Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
NO PRICE TOO HIGH
H ypocrite. Tortured, guilt-ridden, hypocrite.
Both of us.
Sometimes I wonder how much of my relentless drive to punish Montague at all costs is my own, and how much is édouard’s insidious influence. He’s trained me since I was a child. Chances are I’ve internalized some of his crazy.
Alone in my room, I sink onto my bed. Here I don’t have to maintain a pretense of strength and certainty for my House.
“I feel like I was born broken. Born angry. Even before
my mother was killed I felt this.”
I’ve been silent too long, so she does something she rarely
does, and prompts me. “You’ve talked about the abyss.
Realms, I’m tired. My mother’s words when I was eleven ring in my ears more of late .
“Our people have forgotten we left the old Realm to find peace, mon chéri,” Maman had said. “This endless conflict wastes the sacrifice we made in coming here. It shames us.”
She’d dreamed of establishing peace I’d abandoned after her murder. But today we will shed more blood, disrupt Montague brokering a potential alliance with a neutral House.
Is this what you want? Darkan asks.
I stiffen. He hasn’t spoken to me since the power concussion days ago.
“The dark place,” I say.
Not the misty place. The misty place is safety, comfort ? —
sometimes sharp comfort, but Darkan will never be
completely comfortable. We have too many edges.
“It’s a crater. A pit that used to be filled with something,
and I don’t know what. It’s missing and sometimes I look
down at my chest and expect to see it’s been clawed out but
it’s still there. Whole. It’s a lie. I don’t know why I feel this
way. I don’t know if the way I feel is real.”
“No, I don’t want the feud anymore. I want to live my life. I’m tired of fighting. Maman wanted it to end. Danon’s capture would have broken her.”
Then stop, he says. You are Lady of your House, though you scorn the title, and the true unacknowledged Regent.
I push off my bed and begin to don my leather armor, biting back a retort. “Thank you for the advice. I’ll enact that right away, since it’s so simple. ”
Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Don’t try to lie to me. What is the real reason you don’t command peace?
I close my eyes. “The only reality is revenge. The only chaos
I can control is how efficiently I kill.”
“Because that bastard has gone unpunished for killing my mother! Until I feel Renaud’s blood pumping through my talons, there will be no peace.”
I let out a breath. “And I think. . .I think this is really why I’m
always angry. Because someone took something essential
from me. They took it, and it wasn’t theirs to take. This sounds
insane, and I feel insane, and I just want five minutes of not
existing in my own head.”
I strap on a back scabbard custom built for my torso so the hilts of my blades don’t dig into my breasts. Another around my thigh holds a second set of knives. Lightweight, matte black to absorb light, and spelled to return to the holster.
“édouard is right. We can’t let the death of our Lord go without blood or recompense. I just. . .I’m tired of this. We never seem to gain ground.”
If given the opportunity to fulfill my mother’s wish, would I dishonor her by refusing it? Ending the feud isn’t the same thing as letting the Prince live.
Manslaughter is not the same as murder, Darkan says, neutral. Normally he doesn’t bother hiding his emotions, but when we discuss my mother’s death or brush against discussing Embriel, a wall comes down between us. Intent matters.
And yet she’s just as dead. Maman went to wake the Prince to help her end this feud but he lashed out.
I wrap my fingers around the hilt of a dagger, grounding myself by the faint burn of the iron.
Intellectually, I know she understood the risk.
We don’t disturb the Old Ones when they’re between deep sleep and awakening.
Do you understand why?
I bite back an unfriendly retort. It’s annoying when he goes professor on me. Really, Darkan?
He’d been fun until I turned fourteen, then it was teach, teach, teach. Everything a lesson like he was on some kind of timetable.
Really, halfling. Humor me.
Counting to ten used to work. Because even when in deep sleep, they retain awareness on several mental planes.
I shove the dagger into its holster and contemplate my boots.
When they begin to wake, which can take years, they aren’t rational.
If they ever were. They react on instinct to any approaching power as a perceived threat.
Startle an irrational demigod who is clawing cobwebs out of his eyes and you deserve what you get.
Though they’re even worse when awake. We have reasons for preferring Old Ones stay removed from internecine warfare—their idea of a good fight is simply annihilating everyone within reach and starting over with new stock.
Maman would have understood that if he sensed even the slightest threat, he’d strike first and not bother to ask questions later.
But I don’t care, I add. I want him to suffer.
Stubborn.
Maybe. But maybe I’m just right.
I’m ready. Six units of eight assemble in the stone-walled courtyard in front of Faronne House, though we stable our horses and carriages throughout the District to maintain a semblance of secrecy to our movements.
My arms drop to my sides and I lean against the window,
closing my eyes. “Five minutes of darkness. Of quiet. I would
pay any price, to any person, who can give me that.”
I know what you want, Darkan says as Numair, Juliette, and I enter my carriage and it lurches into motion. We change carriages twice, then merge into traffic outside the city through an allied District’s gate. I understand you better than you understand yourself.
“You are myself,” I mutter. I stare out the window, thrumming my fingers on my thigh. “It’s not that simple. The House doesn’t want peace. Maybe a few of us do, but not enough of us to bring everyone to heel.”
My cousins glance at me, Juliette stony, Numair with a crease between his brow.
I grimace at them and shrug. They’re used to the one-sided conversations.
We’re too close, my acting skills nonexistent.
As long as I don’t embarrass the House in public, they’ll keep my secret—though I suspect Numair communicates regularly with my therapist. Juliette is the one to double check the side effects of my meds, and bootleg the dose.
Up or down. At her discretion.
We’ve told her why she shouldn’t do that. We understand she does it anyway. I also suspect she frankensteins them with some of the. . .off-label. . .pharmaceuticals my American cousins procure. Considering my new fear of being hunted by air, we should probably let her do her thing .
Aerinne’s concoction of chill pills. At least there’s no stigma among the Fae when it comes to mental illness—it’s a matter of course, if you live long enough.
Or kill enough people, survive enough people trying to kill you.
It only becomes a problem when it interferes with your ability to maintain your power base.
“We’re going to teach you to give yourself that moment of
clarity and quiet you call darkness.” Her voice is quiet. “It’s
inside you. Have you considered that the abyss isn’t something
that was taken from you, but something that waits for you to
claim it?”
So you’ll have to kill a few people. Darkan’s tone is a mental shrug.
“That seems counterproductive.”
Did you think you would achieve peace without also shedding the blood of your House?
I bristle at the implicit contempt in his question. “No.” I don’t have the power to pull off a bloodless peace.
No. You don’t.
No one is going, or has the power, to offer me aid. Only one person can. He never will. I have nothing he wants and he has every reason to destroy me. On sight. Then make an example of my House though he was, by my mother’s account, her brother for thousands of years before he slept.
I frown, staring out the carriage window. Maybe before I killed Embriel I could have tugged on that thread, but not now.
“I’m willing to shoulder the price,” I say softly.
What price, Aerinne ?
This is a pointless conversation. A daydream. But I shrug again though I mean every flippant word. Any price. None is too high.
He doesn’t speak until the carriage rolls to a stop. Very well then, Lady of Faronne. Remember your choice, when it’s time. You will most certainly be held to it.
I turn and stare at her.
She smiles, and shoves her tinted glasses up her nose. “First,
let’s work on managing these intense emotional states when
they arise so you have tools before you reach the point where
you need emergency medication or external intervention.”
She purses her lips.
“Second, let’s develop some strategies for tolerating this
incredibly stressful situation you’re in right now. Also,
considering recent events, perhaps we’ll increase our evening
sessions at Faronne House to two a week. Until things are
no longer quite as difficult.”