Chapter 40 The Manticore
I don't know what is going on. With Vakh and Cherry.
With the king. In this castle. In my head.
But there's one mystery here I can easily solve.
After making Marton promise to go straight back to our rooms on his own, I go in search of our tardy compatriots.
Whatever they are doing, it had better be worth the amount of worry they've caused to swirl in my stomach as I search the palace grounds for them.
They are nowhere to be found between the stables and Cherry's rooms. They are not in the parlor or the sitting room, the bedroom or the dressing room or the sky-cursed garderobe.
I am fuming as I exit Cherry's rooms, but I am also frightened, anxiety beating out a staccato rhythm in my veins.
On instinct, I follow my nose as I leave the familiar quarters of the castle behind. Cherry's and Vakhrin's scents are fresh in the hall, overlapping as if they walked it side by side. I let the scent pull me down one unfamiliar corridor after another, winding deep into the belly of the castle.
I am in an unfamiliar hall in an unfamiliar tower when I begin to hear extremely familiar voices.
"—stick to the plan," Vakrin is saying.
"I've told you, I don't feel comfortable with that. The fewer people involved in this, the better," says Cherry.
I press my back to the wall as I listen. I don't even need to strain my ears to hear their voices float around the corner.
"But Tarah—" I startle at the sound of my own name.
Cherry makes a dismissive sound. "Tarah and Marton are better as a diversion. My father will be paying attention to her, and where she goes, Marton goes. You're the only one who can do this for me."
"I don't feel right lying."
"Is your loyalty to them, or to me?"
"You know the answer to that."
Confusion and something alarmingly like betrayal begin to bubble up inside me.
"Look," says Cherry after a moment, her tone conciliatory, "I don't want to lie to them either, but they aren't exactly masters of subtlety.
And Tarah has been... Well, she's been emotional lately.
Volatile. I never know how she is going to react to things.
If she will trust me. If she will be on my side.
You are the safer option. I know I can trust you to do this. "
"I will do it," says Vakh. "And I will keep quiet about it. But I want the record to show that I think leaving Tarah and Marton out of this is a mistake. The two of them are a formidable team. Resourceful. Look how they came for us in the Trove. Found us, rescued us."
"That was Araine more than anyone."
Vakh makes a breathy noise, a scoff. "I thought you and Tarah had made up."
"This has nothing to do with that."
"You're still angry at her. Otherwise you wouldn't be saying this."
"I'm being honest."
"You sound like an ungrateful child."
"Oh, I'm supposed to be grateful. I'm supposed to be grateful that she coddles me sometimes, treating me like some precious treasure to be sat on a shelf, and sometimes lies to me or destroys herself to spare my feelings as if I am some power-mad monarch that cannot be reasoned with."
"I don't think you're reading her motivations clearly at all."
"How would you read them then?"
"She loves you."
The simplicity of his reply leaves silence echoing in its wake. I lean my head back against the wall, chest aching as I stare up at the vaulted ceiling.
Vakhrin continues, "She loves you and she has spent her life trying to balance her roles as your protector, your subject, and your friend. Not an easy task for anyone."
"You seem to do a fine enough job of it," snaps Cherry mulishly.
I feel the words like an arrow wound. It is just what I feared. What I suspected. Vakhrin can play the role of me in Cherry's life much more effortlessly than I can. He is better at it than me. She likes him better than me.
"That's where you're wrong," says Vakh quietly, startling me out of my spiral.
"I don't consider myself to be your protector, Cherry.
I would protect you, and I have, because you're my friend.
And I want you to be my queen one day, because your vision for this nation is a noble one, and I want to be a part of it.
But I don't think of myself as your protector.
Your life and your happiness—I care about them, but I don't think of them as my responsibility the way that Tarah does.
So when your life and your happiness seem to be mutually opposing ends, I don't have to destroy myself trying to give you both the way that Tarah does.
And that's why you sound like an ungrateful child when you diminish the things she's done for you. "
"I never meant—"
"I know what you meant."
"Vakhrin, look. I'm sorry I said—"
"It's not me you need to apologize to."
A pause.
"What are you talking about?"
"You should know your friend and protector is out in the hall right now. And I can smell her heartache at all of the things you've just said."
Vakhrin passes me on his way out of the room.
"You're a catty bitch," I tell him as he breezes past me.
He shrugs, giving me a bared-teeth look over his shoulder.
"I don't like secrets."
"There are better ways you could have done this.
" Kinder ways, I don't add.
"Like I said," he tells me, turning fully to face me, walking backwards, "I'm not her protector.
"
"But you are supposed to be her friend.
"
He gives me an odd look, pausing at the bend of the hall.
"I'm your friend too."
"I would rather you be kind to her.
"
He scoffs. "Do you know what happens to martyrs, Tarah?
" At my blank look, he elaborates, "They die.
"
Without another word, he disappears around the turn in the hall.
