold. He expects to pull together his trials in just four days? I’d forgotten to even think of the standard festivals, let alone the one for Creaden soon approaching.
Will we be able to pull our own spectacle together in the fleeting time before then? If we can’t?—
Lothar’s voice breaks through my thoughts again, taking on a dire tone. “To my dismay, I must also warn you of a grave threat that’s come to my attention. Many other stories have been circulating through rumors and hearsay, but they’ve been spread by a source far more terrible than any of the supposed villains they point to.”
I frown, peering at him as intently as I can. What’s he talking about now? Is he going to say that Petra is some kind of brutal fiend?
I find it hard to believe this will simply be more bluster about how exploitive the royal family was. He must have something specific to say that he thinks will sway public opinion.
What could that be? Petra didn’t act in her royal capacity at all until after her father was murdered. I know she hasn’t done anything remotely criminal since then.
Lothar continues with a thump as if he’s stomped his foot for emphasis. “You’ve been deceived, but it’s understandable in the face of a vicious power like this. All of us in the Order of the Wild put our own lives on the line to bring you the truth.”
A deeper prickling of discomfort digs into my chest. Something about the way he’s phrasing his remarks?—
He waves his hand, and another figure steps forward, her face shadowed by the hood of her cloak. I think she might actually be standing on the platform rather than an illusion herself.
Lothar’s mouth forms a tight smile that I suspect is holding back a smirk. “You can hear just how long this poison has been tainting our city from the woman who witnessed it emerge into being. Who has come to us now to warn us.”
The woman pulls back her hood, and my heart stops.
It’s my mother. Even across that distance, with the stark shadows of the magical glow sharpening the angles of her face, I recognize her in an instant.
My legs wobble under me. I have to press my hands hard against the walls I’m braced between to catch myself before I fall.
My head spins. What— How?—?
The woman I once called “Ma” steps forward to rest her hands on the stone railing. Her face looks pale and taut as she gazes down over the gathered crowd—the expression I can remember from when she’d take the whip to me all those years ago.
The scars on my back itch.
“I had to come forward,” she says, her familiar if roughened voice flooding the courtyard through the same magical amplification as Lothar’s. “The more I heard about the vigilantes who are attacking the Order of the Wild, the ones the supposed queen is working with, the more I realized what must really be going on. If only I’d seen it sooner…”
Her voice fades with a rasp. I can barely breathe. Then she squares her shoulders and goes on.
“Thirteen years ago, my beloved younger daughter died suddenly under unexplained circumstances. My husband and I never had any proof, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was strange about our older daughter. That she might be hiding dark intentions of the kind a mother would never want to imagine.”
My fingers curl against the walls holding me up as anguish twists my gut.
She didn’t want to imagine it? But she did, over and over, no matter how much I pleaded.
She beat me and shunned me and left me hungry and loveless, all because of what she suspected but never brought herself to say outright.
Ma raises her voice even louder. “When she turned twelve, right before her dedication ceremony, she ran away rather than accept the gods. I had no idea what happened to her—until I started hearing the stories. A young woman with pale orange hair and blue eyes who seemed practiced at criminal acts. Who could call down unspeakable magic of all sorts with her will alone. It’s her, and it’s undeniable. My daughter is one of the riven, mad with her power, and she’s out to destroy all the rest of us!”
Gasps and mutterings of concern ripple through the crowd. My gut clenches tighter.
Rheave glances up at me with a matching anguish etched on his gorgeous face, his body tensed as if he could literally leap to my defense.
“If I had an arrow, I could quiet her,” he says in a low voice. “Strike her down like lightning…”
I could do the same right now with the magic she’s condemning, the power writhing between my ribs. A sour taste laces my tongue.
My magic sears all the way from my jaw to my gut, burning to be let out. To strike her down for the awful picture she’s painting, the blame she’s shirking.
But it’s not even a question.
I shake my head. The words scrape their way up my throat. “Nothing she’s said is exactly a lie. And we’d only be proving her right.”
How much does she really believe that I’m the brutal monster she’s claiming, and how much has Lothar coached her on what to say?
I’m not sure it makes any difference.
My mother is still speaking, with a quaver in her voice that makes my teeth grit. “I don’t know how anyone who claims to want the best for us could ally with a riven sorcerer. Maybe she has whatever’s left of the Melchiorek family under her control. Maybe she’s the one who murdered King Konram! But we can’t let her or the people she’s swayed to join her tear down all the good the Order has done for us.”
The murmurs of the crowd are becoming more urgent. Some are waving their fists in the air in apparent anger.
My power roars louder, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I pull my imagined vine tight around me. At my continued refusal, a slash of magic cuts across my lungs.
I flinch and clamp my mouth shut against a sob. The pain radiates through me for a few thuds of my heart before finally dissipating.
And Lothar isn’t even done yet.
He takes over the speech with a coolly forceful tone. “You’ve heard it from the mouth of the woman who endured the tragedy of having birthed this monster. Our entire country teeters on the edge of disaster as long as this ruthless riven sorcerer runs free. We must find her and execute her before she can do any more harm!”
At the sharp cheer that rings out, I wince. Another tremor runs through my body.
Rheave touches my leg as if to steady me, but I barely feel the warmth of his hand.
Then more light flares beside the temple platform, and an image of a figure that’s closer to my looks than I want to admit shimmers into being. An illusion drawn from Lothar’s memories and those of his followers who’ve seen me?
My pulse hiccups, and I drop down from my perch.
Lothar’s voice booms through the courtyard again. “This is the woman you must beware. This is the riven who intends to destroy us all. The Order will be showing this image all across the country so you can protect yourselves—and inform us if you’ve spotted her. Don’t approach her yourself. We’ll bring our own magic to bear and ensure Silana’s people are safe. But any information will be hugely rewarded.”
Gods smite me. I fumble for the invisibility charm and yank it over my head. Rheave does the same and snatches my hand.
Without another word, we bolt along the edges of the crowd and out of the courtyard, fleeing the mass of my fellow citizens now baying for my blood.