25. Raithe
Raithe
“The queen regent is demanding answers,” Gregorios informed us that evening in the observatory.
He placed a note on the table between the chairs he and Felaf occupied beside the fireplace.
Any communication delivered to seers required specific parchment with raised ink for deciphering.
“This is her latest summons for us. She knows Raithe was seen carrying a bleeding woman into the palace, and naturally she’s suspicious. ”
“No doubt courtesy of Barto and Chessah,” I muttered.
“Never mind them. We cannot delay any longer.”
I leaned against the mantel, trying to remain focused on the conversation at hand. My attention strayed to Rahzlyn across the room. She ignored us by feigning sleep. Her uneven breaths gave her away.
“What does it say?” Felaf asked.
“We don’t need a letter to tell us,” I said. “She hasn’t stopped fuming to her advisors down in her chamber.”
Felaf read the note anyway and cringed. “Oh my.”
Gregorios steepled his fingers. “We need a story.”
“We need answers,” I said pointedly, my gaze boring into Rahzlyn’s back.
“And we’ll get them, in time.”
“We don’t have time. We can’t allow her to roam free knowing she’s an apostate. Surely her affiliation with them is why Gemini spoke to you.”
“I still can’t believe that happened,” Felaf murmured. “How do we know this isn’t the curse’s work?”
Rahzlyn shifted to face us. “I told you, I am not an… It was Al…” Her words died. She seemed to struggle to find the right ones. “And Mar—” She groaned in frustration, as if she couldn’t physically say what she wanted to. “I’m not one of them.”
“The brand on your right foot says otherwise,” I stated dryly.
“It was put there without my permission!”
“We should listen to her,” said Felaf. “Scorpio selected her for a reason. We should trust in that.”
I glared at Rahzlyn. She glared right back.
Outside, Letti approached the observatory and knocked. She was alone. Felaf looked to me for confirmation. I nodded hesitantly.
“Enter, Letti.” Felaf spoke eagerly, her voice unlocking the doors. Letti emerged with a tray overflowing with warm bread, cheese, fruits, nuts and hot tea. Silence stretched into minutes.
While I permitted Letti to trim my hair every few months, I wasn’t certain of her ability to keep the revelations in this room quiet. Neither was Gregorios, it seemed.
Felaf read the room and disagreed. “I know what you’re thinking, but we can trust her too. Letti already knows she doesn’t speak Scorpion. Letti won’t say a word. I’m the only one she talks to in the palace, anyway.”
Letti rolled her eyes as she spread out plates across Gregorios’s desk.
“Roselyn is going to need a lady she can trust,” Felaf continued. “If we’re so concerned with someone discovering her background, and Gregorios’s secrets, better to have someone like Letti than one of Maryn’s loyal personal attendants.”
“The more people that know a secret, the less of a secret it becomes,” I said.
“You don’t trust anyone but yourself, do you?” Felaf asked, not expecting an answer.
“I think it’s women in general he doesn’t trust,” Rahzlyn said. “Just an observation.”
Felaf let out a low whistle.
“Are you going to join this conversation, Princess?” I mocked. “Or are you going to sulk over there in the corner?” I didn’t bother to acknowledge her ludicrous statement. No one, regardless of gender, should be trusted until proven otherwise.
“Raithe,” Gregorios warned. “That’s quite enough. I know tensions are high, but we are all on the same side here.”
I focused on the fireplace, listening to the crackles and pops of the burning wood. Despite her well-performed protests, Rahzlyn’s side was that of the apostai’s. I didn’t understand why Gregorios, and Felaf, couldn’t see that.
Letti poured mint tea for each of us. Felaf smiled fleetingly at her as she took a steaming cup and set it in her lap. “I must admit it doesn’t feel right to deceive our court. Maryn is Maryn, I know, but keeping such a secret from her, the queen regent…”
“If Maryn finds out about the circumstances in which Raithe found her, she’ll send Roselyn and Raithe both to the dungeon,” Gregorios pointed out. “She’ll send me there too. Everything we’re discussing here is treasonous.”
Wordlessly, Letti approached Gregorios. She lifted her sleeve. With a knife swiped from the tray, she made a small incision along her wrist. “Here,” she said curtly. “Drink.”
Gregorios hesitated when she brought her wound to his mouth.
“Shouldn’t you drink Rahzlyn’s first?” I protested. “She’s the one we can’t trust.”
This earned a flabbergasted scoff from Rahzlyn.
