Chapter Six
I’ve just committed murder, and I should be haunted by it. Instead, I’m fretting about this stupid bargain with Roze.
In the morning, I pace back and forth at the foot of my bed. Saint Waffles snoozes soundly on my pillow, leathery wings tucked in tight, little piggish snores escaping between his two tusks.
Seven days. The Queen gave Roze seven days to kill me.
Now there are six days remaining to learn how the King died while Roze protects me from his mother.
Roze believes my shadows give me the ability to divine these things.
I’m sure he’s wrong, but there are other ways to give Roze what he wants—a culprit for his father’s murder.
The little black book that Professor Borges gave me rests beside my bed, and the feeling that it’s watching me is like needles on my skin.
That book is the only thing we have to go on.
It’s not the Book of Odds, not with all its pages blank.
But the dragon and lion on the cover—the symbol of Castelle twisted with the Aragoan lion and the Hivernian runes—those must mean something.
Saints, why would the king have Hivernian runes tattooed on his arm? No one could read them. Supposedly.
As though that weren’t enough to think about, I also have to pretend to be courted by the person I most detest. It wasn’t until this morning that the full reality of that situation sunk in.
It’s more than just a fake engagement. For this to seem real, I’m going to have to pretend to …
to be in love with him. Every touch, every glance with Roze feels dangerous, like I’m walking high on a ledge over a chasm.
A small wind could toss me over. And I’d fall.
It’s a favorite pastime of Vandenberghe students to complain about the uniform, but I love not having to concern myself with what to wear every day.
It’s one less thing to think about. It’s also a wonderful equalizer between those from the caverns and students whose parents are nobility.
I came to Vandenberghe with hardly any clothes, and those I did have from the orphanage were old and tattered.
Clothing is nearly priceless in a kingdom that is quickly running out of resources, but the noble class certainly dresses better than those of us from the caverns.
Wearing the Vandenberghe uniform spares me the mockery of elitist snobs like Roze.
I smirk. He might be the Prince, but he wears the same old uniform as commoners like me.
I tie the double knot of my navy-and-maroon tie—Berlaise House colors—with a practiced motion so familiar that it causes my heart rate to slow and the worries of the morning to melt.
Then I try to tug my wild hair into some semblance of order, a bun barely contained by a ribbon, and slip my feet into my shoes.
I need to get to the library, to start researching those runes. I can’t think of any other reason Professor Borges would give me that book unless she knows something, unless it’s meant to lead me in the right direction.
What does the professor know? How is she involved?
And then the thought that the professor might have betrayed me, might have knowingly sent me to my execution, hits me in the chest, sharp and painful.
She’s my favorite teacher. Yes, she’s strict and holds me to a high standard, but I thought she did so because she cared.
The feeling of betrayal is too familiar, too similar to how I felt when my parents left me at the orphanage, and an ugly grief rises with my shadows as they curl around my clenched fists. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Calm.
Control.
I have to stop thinking about it. There’s work to do. I take a deep breath and open the door.
Roze is there, waiting. He leans against the wall like he owns it—which, I guess, in a sense, he does.
Or at least, his family does. I’m so surprised that I jump back.
Saint Waffles is on his feet in an instant, bounding over the edge of the bed, leaping through the doorway.
He attacks the Prince with the ferocity of a hellhound, growling and clawing up the Prince’s leg.
Roze yelps and jerks back.
“Off !” he commands, trying to shake Waffles loose.
But Waffles has the Prince’s pants in a snare between his tusks.
I want to let him tear the Prince’s pants to shreds, because frankly, it would be funny.
But since I’m supposed to pretend to like him today, I force myself to pluck Waffles from his leg.
“What is that thing anyway?” growls Roze, eyeing Waffles in my arms. The gargoyle wriggles and roars, still trying to get at the Prince.
“My gargoyle,” I say, trying to hush him. “Say hello, Saint Waffles.” I rub between his ears—his favorite spot—and he finally relents, softly whining in my arms and glaring at Roze.
“He’s disgusting,” Roze says with a scowl.
“Well, he’s been with me since before I can remember, and I rather like him.”
Roze curls his lip at Waffles. “Please tell me he’s not going to follow us everywhere.”
