Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Ivy
The first glow of the dawn has just reached the horizon when I slip into Stavros’s quarters.
The drug the scourge sorcerers gave us still muddles my thoughts and throws off my coordination alongside a growing fatigue. I managed to make my way to the fourth floor quietly enough, but I push the door closed a little too hard, with a thump that resonates through the room.
A grunt and a sharp breath carry from the bedroom. Stavros charges to the doorway and scans the living space with eyes both bleary and panicked.
He obviously fell asleep during the long time I was gone. His dark red hair and the dress shirt he never changed out of are rumpled. From the urgency in his expression and the tense set of his mouth, I think I might have startled him out of another nightmare.
A nightmare about me, no doubt.
My hand flies up. “Wait!”
I teeter around the room feeling for magic, but the beetle must be gone, and nothing else has taken its place.
I collapse onto the sofa to ease my dizziness. “It’s okay,” I tell Stavros. “I haven’t caused any catastrophes. The scourge sorcerers, though—”
Images from the chaotic night flash through my mind. I leap back up with a lurch of my own panic. “We should meet right away. I need to tell everyone—they’re making people. They want to burn the king. We stabbed a man—”
There’s too much I need to say—it’s all colliding. I grope for the right words and sway on my feet.
Ivy, I think you should sit down again, Julita says in a nervous tone. You’ve been up all night. It’s not like they’re staging a coup right now.
Stavros has already marched across the room to set a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
I shake my head, which unfortunately makes my head spin harder. “No. There was a drugged drink—I tried not to swallow—the stupid cart, ruts in the road…” I stop and force myself to inhale and exhale slowly. “I learned a lot. I should tell everyone.”
Stavros’s grip on my shoulder tightens. “Is there any immediate danger to the royal family or the city?”
“It didn’t seem like it. But I don’t know. If they have a lot of clay—and they threw the dummy in the fire.”
I’m aware that I’m not making a great deal of sense, but I can’t seem to keep my thoughts in coherent order.
Stavros nudges me toward the sofa, keeping his hand firmly in place until I’ve sat down. “I don’t think you’re in the best condition to explain what happened at the moment. You must be exhausted. Get a few hours’ sleep, and then you can tell us everything.”
I’m abruptly aware of how heavy my eyelids have gotten. I swipe at my eyes and peer up at the former general.
All the confusion I’ve felt in the past week swims to the surface, straight past my internal filter.
“Why are you being nice to me now?” I demand. “You should want the scourge sorcerers to murder me. Then you wouldn’t need to worry anymore.”
Stavros’s expression tightens with what might be horror—or guilt. “Ivy, I’d never want that.”
I scoff. “You hated me. My soul’s still broken. I give you nightmares.”
His mouth twists. “I didn’t—I didn’t hate you. I was afraid of what you might be capable of, but I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have needed to test you to figure it out.”
I wave my hand vaguely. “You don’t need to feel guilty about it. I’d have wanted to strangle me too. I’m afraid of me—how can I blame you?”
Stavros pauses with an audible swallow. He rests his hand on my shoulder again, gentler now. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Lie down and get some rest. I’ll be right here if you need anything.”
I have the ridiculous urge to grasp his hand and pull him down on the sofa with me, so he really will be “right here.” To sink into the heat of his body and his peppery scent, wrap myself in all the strength that emanates from his massive frame.
Of course, he wouldn’t fit lying down on the sofa with me because of that massive frame. I doubt he’d want to be that close anyway, no matter what Casimir says.
I shouldn’t want him to be either. He probably does still hate me somewhere underneath. He might decide to put another rope around my neck, and even if I can’t totally blame him, I do generally prefer being alive.
Stavros lifts his hand to stroke his fingers over my hair—a fleeting caress, but it makes my pulse skip a beat. “If you want to have that meeting, then sleep. We’re not going anywhere until you’ve rested.”
I let out a disgruntled huff, but I oblige him by lying down. My eyes close automatically. I’m not sure anything has ever felt as wonderful as these sofa cushions.
I think Stavros is still standing there, watching me—standing guard, like he thinks I might run off again if he doesn’t. I can’t find the wherewithal to care.
The fog rolls over my mind, and I drift away.