“Her skin is still healing,” Gregorios explained. He closed his lips over Letti’s wrist and sucked.
Rahzlyn grimaced from the chaise. “I’ll never get used to that.”
Only a few seconds ticked by before he dabbed at his mouth. Seers had the highest tolerance for Blood Sight, but they had to be cautious of drinking too much. “She will not disclose anything to anyone, at least in the near future,” he confirmed.
“I told you.” Felaf’s shoulders loosened. “How much of this can we reveal to Alekko? Vesperah? Maryn?”
“Alekko doesn’t know how to lie,” I chimed in. “Especially to Vesperah. Maryn will know something is wrong by looking at him. And with Vesperah, Alekko outranks her. We can’t tell one without telling the other.”
“So we’re to keep all of this from Maryn?” Felaf repeated. I could hear her hesitancy. “What if you use Blood Sight on her—”
“I can’t,” Gregorios said. “Not against her will. I don’t need to remind you the dangers of using forced Blood Sight on another. Me asking for permission would only make her believe we don’t trust her, which would spell even more trouble for all of us.”
“You don’t trust your own queen regent?” Rahzlyn asked from across the room. Letti had silently made her way over there with a bundle of clean linens for her glyphs. “No wonder this queendom has problems.”
“I implore you to join us, Roselyn,” Gregorios called to her.
“Considering you all plan to eventually slaughter my family, no thank you.”
“That’s not exactly how the sacrifice works,” Felaf said. “Besides, you’ll have plenty of time with them before then.”
“It is the way our world works,” Gregorios elaborated. “Every Chosen receives a fraction of the Astrals’ power and in turn must make a sacrifice to sustain the Astrals’ strength. Without their power, our own diminishes, and the realm becomes volatile. Politically and physically.”
“How could killing my family possibly do that?”
I peered away from the flames to survey Rahzlyn. Redness rimmed her honey-brown irises. Despite being surrounded by strangers, she expressed herself with abandon.
As she had while dancing under the guise of the Black Rose.
I reminded myself it was all an act.
“The devotion and credence of a sacrifice is the most divine way to show our loyalty and sustain our Astral’s celestial power,” Gregorios said. “Beyond that, it is a mystery even for us seers.”
“But don’t you know everything? Can’t you see all?” Rahzlyn countered. She hissed as Letti lifted her arms to wash the wounds there.
“Contrary to that narrative you’ve been told, the Astrals are not omniscient.
Seers are merely the intermediaries between them and humans.
Blood Sight, also, is limited. I possess the memory of all Scorpion seers before me.
That is thousands of years’ worth of knowledge.
To seek one fact or memory could take months, if not years without assistance from acolytes. ”
Rahzlyn’s brow furrowed at this. “So how did you know where to find me?”
“A message in a dream,” Gregorios explained. “Sent by Gemini, somehow, for Raithe to retrieve you.”
“I could just as easily have found you,” Felaf insisted.
Neither Letti nor Rahzlyn seemed alarmed by Gregorios’s treasonous revelation. Perhaps neither cared. If Rahzlyn were a true apostate, such information would be monumental to their cause.
“You should try Blood Sight on Rahzlyn,” I offered. “Before we reveal too much more. If she’s not an apostate, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Gregorios rubbed at his temples. “I must pace myself. Too much blood in a short amount of time is lethal, even for me. I will test your blood once I regain my strength.”
“You wouldn’t see anything anyway, because I’m not Scorpion,” Rahzlyn muttered, still playing the part of victim in denial.
Gregorios tilted his head. “Raithe tells us that you were in the middle of a plot to steal King Zephyr’s talisman, yet you claim to not be an apostate?”
Rahzlyn gripped the edge of the chaise. “I was hired to be the… to be a dancer. After being forced to prove my seduction abilities.” She swallowed, looking away.
My stare hardened. “For someone so set on being innocent, you are having a hard time explaining said innocence.”
“I’m having a difficult time speaking it aloud. But everything I did was all to protect my brother,” she said. “He’s been missing for weeks. Al… Mar…” She groaned. “They call themselves Gemini’s syndicate rebellion.”
“And who allegedly forced the brand on you?” I pressed. Did she know about Kole? Was her brother even missing?
Rahzlyn opened her mouth to speak. She clawed at her throat. “Her name… I can’t say it.”
“It’s now or never.”
“I’m trying to tell you!”
“So tell us.”
“I can’t! I need… air…” Rahzlyn gasped, frantically looking around. “I can’t breathe.”
