Chapter 27
“You stole from me,” I murmured, confusion making me slow.
Calanthe’s hand shot down, latching around mine, trying to prise my fingers from the sword.
“What the fuck, Calanthe?” I demanded, tightening my grip, bringing my other hand down flat on her wrist to break her grip.
I backed up, conscious of the staircase behind me, staring at my friend as the shock began to wear off and hurt set in.
“You stole from me, and then lied to me. You said the bag was full of supplies, not pilfered fucking loot. Say something!”
I watched her throat bob, watched her shoulders curl inward, and the lies hurt. “I’m sorry.”
No excuses, no explanations, just sorry. I wasn’t having it. Heat tingled up the back of my neck, burning my ears, my cheeks. But I refused to cry. Fuck tears. I swallowed twice, then hardened my jaw.
“This sword is the only thing that keeps my head clear,” I said, making my voice loud and firm, carrying through the landing and up the stairs above like an echo of condemnation. “It’s the only thing preventing me from being a puppet. Do you get that?”
Calanthe sniffled. Nodded.
I couldn’t let myself weaken, not this time, no matter how much it hurt.
I threw the fabric wrap to the floor and flexed my hand around the sword’s handle, feeling better for having it in my hand.
Days I’d been ensconced in the Chamber of Truths, separated from my friends, alone and useless when I should have been helping prepare the city for a siege.
I could have been adding my magic to the wall, could have helped strengthen the rooftops to endure arrows and cannonfire.
Instead, I’d been locked downstairs, terrified Cleodora would seize control of me again.
“Why?” I demanded, but I realised the answer before she spoke. “The girlfriend you’re taking me to. It’s her, isn’t it?” My voice rose. “Answer me!”
“I-I don’t know. Maybe?” Calanthe lifted her head, hazel eyes lined with silver, her cheeks wet. My stomach curdled, but I choked back the sympathy, the instinct to forgive, to understand.
“Is she even your girlfriend?”
“Yes!” Calanthe burst forward a step, her hands out, beseeching.
I backed up and she stopped where she was, her shoulders dropping, misery filling her beautiful features.
A face I’d loved so much, my first real friend in the goblin lands, the woman who made me feel less alone.
I blinked back the burning in my eyes. “She’s really my girlfriend, and she needs the sword. She needs me to bring it to her.”
I shoved all my hurt, every last bit of emotion, into a vault and slammed the door, mentally adding half a dozen padlocks for good measure. “Why does she need it? What for?”
“She’s going to unite the goblin lands,” Calanthe breathed, her eyes begging me to understand. “She’s going to make a safe space for all goblins to live together, where halflings like me will be accepted.”
I sighed, a weight pushing my shoulders down. “Calanthe. She’s a maniac. She’d sooner eat your heart than accept you. You can’t believe anything she says. You—” I went still, thoughts firing like arrows through my head. “Did you leave the door open on purpose?”
Her brow knotted. “What…?”
“Last week, when you came to visit me, did you leave the chamber door open on purpose? Did you lure me down to that cellar of stars?” I dragged a hand over my face, nausea cramping my stomach.
“You set me up. You knew Gaia would give me a vision of her mausoleum, that I’d insist on getting to it before Cleodora… ”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Calanthe said in a thick voice. “Always being out of place, being wrong no matter where you go. But she’s going to change it. She’ll make the goblin lands a home.”
My stare flattened, and I eyed her bag, wondering what else she was packing.
What else she was sneaking out of the castle to the Greenheart queen.
“I’m human; I belong here less than you do.
So yes, I do know what it’s like. But nothing justifies letting your friend become a brainless puppet when you knew the sword kept me safe.
Nothing justifies stealing it, or setting a trap for me with the open door and the mausoleum and Gaia—it wasn’t Gaia. ”
The words came out flat, though horror made me want to throw up.
“It was never a goddess, was it?” I demanded, stalking across the landing to Calanthe. “Just tell me the truth, you owe me that much.”
She shook her head, tears falling down her face. I sighed hard.
“Well.” That was all I had. That one word. Well. I dragged a hand through my hair, exhaustion hitting me suddenly. Valour and Baby both lunged through the place they lived inside me, promising justice and revenge, but Calanthe was my friend. Had been my friend.
I shook my head with a sigh. “Was any of it real? Or were you here as a plant from the beginn—”
“No!” she rushed out, reaching out to touch me and flinching when I drew back. “No, I promise. I only met her a few months ago, and I didn’t even know who she was until recently. But she’s amazing, Letta. She genuinely cares about—”
“Herself,” I finished in a voice like hammered steel.
“She only cares about herself, and if you believe anything else, you’re more na?ve than I realised.
You think she’ll want you after you’ve served your purpose?
She’ll throw you aside the second you deliver this sword.
Especially now that I know the truth, and all the trust I placed in you is dead. ”
It hurt to say it. I sucked air through my teeth, ignoring the way my chest ached and the air tasted like dust and history and lies.
“You’re a traitor, Calanthe.” My eyes widened. “The plans the rebels had of the castle…”
Her ducked head was confession enough.
“They were going to kill Kier!” I yelled, my voice a whip cracking. Our friendship died, there and then, irreparable. “They would have used the plans you gave them to kill my husband. To kill me if I got in their way.” I shook my head. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m your friend, the same as I’ve always been.”
