Chapter 24
ACKER
The figure on the roof across the street sits with his back to the smokestack, leg swinging lazily where it hangs over the edge as he sharpens the sword in his lap. Long, steady sweeps of stone against metal. He’s been out there since we were deposited at the cottage yesterday.
“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”
Letting the curtain fall back over the window, I turn to see Irina in the doorway of the bedroom, looking a tad rumpled, but surprisingly lively considering what she went through yesterday.
She was lucky the bedroom was in such close proximity to the front door, as it took her less than a minute to fall asleep after face-planting into the bedding.
I inspect the tumbler of liquid I’ve been nursing since I awoke hours ago and shrug. “What else is there to do when you’re imprisoned?”
As if it finally occurs to her where we are, she takes in the living quarters of the cottage.
It’s clean, but there’re little trinkets that feel personal to someone who lived here once before.
A half-used bottle of men’s fragrance was left in the bathroom, along with a beard comb.
And the pots and pans in the kitchen are well worn.
Worn boots sit beside the door. If I had to guess, this was a soldier’s personal residence.
Someone who will no longer be coming back to it.
The walls are a soft white, the furniture crafted in varying shades of wood, and rugs covering the floors.
Not very prison-like, no, but the soldiers making regular sweeps of the perimeter have made it abundantly clear we are not merely guests.
At least, I’m not. Wells and Olivia, on the other hand, are apparently guests of honor.
“It’s a bit disappointing, isn’t it?” Irina asks, gaze moving back to me as she sits in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace.
She has a tone she sometimes uses that never fails to grate on my nerves. It’s meant to come across as light and conversational when it is, in fact, incredibly patronizing.
I waver on whether to ignore her or not, but the drink has me sliding into the opposite chair. Maybe. “What is?”
“Having your Match do the same to you as you did to her.”
“I think you’re mistaking my father’s actions for mine.” I swirl the liquid in my glass. “I did talk him out of the collar he wanted her to wear, though.”
I realize my mistake a moment too late.
Irina’s gaze falls to my neck … to the absence of stones.
Now that she sees me without them, there’s no hiding the obvious implication.
I did visit Jovie last night, but it’s not as scandalous as she probably believes it to be.
I thought that giving Irina a lover would lessen the hurt of living without my affection, but I’m not sure it has. Ever.
Irina’s emotions play across her face like the flicking pages of a book, telling me everything without saying a word. I am the cause of her perpetual heartbreak.
Olivia shuffles into the room. “You’re drinking already?”
Fucking maddening, these women. I down the remainder and hold the empty glass up for them to see.
“Nope.”
Rolling her eyes, Olivia lays out on the settee, head lolling on the armrest as she looks over at me. “I heard you pacing around in here for hours. Did you even sleep?”
I’m surprised by her concern, having gotten so used to her ire as of late, but I am not one to turn down grace when it’s given. “I did,” I tell her. It wasn’t more than a couple of hours, but sleep is sleep. “But it sounds as though you didn’t.”
She groans as she rubs her distended stomach. “I think the boat made him unsettled. Like you, he has yet to quit moving.”
The midwives had come within an hour of us arriving at the cottage.
The four women disappeared into the second bedroom with Wells and Olivia and were dismissed one by one.
They finally chose an older woman dressed in layers of practical linen, her years of experience and positive demeanor highlighted by the laughter wrinkles bracketing her eyes and mouth.
It seems that arriving in Maile has calmed Olivia in some sort.
Even clearly exhausted, she rubs her belly gently, a peaceful grin on her face.
I know it’s because she believes her unborn child will be better protected here.
And as glad as I am that Jovie has offered my friends sanctuary, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a false sense of safety, not now that I know my father can steal magic from Heirs.
That type of power feels inescapable, no matter how far one runs from it.
My magic suddenly shifts. It’s been a while since I’ve given free rein to my gift, but the sensation of metals moving closer sends my blood buzzing and I look in the direction of the front door a moment before a knock sounds.
Irina shoots to her feet, instantly on guard, and I urge her to calm with a raised hand. Olivia sits up, albeit a bit wobbly.
