Chapter Thirty-Eight
I wake in a soft bed enclosed in drapes. My mouth feels dry as the desert, my limbs aching and sore. Yet I’m no longer struggling in the tempest of pain. In its aftermath, I assess the damage.
I lift the covers to find a patchwork of bruises along my legs, and I fear what is beneath the cotton gown someone dressed me in, especially with the deep ache in my stomach.
When I drop the covers, a new sight shocks me. Kassandra, slumped in a chair by my bedside, her head resting on the mattress beneath her arm, the other resting against my knee on top of the blankets. Fast asleep and still, her face crinkles in worry, shadows under her eyes.
Lila. She’s in the House of Healing now, but how does she fare? What is the extent of her injuries?
“She’s okay,” Kassandra mutters, pushing herself up, scrubbing her face. “Lila is okay. I get reports from Eli.”
My gaze wanders over the curtains. “Briar?” I rasp.
“Resting. Now, you need to take water and a pain tincture.”
Before I can protest, Kassandra dips between the curtains, and when she reappears, she holds a glass of water.
Gentle, ghostly hands prop me up against the pillows.
This time, I do not fear them. Kassandra tips back my head and slips water between my chapped lips, cool and soothing, coating my tongue and throat. I lean forward to gulp more.
“Not too much at once, or you’ll be sick.” She retrieves a small vial from a pocket in her tunic. “A pain tincture. May I give it to you?”
Nodding, I do not meet her gaze. Kassandra drips the warm tincture into my mouth, an echo of another night with a brother and broken arms. Warmth blossoms on my tongue, filling my chest, leaving my head fuzzy. She lowers me back to the pillows, frowning.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“For what?”
“I didn’t get the proof.” My voice cracks. “I didn’t get the proof you asked for.”
“Hush now,” she chides. “He’ll still be a halfling tomorrow. We’ll figure it out.” But her mouth pinches tight.
“You’re angry.” I sound like a child, but I feel like one now: terrified.
“The Healer said your genius and body were equally harmed,” she says. I wait, unsure if there’s a question in her statement. Kassandra sits on the edge of the mattress, eyes burning into me. “You battled with the king, both physically and magically.”
I nod.
“Why would you do that?” she seethes. “His genius could’ve crushed yours.”
“It didn’t.”
“But it should’ve.”
“You think me so weak?”
“You could’ve died!”
“I know.”
“You have always been careless with your life! And so you are careless with others.”
Anger roils around in me. “What was I supposed to do, Kassandra?”
“Live!” she shouts. “You are supposed to want to live!”
Why do you care? I want to yell, but the words disintegrate on my tongue. Neither of us is brave enough to name why she cares. Maybe the Heart of Illusion is not so unfeeling. Maybe she bleeds for only a select few.
“I do want to live,” I say, and for the first time since Jeremee’s death, it is not a lie. Yet she is not convinced.
“Then act like it.”
“If I stay here and hide from the king, will it matter? He will just find me. If he wants to silence me, he will. But…he didn’t. He wants something from me. We can use this to get the proof we need.”
She falls silent, then surveys me again. “Your magic smells different. It’s…richer now. And it was rich before.”
“Finally tolerable to you?”
“I never truly hated it,” she mutters.
“No, you just humiliated me for it.”
Kassandra looks away. “I was a fool, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I have done to you. I’m sorry for the actions of my brother. I’m sorry he sold us both to the king, and that you were so greatly harmed. There is little I can say to make it up to you.”
“You’re right—there is.”
My mistress doesn’t flinch, just slides off the mattress.
“May I roll up your sleeves?” she asks.
“What are you doing?”
“I was going to explain when you had fully recovered.”
I glare at her, but curiosity takes hold.
When she bends over me, I smell cinnamon and ginger and the faintest hint of peach.
Kassandra slides delicate nails under the fabric of the nightgown and rolls the sleeve up to my shoulder.