I wake up to a bitter taste in my mouth and a dull ache in the back of my head. But when I sit up, blinking in the bright daylight now streaming through the window at the other end of the room, my head doesn’t reel. My body remains steady.
Stavros stands up where he was seated behind his desk. I don’t know if he slept more, but he’s wearing a new, unwrinkled shirt with an embroidered jacket over it, and he’s put on his hand-shaped prosthetic over the stump of his left wrist.
He speaks in a familiar wry drawl, but his gaze fixes on me intently with a twitch of his head. “You’ve returned to consciousness. Do you have a story that makes a little more sense now?”
I can’t remember exactly what I said to him when I first arrived this morning, but enough of our conversation—especially the last part of it—comes back to me that my face flushes.
I glance away with the excuse of grabbing a new dress. “I’ll get changed, and then we should signal Alek and Casimir to come to the meeting room. Assuming they’re around. It’ll be easier to tell all of you at once, and they might know things that’ll fill in the missing pieces.”
Stavros nods, his tone darkening. “I have a little news of my own.”
With that ominous statement hanging over me, I duck into the latrine and hastily swap my grass-stained gown for one more befitting the lady I’m pretending to be. As I fumble with the laces, it occurs to me that I’m going to need Casimir to bring me yet another replacement.
I seem to go through dresses like most people go through dinner.
I bustle back out to find Stavros waiting for me with his cord already looped on the floor and a plate of bread, cheese, and sliced meat in his hand. “I picked you up a little food when I went down to breakfast earlier. Nothing meant to be hot since I didn’t know how long you’d sleep.”
He’s matter-of-fact about his generosity, but a fresh prickle of heat still creeps up my neck as I accept the plate. My stomach lets out an approving grumble. “Thank you.”
Julita gives a laugh that sounds a bit stiff. I obviously should have prodded him more to bring out this unexpected generous side.
I lift my shoulders in a slight shrug to indicate that I didn’t ask for any of this and wolf down the food in approximately five seconds flat.
Stavros waits for me to take my own cord out of the drawer in the sofa-side table where I’ve been keeping it. Like he’s making a show of the fact that he’s letting me handle it now.
Am I supposed to thank him for that too? He only handed it over because Casimir asked.
I lay it out in its ring hastily and step through at the same time he does. The magical passage into the palace meeting room hits me with a little more dizziness than usual, but the effect clears the moment I’m on solid ground again.
I prowl the edges of the room to confirm no unwelcome creatures are lurking. Stavros takes his locket out of his pocket and taps it to signal the others.
The sight of it gives me pause. I hadn’t fully thought through the part of the plan where we alerted the other men. “Are you sure it’s safe to use that? I mean, Benedikt had one too…”
Stavros’s jaw tightens. “That problem has already been taken care of.”
I’m about to ask him what he means when Alek emerges into the room with a warble of the air. “Is Ivy all—” he’s saying before he’s even steadied himself. Then he sees me, and a relieved smile springs to his lips.
I step closer to catch his hand for a quick squeeze. “I was summoned by the scourge sorcerers again last night, and it was pretty… intense. I thought I should fill you all in as quickly as possible. And you can tell us about your investigations too.”
Alek’s mouth slants downward. “There isn’t much to report there so far, unfortunately. Plenty of clay quarries and few ways of narrowing them down without taking the trip to visit them.”
Stavros dips his head to the scholar. “It’s good that you’re looking into them at all. None of the rest of us would be able to invent a suitable excuse.”
Alek’s smile comes back at the former general’s praise. “I want to pitch in however I can. All the responsibility shouldn’t fall on Ivy.”
I mean, it’s not as if you’re out there alone, Julita mutters.
A twinge of guilt runs through my stomach. “At least I’ve got Julita with me no matter what happens,” I say.
Alek blinks, as if he really had forgotten about the ghost who’s taken up residence in my head.
Stavros lets out a stiff chuckle. “And we’re still glad for any help she can offer, as limited as it might be in her current situation.”
Julita lets out a disgruntled sound. Limited? I’ve had plenty of useful observations—
Her rant is cut short by Casimir’s arrival. The courtesan steps out of his cord and swipes his disheveled hair away from his eyes, his outfit of dress shirt and trousers looking hastily pulled together. “Sorry. I was still sleeping. I had a late night plying people for information over drinks.”