My laugh was as short as a gunshot. “Get out. Of the castle, the city, the Bluescale Court. Go live with your fucking girlfriend, run into the human lands, I don’t give a shit.
Calanthe, I renounce you as my friend and exile you from Lazankh.
Should you return, our guard will have instructions to execute you on sight. ”
The words Kier had delivered to me, each one a weapon cutting deep.
I’d never once forgotten them. I wasn’t sure if it hurt more to have them said to me, or to say them to my friend.
The woman who would have let rebels kill Kier, who would have let Cleodora control me, just to feel an ounce of selfish love.
“No,” Calanthe gasped, lunging closer. “Please, Letta.”
I braced my heart to push her away even as she clasped my hand, but she reached for the sword.
“You can’t exile me,” she said with a breathless urgency, yanking on the sword with all her weight. “I need to be here.”
“Because she needs you here,” I argued, but a pulse of alarm went through my heart.
All the people Cleodora compelled were humans, myself included. Had she ever controlled a goblin, or were all her rebels human… or halfling?
It took half a thought to have magic rising through me, Valour protective anger and Baby’s indignation at Calanthe’s lies making blue light burst through my hand and down the sword.
I aimed it at the back of Calanthe’s neck, expecting a green ribbon of power to meet the tip, but nothing happened except the sword glowed and Calanthe jumped back with a gasp.
I didn’t think her fear was faked, which only made me hurt more.
She really thought I’d hurt her, maybe even kill her?
“Is she controlling you?” I demanded.
“No,” she answered quickly. Too damn quickly.
I swallowed the knot in my throat and raised my glowing sword, wondering for a moment at how far I’d come from the woman Calanthe first met, full of hatred and rage, my thirst for vengeance overtaking everything.
I stepped forward as she backed up, heading towards the staircase that led up through the castle.
Calanthe’s eyes widened with true fear, and she threw her arms up to ward me off.
It might not have worked if her sleeves hadn’t fallen back, if her forearm hadn’t been exposed—and the dull green gemstone embedded in her skin.
Static noise filled my head. I had to swallow twice to rid my mouth of bile. “Calanthe,” I rasped, all my anger and hurt whisked behind a rising wave of anger.
Cleodora didn’t just have me under her vile web of compulsion; she had Calanthe controlled, too.
My shoulders slumped, a tight pain stretching over my chest. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get that out of you. I promise.”
She shook her head fast, dark curls flung all around her face. “You don’t understand. I love her. The gem doesn’t change that, it just means she can find me if I get lost, or if I’m hurt and need saving or—”
“It means she controls you,” I said in a hard voice. “That’s why you need this sword; because she needs it, and you’re the tool she’s using to get it.”
“You’re wrong,” she snapped, my own hurt echoed back to me. Shit, Cleodora had really done a number on my friend.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, taking a slow step closer. “And I take back what I said about exiling you. We’ll fix this.” I held her stare, silently communicating with whatever part of her screamed and sobbed behind the gemstone’s control. “I promise.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and I sighed, thinking we were done fighting. I should have seen it as a sign of the opposite, because she threw herself at me the next moment.
“Shit,” I grunted, whipping my body aside just in time to avoid skewering her with my sword.
Clearly the Greenheart queen didn’t give a shit if Calanthe came to her crawling in blood as long as she brought the sword.
Which meant I was right to claim it before she could.
Even if she’d manipulated me, even if the only reason we went to Gaia’s grave was because she wanted us there.
Calanthe shoved the heavy bag off her shoulder, the rattle of metal within telling me there were more weapons and riches inside. The sound distracted me long enough for her to grab my hand, pulling at my fingers, frantic to get to the sword.
“Gods,” I hissed as her fingernails dug into my skin, pinpricks of pain covering my hands. “Calanthe, stop.”
But dim light glinted off the green crystal embedded in her arm, and I knew she wouldn’t stop until she took this sword from me. If Calanthe was a warrior, she might be able to do it, but I’d been scrappy from a young age, and I grew up fighting. She didn’t stand a chance against me.
It hurt to snap her grip away, knowing I’d leave a bruise on her arm. It hurt to swing the sword away and drive the flat of my hand into her chest to push her back. It hurt when she staggered and came at me again the moment she regained her balance, covetous eyes on the sword as if I didn’t exist.
It especially hurt to see the opening. The blow I could strike to stop her permanently. I couldn’t do it, wouldn’t. Not even if she’d betrayed us of her own free will.
“Stop,” I repeated, my voice carrying up the stairs. “I mean it, Calanthe, final warning. Stop.”
But she came at me, determination and greed in her eyes, and my heart skipped. Was Cleodora in her head right now, whispering to her, dripping poison into my sweet friend? I adjusted my grip on the sword, tracked Calanthe’s movement, feeling physically sick at what I was about to do.
“Please forgive me,” I whispered as she reached for me.
I swung the sword up, its weight straining my arms even as I sensed eagerness from the magic racing up and down the fuller, illuminating the script etched there.
It sliced through Calanthe’s arm, just below her elbow, like a knife through butter.
We both paused, froze as her severed arm tumbled to the floor, the light winking out of the emerald.