I gawk at the unmarked skin of my biceps. To the other arm, she does the same.
So much untouched skin. All that remains are four rings from my wrist to my elbow on each arm, put back there by Dominik’s complaint. Just like before, my debt has been halved, and I only have eight rings. I stare at the skin, waiting for the tattoos to return like last time. They do not.
“I could only forgive some debt,” Kassandra says. “So I chose the debt of the other Houses, as to not flag Dominik’s attention. I’m trying to keep these transactions low profile.”
I glance up at her, gratitude and vexation swirling in me. “How?”
She smiles. “Remember Hector’s mistress? The wife of Illusion’s advisor? I had her to tea.”
“How’d it go?”
“It was pleasant despite the blackmailing. Well, pleasant for me, at least. She agreed to my terms and helped shift the books, which means I now have my own account Dominik does not know of.”
“Has he been here?”
“Not in over three weeks. That’s why I’ve been able to practice.”
The last time I saw Dominik, he was in the Pith with Maxian, a strange black powder on the table between them.
“You know something,” Kassandra states. When I say nothing, she huffs. “Tell me everything you learned while there. In riddles. Maybe it’ll help us come up with a new plan.”
“The eagle calls to the wolf.”
“I know that.”
“They…play with a powder.”
She snorts. “Coke?”
All that comes to mind is the image of the black powder on the table, and so my tongue cannot get around the oath. So I shift to different images, as if she’s asking a different question: What color is Eli’s hair? What color does Death wear?
“Black,” I sputter.
“I don’t know it.” Kassandra makes a face. “What else?”
“I don’t know why, but the eagle wants to keep the…moth.”
“No.”
I wince. “But the eagle—”
“Not happening. Next secret.”
“The eagle mated with…” My face burns and I look away.
“Go on.”
“The eagle mated with a pink…eagle.”
“You’re very eloquent today.”
I shoot her a look. “Do you know who the pink eagle is?”
Kassandra shrugs. “There’s only one magenta Reign fae at court. So how does the king feel about me now that he’s found a cousin to fuck?”
I grimace. “The eagle is no longer interested in the silver cat.”
Her eyes have gone hazy as she rubs her temple.
“What’s—”
“Be quiet, I’m thinking.”
She slips through the drapes, and I yank one back. She rifles through her desk drawers, pulling out parchments.
“Where’d you put my notes from my tutoring?” she calls.
“You never took notes.”
“The ones the tutor gave me.” She glances up. “Where are my notes on the marital laws of Versara?”
“In the storage box in your closet,” I say. “Bottom shelf.”
Kassandra disappears through the door that leads to her bathing room and closet. When she emerges, she’s shuffling parchment, eyes scanning the pages. “Why are only males the heads of Houses? Why is it the females who always marry into another?”
“Because…they have archaic views?”
She taps a nail against a parchment, moving closer to the bed. “The Head and Heart must never share a body, only a bed. One must lead, and the other must wed. It’s a system of checks and balances on the Houses.”
“What does that mean?”
“To prevent institutional alliances, a head of one House cannot marry the head of another.”
“But the fae marry between the Houses all the time.”
“That’s between individuals. Every heir must marry a female who is below him in rank. Even if there are two sons and the second son is the Heart, he must marry a lesser noble female.”
“So it’s a law that keeps the Houses, the heirs, and all females of the court in check. It also prevents same-sex marriage, since the heads can never marry,” I say.
“Exactly. It’s why I was set up to marry Maxian. Or Eli as a backup.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I have my secrets, too,” she says. “A marriage between two families can be used to ensure the fulfillment of business contracts used as the dowry. But the Head and Heart law prevents the Houses themselves from merging, pooling assets, and becoming one big House.”
“So, Dominik became the heir and you the Heart. One leads, building wealth, and the other marries to expand the wealth.”
She nods. “It’s why most fae try for two children, despite it commonly killing the mothers. Each family desires a Head and a Heart.”