I knew the truth—I witnessed the Choosing with my own eyes. Yet she was surely an apostate and couldn’t be trusted in a Chosen position. She ought to be taken to the cells like other suspected apostates. She deserved to be fully questioned and forced to reveal all she and her family knew.
If I was able to get Kole and Jere to speak freely with me, then maybe I could get her to as well. But only if we were alone.
“Gregorios, Felaf, Letti,” I addressed them quietly. “Would you mind stepping outside the observatory and giving us some privacy?”
Felaf leapt from the chair, horror written on her face. “Raithe, don’t—”
“Relax, I’m not going to torture her. I think I can get her to speak to me. We all want the truth, don’t we?”
Felaf nodded.
“Whatever you’re up to, go easy on her,” Gregorios said as Felaf and Letti reluctantly guided him out of the room. After the large doors groaned shut, I faced Rahzlyn, who had curled into herself whilst gulping for air.
“The wind,” she choked out. “It’s the only thing that soothes me.”
There was hardly any wind in Scorpio these days with no queen to produce storms. “Breathe in the air around you.”
“I… can’t…”
“You only think you can’t. But you can.”
“It’s not working. I need Basil,” she pleaded, tears spilling over her cheeks. “I need my brother.”
“He’s not here. It’s you and me.” I approached her, crouching to her level. “Look at me. I need you to breathe.”
“Why are you—” She hiccupped. “Helping me?”
“I’m testing a theory to get you to tell me the truth.”
“You won’t… believe me… unless your seer’s Blood Sight confirms it.”
Smart woman. Still, my instincts implored me to hear her out. “What I want is the truth. You said you were trying to tell us. What were you trying to say?”
She looked up from her messy curls, and the words came pouring out as fast as her tears.
“That I’m not an apostate. Not by choice.
Allory and Markus are the ones who forced that brand on my foot to coerce me into doing their bidding.
I had no idea Serpentine was real until my—a friend took me there.
I’d heard rumors of a dancer, but I didn’t know who or what she was.
I didn’t know about the Black Rose, but something about my hair made me the perfect candidate to be her.
I wanted to dance and prove…” With a sniffle, she swiped at the moisture gathering around her nose.
“Markus made me seduce him. Not all the way, but enough to prove I could seduce King Zephyr and steal his talisman.”
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m giving you a chance to be honest here. You should take it.”
“I am!”
“You risked all that, just to save your brother?”
“It’s my fault they took him,” she sobbed.
I froze, looking down. She’d latched on to my arms.
“I swear, I don’t know what they wanted with it.
They branded me, likely to ensure I couldn’t reveal their names or plans to anyone.
I thought the previous Black Rose’s name was Yarah, but apparently it was Thusiah.
This brand prevents anyone from divulging an apostate’s name.
Please, Raithe, you must believe me. You’re the only one I’m able to tell this to. ”
I recalled the moment Jere led me into Serpentine. The guard had muttered the name Andreas, and both men were pleased that he’d been able to. Perhaps Andreas was the guard’s name, and there was truth to what Rahzlyn said. The only caveat to the theory was that I didn’t have a brand on me.
But it wasn’t that recollection that gave me pause.
Please, Raithe.
Dozens of emotions swam in her eyes all at once: a storm of fear, rage, worry, resentment, hope, despair—so many that I hadn’t experienced in a long time, if ever. They poured out of her freely. I found myself momentarily stunned by her vulnerable candor, not a trace of deceit to be found.
I shook my head to clear it, demanding, “Why is that?”
“I don’t know. It feels like a hand is fisting around my throat whenever I try to say their names.” Her trembling fingers lingered on her neck. “So how come I’m able to tell you?”
“You’re insinuating that there’s some sort of implausible magic reason.”
“It’s the brand on my foot. Everything seemed to change after that. Allory and Markus told me their names, their plans, without true fear of me exposing them.” She paused to collect a breath. “Do you also bear the brand?”
“No.” Against my better judgement, and to my utter confusion, I wanted to believe her. “We must convince Maryn that your Chosen status is real. She will have many reasons to doubt you.”
“I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why—”
“You could be the key to taking down the apostai. And for that, we need you alive.”
Her gaze turned scornful. “You intend to use me?”
I shrugged, unraveling from her grip. “If it comes to it. Princess or not, I’ll be watching you. And if you do anything to threaten the safety of this court and our queendom, I will throw you in the dungeon myself.”