Wells appears in the open door of the bedroom, doing up the last few buttons on his shirt. “Who is it?” he asks, smoothing down his mussed hair.
Only one way to find out.
I’m somehow unsurprised by the sight of my sister at the cottage’s door.
What is shocking, however, is how … mature she appears.
There’s a touch of make-up enhancing her strong features; her lips are painted a soft pink, lashes curled.
A lavender dress hangs from her shoulders with a gold butterfly pinned to the neckline.
She stares at me in the same manner I do her, as if struggling to merge the memory of the sibling we grew up alongside with the version of them standing here now.
Foreign, yet familiar. Familiar, yet foreign.
Her inspection goes deeper than just the physical, her eyes flitting over the air around me, seeing colors and shapes I’ve never been privy to.
I don’t move, nor so much as blink, knowing this moment is pivotal if I’m to be trusted.
But I can only withstand the silent judgment for so long. “Well,” I say with a tilt of my head. “What’s the final verdict?”
Her dark eyes, near identically to my own, fix on my face. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They are the first words she’s spoken to me since her betrayal. I suppose a simple hello would be too gauche. “Sure.”
Beau steps back, waving at Olivia and Wells as she turns. “Hey, you two,” she says, and then pauses, eyes lingering on my wife. “And you, Irina.”
While her tone is dry, it’s not unkind either, and Irina offers a brief tight-lipped smile in return.
I keep an eye on the man on the roof as I step outside.
The cottage we’ve been housed in sits on a bend in the road near the gulf, the water within walking distance and the wharf within sight.
Aside from the rooftops of the cottages situated on the street up hill, I have no sense of where we are in relation to the palace.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Beau simply stares at me standing on the stoop.
Her eyes are lethal as they scour my skin.
Like I’m being gutted, sliced right to my core, like she’s trying to dismantle me from the inside and there’s not a godsdamned thing I can do about it.
Finally, she takes mercy on me, eyes cutting to the direction where the road slopes down toward the coastline.
“This way.”
I fall into step beside her. Both of us are quiet and I use the time to take in the city once more.
When we were marched up the hillside yesterday, it was dusk, and the lamps dotting the roadside were a beautiful sight to behold.
The warmth radiating from the lamps made it seem like a blanket had been draped over the city, their glow making the white stone cottages all the more ethereal looking and I’m eager to see the city in the daylight.
“Does he go everywhere you go?” I ask, tilting my head to the figure leaping across to another nearby roof as he follows us.
“He goes where the queen tells him to go.”
If Jovie believes I am capable of harming my sister, it’s another stone stacked against me.
Beau is more than capable of defending herself.
Even if she weren’t, I never felt the same anger toward her as I did for Jovie.
Her betrayal felt like it was born out of desperation.
Beau suffered at the hands of our father.
Trapping her mother, making her vie for a place at court by doing his bidding, constantly pitting us against each other just as he did with his wives.
Jovie’s betrayal just felt cruel. Like a punishment for something I wasn’t even aware I’d done.
People begin to trickle out into the streets as they start the day.
They wave to Beau, well acquainted with her presence, it seems. A horse-drawn buggy heads toward us and we step to the side of the road to let it pass, a sweet smell following in its wake.
“Bread delivery,” Beau explains. “Evelyn makes bread as gifts for people in the capital.”
“As in … for everyone?” I ask.
She smiles as if I’m a toddler asking if the sky is going to fall one day. “Yes. Every family gets a parcel at least once a year. Evelyn says it keeps her busy. She enjoys it.”
The path curves around a cottage with pink shutters, and as we round the bend it’s as if we’ve stepped foot into an entirely different part of the city. The path splits to the left and right of a theater sunk into the ground ahead, steps leading to a stage at the bottom.
Despite the cold temperatures, the trees bordering the round seating area are green and full.
Flowers bloom on them in bright shades of purple.
And, as gorgeous as they are, it’s the flutter of gold between the swooping branches that holds my attention.
The way the sun glimmers off the butterflies’ wings looks like tiny fissures of lightning, a tiny spark of reflected light here and there before it’s gone, hidden by the beat of a wing.
Wow.
“I know,” Beau says. “It’s beautiful.”