I eye the doorway to the room where Cherry waits.
For a long, frozen moment, nothing happens.
I don't go in and Cherry doesn't come out.
I think maybe we won't. Maybe neither of us wants to have this conversation, the argument we began that day in the Royal Wood before the knights found us.
Maybe we just won't have it and everything will remain as it is, frozen in time, our friendship preserved like a bug trapped in amber.
And then I am stepping forward, propelled by unknown courage.
Need. Curiosity. Determination. Something.
It is a small tower room, lit only by thin slivers of light through the arrow slits lining the walls.
Sparsely furnished with a fainting couch, an armchair, and a writing desk.
Cherry stands behind the couch, her hands white knuckled along the back of it.
"He should have let me know you were listening," says Cherry.
As opening words go, these feel like a knight's iron gauntlet reaching into my sternum to yank something vital out.
"Would you have checked your words if you knew I was listening?
"
"Of course."
"But you still would have felt them.
Everything you said to Vakhrin. About me.
You still would have felt it."
I don't phrase it as a question, but it is one.
Cherry gives me all the answer I could have dreaded when she looks away from me.
Not quite ashamed of herself, but not proud either.
"Do you hate me for protecting you?
For—for trying to be your protector and your subject at the same time?
"
"I only ever wanted you to be my friend.
"
"You know that's never who I was to you.
From the very start. That's never what we were.
"
She says nothing, so I ask the question again.
"Do you hate me?"
In the Royal Wood, she said that she loved me, that I was her sister, that she would always want to be my friend.
But there is a great distance between us now, her with a tiara on her head and a castle full of people to serve her better than I ever could.
And now I have heard how she speaks of me when I am not in the room.
"From the very start," she says, and I already know the end of the sentence is going to rip my stomach out, "you were with me only because my father commanded you to be.
And while I trust that you are loyal to me and not him, I also know that you are.
..you're weak, Tarah. You're impressionable and soft.
Your moods change with the tides. I never know from day to day which version of you I will get.
My strong and mighty protector. Or a sniveling girl in need of reassurance. "
"Wait—" That isn't what she said to Vakhrin. That isn't what she's supposed to think of me. It's worse.
"I need someone I can rely on. And I can't rely on you.
I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Vakhrin is always there when I need him.
He's always who I need him to be.
So yes, I asked him to help me investigate the king.
And I tried to distract you from the investigation instead, because I thought you would be a liability. "
My ears are ringing. My head aches.
"But I've always helped you."
"No, Tarah. You've kept me alive. That's all.
You've held me back my whole life. We spent years in that tower when we could have been free.
We could have been out in the world learning all of the things we know now, but we weren't because you kept us there.
You decided. You wouldn't let us explore, let us leave.
I wanted to. Remember? I begged you, and you turned me down. "
I remember, the recollection swimming to the forefront of my mind. A wash of blood. A river of crimson staining the floor of our tower room. The gashes on Cherry's wrists, red staining the front of her skirt.
She was so sad that she almost died, those years I trapped her in the tower. I did that as surely as her father did.
"I'm sorry."
"I don't need your apologies, Tarah, I need you to understand."
"I understand."
"No, not yet, Tarah. I haven't finished yet." A beat, conflicting emotions fighting across her face. "Listen," almost gentle, apologetic, "I do love you, that was never a lie. You are my sister. I would like it if we could be friends again, one day."
"But...?" My head spins with confusion. Why is there a but? Did she say be friends again? One day?
"But there's nothing you can offer me right now that Vakhrin isn't capable of. More capable than you. Now that you know... Now that you know the truth, I think it might be better, safer for you both, if you and Marton left the castle."
"But you said... You told Vakh you wanted us as a diversion."
"And that would've worked, while you were ignorant of the plan, but you and Marton are not good enough actors to pull this off now that you know what's really going on."
"But you haven't really told me anything. I don't know..."
"Tarah, don't make this harder than it needs to be."
"I-I can't leave you, Cherry. You must know that. You know I'd never leave you if there was any chance you could be in danger."
"I'm asking you nicely, Tarah. I'll command you if I need to. And if that doesn't work, I tell the castle guards what you really are. The dragon who held me captive. How warm do you think your welcome will be then? Will you kill them all, just to stay by my side?"
Guilt fills me. Devastation. Shame. "Why are you doing this?"
"It has to be this way."
"But why?" I'm crying now. I can feel that my face is wet. I can't even feel properly embarrassed by this fact.
"I need you gone, Tarah. You're holding me back.
Whether I can trust my father or not—whatever, whoever he is.
I need to be able to figure it out and face it on my own.
And I know you. You'll never be comfortable here.
You're too impatient. I just—I just need space from you, okay?
I need the manticore right now, not the dragon. "
My throat feels like it is aching too badly to form words, my head pounding so hard it feels like it will burst. "Okay," I croak.