CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CONNIVING, VINDICTIVE, CRUEL
Revenge is a multistep process. It requires careful planning, attention to detail, and enough fury to set the world alight. I have all of the above.
Luc’s parents use the Praeceptor’s private dining room to celebrate his victory. I’m convinced they pick it just to spite me. To fully pound it into my skull how easily I can be discarded.
I wasn’t invited. Yelina gave me a smug, simpering smile as she placed a bony hand over her chest (presumably where her heart resides; I’m unconvinced she has one), feigning devastation as she delivered the news.
“Unfortunately, Remira, I think it would be best if we don’t remind our guests of the scandal.
” (Scandal referring to the horrifying fact that I exist.) “This is an important dinner. You understand,” she’d said.
Luc said nothing in my defense, and for the first time, it didn’t sting, because for the first time, I knew to expect nothing.
Besides, much as I hate Yelina, I do understand. I’m the one who’s always telling Luc to make a spectacle of his wins and obscure his shame. Sometimes, I almost let myself forget that his biggest shame is me.
With my favorite place taken, I work in the library. I set up my things at one of the tables along the windows that span the back wall. As the clock ticks closer to the start of Luc’s dinner, I play pretend that I’m not seething.
I know how this night will begin. Luc will come and find me to apologize for failing to defend me. As always. I’ll smile as though all is forgiven. As always.
One hour until Luc’s celebratory dinner . . . thirty minutes . . .
Just ten minutes to spare when the library door finally creaks open.
I hunch farther over the table so Luc doesn’t catch me watching the clock as his footsteps pad closer.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say without looking up.
“That’s strange. I was under the impression the library is open to all members of the Honorate,” says someone who definitely is not Luc.
Kaidren.
I stiffen in surprise as his steps pause just behind my chair.
I fix my face into a smile and turn. In my current mood, he’s the last person I want to talk to, but we’re friends. Or at least, he thinks he’s manipulated me into believing we are. “Kaidren. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Hope you’re not disappointed.” He circles the table to stand across from me.
Something in the way he moves is off-putting.
There’s tension in how he carries himself, different from his usual laid-back demeanor.
There’s a table separating us, but the way he hulks over me, the way he leans forward .
. . it feels almost predatory. Even that signature perfect smile of his is ever-so-slightly off.
His eyes are tight in the corners, lips thinned, teeth looking more bared than pleasant.
“I’ve been searching for you,” he says. “I looked first in the Praeceptor’s dining room, but there’s a celebration there tonight. Seems neither of us was invited.” His tone lacks its usual fake warmth. Instead, his words are as frigid as lake water in the mountains.
“I wasn’t expecting an invitation,” I say.
He’s still smiling that small, unsettling grin. “That doesn’t mean much to you, though, does it?”
His tone sets me on blade’s edge. I spoke to him just two days ago. He took great pains to coat his words in honey intended to ensnare me. Now his voice is bitter, and his stare is sharp.
I tilt my head to one side, trying to guess the reason behind this shift in him. “What do you mean?”
“This wouldn’t be the first time you showed up somewhere uninvited,” he says coldly.
My heartbeat quickens. His words are too delicately chosen to be anything other than an accusation. He knows about the first trial. But how?
I’m scrambling for a defense but coming up blank. I settle for playacting confused. My brows scrunch together. “I feel as if I’m missing something.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he snarls. “Yesterday. The arena.”
My blood is ice. My throat clogs with fear. I swallow it.
I was completely covered in the arena. Kaidren didn’t see my face or touch my skin. How he guessed it was me, I don’t know, but so long as I deny it, he can’t prove anything.
“What about the arena?” I feign confusion.
“It was you. You hid amid the aikkari and disguised yourself as a soldier. Don’t bother denying it.
” There’s not a trace of doubt in his tone.
With the glare he’s leveling at me, I can no longer convincingly play the role of his dewy-eyed, eager-to-please friend.
Whatever trust he had in me is up in smoke.
That doesn’t mean I can’t continue to manipulate him. I’ll just have to adjust my tactics for an opponent who sees me as a foe, rather than a friend.
I recall the patronizing way Yelina put a hand over her heart when she told me I wasn’t invited tonight.
I mimic her. Place a hand on my chest and draw my brows together in a semblance of sympathy I know he’ll see right through.