“Waffles goes wherever I go.”
While I lock the door to my room, Waffles growls at Roze … and I’m pretty sure I hear Roze growl back.
“So.” I look back at Roze with raised eyebrows. This is his stupid plan, after all.
He looks away from Waffles, and a sly smile spreads on his face. “So—” He draws a hand out of his pocket, and in it is a ring.
My heart stutters.
“This is the ring of the Roquelart line,” he says. “Not the same one my sister will get as Crown Princess and all, but this crest”—he points to his family’s seal on it—“marks you as my intended. You wear this, and no one will question your place.”
I swallow, staring at it. It’s an ornate, stately thing—the sort that only royals wear. “And how will that stop your mother and her guards?”
“This ring is only given to those who have received the Queen’s blessing to join the family. You wear this, everyone in the Kingdom will know your name. And my mother will have a much harder time disappearing you in the night beneath anyone’s notice.”
“She cares that much about public opinion?” I arch a brow.
“She cares about rebellion. If you haven’t noticed, things are rather tense in our little cloistered Kingdom.” We both glance out a window at the roiling Mists. “Blaming the meigas, sowing fear and hatred … you know it’s all a distraction from what’s really going on.”
Neither of us need to say it aloud to know what he’s referring to.
The Kingdom is dying. Everyone knows it.
No one says it. The two decades since the Mists came have felt less like survival and more like a slow death.
Plenty have died from disease. Some have gone mad.
Soon the Kingdom’s stock of medicines will run out.
Our emergency stores of grains will grow too thin to support the few small animals that we have kept for eating—chickens and rabbits, mostly.
We’ll begin to waste away from disease, malnutrition …
That is, if there isn’t a rebellion first, if we don’t start tearing out each other’s throats like beasts in a cage.
We can all feel it—the restlessness and despair tightening around us like a noose.
We are walking around in our own mass grave.
“How do you have this?” I ask. “She can’t have given it to you.”
“Obviously.” He smirks. “I stole it.”
Of course he did.
He gestures with his hand that holds the ring and lifts his eyebrows.
Oh. Right.
I hold out my hand awkwardly in front of him, and my pulse quickens as he takes my hand in his gloved ones and slowly slips the ring onto my finger.
It looks ridiculous—something that old and ornate and valuable on the hand of a common teenage girl.
“Perfect,” he mutters, staring down at the strange sight of my hand in his, his ring on my finger. My heart thunders in my ears.
Then he clears his throat and drops my hand, nearly throwing it back at me.
“Right. From now on, you’re not to go anywhere unless I am there. We will dine together at each meal, and I will bring you back to your room in the evenings. Understood?”
My jaw falls open. “What, constantly?”
“During the day. I won’t be sleeping in your bed with you. Although if you insist …” He grins slyly at me, and my stomach twists.
Stop it. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.
“I’d rather share a bed with a corpse,” I reply, glaring at him.
His smile broadens, showing every one of his perfect teeth. “Such a morbid sense of humor, Sinclair. How delightfully unexpected.”
“You’re a troll.”
“Come on now, you find me charming.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “What if I don’t want to be with you day and night?”
“I’m afraid this is the price of staying alive, meiga.”
“I don’t need you haunting me every moment of the day. I’m entitled to some privacy.”
He waves me off, like my wishes are a mere annoyance. “You can forget about that notion right now, Sinclair. You’re about to lead a very different sort of life.”
“We said I was in charge.”
“Of our investigation. I, however, am in charge of your safety.”
Then he steps close, towering over me. His cool breath whispers against my cheek, and I catch the scent of him—spice and winter and something that makes me shiver and want to pull away … or pull closer. I’m not sure.
“You will stay close to me, little witch, because it’s what’s expected of you as my fiancée. And because you are the key to finding out how my father died. I won’t allow anything to happen to you until you do.”
Strange how it feels like both a threat and a comfort.
Roze is true to his word. He sticks to me like a leech.
He wants to go to breakfast, but I insist that we go to Professor Borges’s office first. My need to know why is eating me alive—why she acted so cryptically, why she gave me the book, why she sent me into the mouth of the lion now prowling beside me.
But when we knock on the professor’s door, there’s no answer.