My stomach curls. Despite wearing the crown on its head, the entire House of Reign is vulnerable. It lost its second child, its Heart. Its heir may not even be—
We are a dying breed, we Reign fae, Hector had said.
Kassandra continues. “Now that Maxian does not want me, and Eli and I do not want each other, it means something else. It means I will be neither the future queen nor the Lady of Healing.” Her eyes brim with tears.
“It means I have no marriage prospects. That I have failed as the Heart of Illusion.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know that was your way out.”
She shakes her head. “These are happy tears.”
My heart breaks a little as I watch freedom dawn on Kassandra’s face. She blooms with a joy I have never seen before. She laughs and my chest hurts, imagining telling this to my mother as a young faerie, before she married my father, even if it means never having me.
You don’t need to marry, I would say. You are enough as is.
“I’m free,” Kassandra gasps. “I’m free.”
Tears sting my eyes, my throat thickening. “You are.”
“At least until Dominik finds out. He may try to marry me off to another noble.”
My joy stumbles. Does he already know?
No, this can’t be. For all of Kassandra’s faults, I would never force a freed creature back into a cage. Something given once, then taken away, is the greatest torture. My mind spins for a solution while hers spirals into despair.
“Kassandra,” I breathe. “If you are no longer the Heart of Illusion—at least not for now—then that means you could be the heir. The head, one day.”
She blinks. “Dominik is the heir.”
“What does it say of sex in the doctrine? If second sons can be the Heart of a House, could a daughter be its head?”
Kassandra reads. “It’s more of a practice, I think. If there are no sons…they usually find the oldest one among the fae families, and the control of the House switches to a new lineage.”
“Do you have any older male cousins?”
“No, just a younger one.” She looks up. “There is no distinction of the sex in the laws.”
“So you could be heir if Dominik is not.”
“The other Illusion families could still choose Ranicus, my cousin in Fraulus. A male child is more valued than an adult female.”
“But then House Illusion would need a regent and be further destabilized.”
“Why are we talking about this?” she snaps. “Dominik is heir. He is the first male and he’s stronger than I am.”
But she has spent two centuries being beaten, insulted, and told she is nothing. How large could she loom, if allowed? Would she surpass a mountain? Perhaps she already has.
I think of Lila whispering to me the day we thought Versara would collapse. He tries every day, and every day he fails.
Of the king’s own confession. Nothing could ever convince me to marry Kassandra Morella, even if she is extremely powerful.
Of his lineage. His true lineage. About where I come from. Who I come from.
Wouldn’t a powerful wife help hide Maxian’s secrets? No, she threatens something larger and more fragile than lineage: ego.
“Kassandra, you’ve already shown yourself to wield great power.”
She glares at me. “You’re moonstruck.”
“Can they do what you did at the coronation?”
“The dagger?”
“Maxian can’t—” My mouth fills with the oath, and I groan. “The eagle tried and failed to build what the silver cat did.”
Kassandra winces. “It’s a specific technique.”
“What if it’s not?”
What if he can’t? I wish to say around the oath. What if he can’t because he’s not fully fae, and even if he were, could he compete with you? Could Dominik, for I haven’t seen him meld the hardest gemstone on earth into a weapon?
“Why do you care?” she says. “It means nothing.”
“What do you want for yourself, Kassandra? If you did not hold yourself back, as others have done to you, what would you choose if you could?”
She lowers the papers, biting her lip. “To never be a wife. To be powerful enough to never be harmed. To…to be untouchable.”
To be untouchable.
I flip the sentence around in my mind, examine it from all angles. It fits neatly into my image of Kassandra—the silver fae who rode the silver mare. The female who forged a diamond dagger. Her spitefulness, her regrowth after every breaking.
“Untouchable would look good on you,” I tell her.
I wonder how it would feel on me.
“So,” she says, cutting into my thoughts. A half smile tugs at her lips. “It seems House of Illusion isn’t the only House made of mirages.”