“Oh, I understand. You’re upset you lost the first trial, and now you’re lashing out. ”
Kaidren bends closer to the table, eyes narrowed in fury. “Stars in hell, you can drop the act. I’ve got you all figured out, Remira.”
I doubt that. I’m enjoying myself too much to stop. Usually, I have to hide behind the Shadow Queen’s name to verbally spar like this. Taunting him now, watching the way my words burrow under his skin, gives a new kind of satisfaction.
“Why are you being so mean?” I widen my eyes the way I do when I want to appear innocent, but allow the corner of my mouth to tip up in the tiniest of smirks for him to see. “I thought we were friends?”
His palms slap against the table with a glare scorching enough to raze mountains. “You know damn well we were never friends. You’ve been playing me since the day we met.”
Finally, I allow the glass mask of feigned hurt to fall and shatter. My eyes harden to steel. “Now, how could I have possibly done that?” I drop the falsely sweet tone, and for the first time since we met, I address Kaidren Vale with all the derision I feel. “I thought I was just the help?”
Kaidren reels back as though I’ve struck him.
I keep going, rising to my feet as I stare him down.
“And you’re wrong.” There’s still a table between us, and he’s still tall enough to tower over me, but the shock on his face makes me feel as though I’m in total control.
“I haven’t ‘played’ you—that suggests a risk of losing.
We haven’t been playing a game; I’ve been beating you. Over and over again.”
Kaidren’s nostrils flare. He looks as though he’s seeing me for the first time and doesn’t like what he sees. “Clearly, I’ve underestimated you.”
“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said since you got here.”
Realization dawns in his eyes. “I told you I was Opheran when we met. The Shadow Queen mentioned it in her column, and I couldn’t figure out how she knew, but you wrote to her, didn’t you?”
“I did nothing of the sort. Although, I confess I’ve always thought ‘Bastard Vale’ had a nice ring to it.”
“And it was you who accused me of murdering my father,” Kaidren continues as though I haven’t spoken. He slowly rounds the table, advancing on me as the revelations keep coming. “Not your brother. You must’ve had quite the laugh at my expense when I came to you for help.”
“I admit to laughing at you. Every other accusation is absurd.”
“You fought me yesterday in the Tournament.” He’s on my side of the table and moving steadily closer. “I’m certain of it.”
I step back. He takes another one forward.
“If you’re so convinced, prove it.” My back hits something hard and cold—the wall of windows. I can retreat no farther. My pulse is racing. I have no idea how he worked out I was in the arena, but if there’s evidence, I need to know what it is so I can destroy it.
Kaidren’s slow march in my direction falters. To my surprise, he looks almost . . . embarrassed. “Your eyes gave you away.”
I’m so relieved, I chuckle. “You saw a girl with brown eyes you could barely see through a mask, and you think it was me?”
“Well, that, and . . .” He hesitates and, again, I catch a glimmer of embarrassment in his expression.
“And what?” I prompt.
“Your scent.” The lightest hue of pink tints his cheeks. “It’s that perfume you wear. I’d recognize it anywhere.”
I wave him off dismissively. “I don’t wear perfume.”
“Yet you always smell of rosemary.”
It takes everything in me not to flinch. I wasn’t lying—I don’t use perfume—but Sef adorns my hair with rosemary oil. I’m stunned Kaidren noticed.
I hide my surprise behind a scoff. “You saw brown eyes and smelled rosemary. That’s hardly irrefutable proof.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Kaidren’s expression is stormy as he stalks closer and closer, until I am pressed to the window, his body fencing mine.
He stoops, face a gasp away, our breaths intermingling.
We’re close enough our noses would brush if I inclined my head.
Close enough I see a vein thrumming furiously in his forehead.
Close enough my pulse races with the fear he’s going to close the distance and touch me.
I flatten myself against the cold windowpanes and hold my breath, petrified my shallow inhales will be enough to bridge the narrow gap that divides us.
“Your eyes aren’t just brown.” His tone is harsh as his gaze flits over my face, soaking in every detail as though carving it into his memory.
“They’re chestnut. But that doesn’t matter.
You think eyes are distinguished by color?
They’re not. Even when I thought you were a servant, there was a fire in them I’d recognize through smoke.
The girl I fought in the arena was you. I am certain of it. ”
I didn’t think there was enough space for him to draw nearer still, but he does.