Chapter 33 #2
People just died trying to find a way to the Eternal Flame. I can’t languish here. I have knowledge no one else has…but I’m too afraid. My dreams in Delvos were right. I was right the whole time. How can I ignore my instincts now?
I slide my nails along my scalp, trying to organize my mind.
Who is he? Who would want me dead? Does the masked man know me, or did someone send him?
I’m inconsequential—a princess who only exists to marry and have children. I’m lowest in the succession, so my siblings have no reason to want me gone. My mother hates me, but I just became marriageable. With my birthday, my value to her and my father has only increased.
Maybe I did this to myself. Maybe, by running from my premonition, I ran straight into the danger: Norville.
Alaris said he was angry enough to involve his cousin, Kalgasari, the Sovereign of Delvos, in his search for me.
But Norville doesn’t know I’m a princess who could bring the emperor’s wrath down on his head.
As far as he knows, I’m just a woman from Trellis, who knocked him out and escaped him.
Would he really hire an assassin to hunt down a missing governess?
It doesn’t make sense. No answer does. I spend the day in and out of spinning thoughts and fitful sleep.
Late in the evening, the door opens and I jump, but I know who it is without a word. Alaris’s gait is clear as he enters the room.
“Ly, are you awake?” he says softly.
I consider pretending so I don’t have to explain my absence from the office earlier. But I’m sure he heard me move.
I sit up and arrange myself. “Yes.”
He opens the curtains with a flick of velvet, carrying through a tray with tea, bread, butter, and a pot of honey. “I’m glad you decided to rest. It seems your lord’s good sense is rubbing off on you.”
“Good sense?” I scoff. “Is that what we’re calling your continued abuse of power?”
“Last time you tried to get up on your own, you fainted.” He places the tray on the table beside me. “I think another day of rest was wise.”
“I didn’t faint.”
“You were about to faint.” He pours the tea. “Now eat something.”
I tear a piece of bread because I’m hungry, not because he told me to. He pulls a chair from beyond the curtains and sits at the foot of my bed, one ankle crossed over his knee, watching me eat with an expression I can’t read.
“The guards searched the grounds and the clearing,” he says, after I’ve swallowed. “They found blood and broken branches. And a knife, which I believe is yours. But no other evidence of the attacker.”
“I see.”
“I hoped I might be able to give you some answers, but so far, I have none. I’m still looking into it.”
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that he left a calling card.” I pick up the tea and swirl it. “Thank you.”
“There was something else I found interesting.”
“Oh?”
“They didn’t find a single scorch mark.”
I still. “Ah.”
“You did well surviving what appears to have been a trained armsman,” he says slowly. “I’m just curious why the emperor’s youngest daughter didn’t use fire, even to save her own life.”
I school my expression into careful blankness, meeting his dark gaze. Should I try to claim I was just hiding my identity? Or that I did use flame, but there was no evidence?
I set the teacup down. “I…sometimes struggle to call the flame,” I say, landing on a half-truth. “Especially when I’m nervous.”
“Hmm.” The pause stretches long enough that the fire crackles. “Inconvenient.”
“Very.”
We stare at each other. I keep my face a blank slate. This is a familiar lie, but I’ve never been challenged on it quite like this. No one at the palace would imagine or dare. Curse Alaris’s powers of perception.
I resist the urge to touch my hair or twist it between nervous fingers. I wait for more prodding questions, more accusations, but they don’t come.
He stands. “I might have something that can help.”
He crosses into the wider room and rummages around his bookshelf. He opens a few drawers, then returns.
He holds out a dagger, hilt first. The blade is plain steel, the handle wrapped in strips of dark leather. The pommel is a rounded stone, with a milky shimmer that shifts in the light.
I take it and grip the round end. A chill spreads through my fingers. It reminds me of how Alaris’s skin feels on mine.
“What is this?”
“Moonstone. It has calming properties.” He points to the blade. “And that end is for stabbing. Both might prove useful if you find yourself struggling to call fire due to nerves.”
My mouth twitches. I turn it in my hand. The shimmer shifts as it moves, and the weight of it is doing wonders for my pulse. “You just had this lying around?”
“You might have noticed, I’ve got something of a collection.” He gestures at the room of treasures behind him. “That crystal above your head is also moonstone. And I have more blades, if you’d like something else…”
“No, this one is beautiful.” I wave it back and forth.
“You don’t have to trade. I’ll give you ten.”
I giggle. “You seem to like collecting things. A side effect of your…ease of travel?”
“It’s only a recent habit.”
“Really? You haven’t always flitted from market to market, picking up treasures?”
“Quite the opposite.” He shakes his head, returning my smile. “I didn’t used to see the point of acquiring objects.”
“You aren’t serious.” It’s hard to imagine this beautiful lord, dressed in rich silk, with crystals and constellations sparkling over his head, ever lived an austere life.
“It’s true. It’s just how I am. Or was.”
“What changed?”
He pauses. The smile that touches his lips is sad. “I found myself wanting someone else to get a chance to see more of the world. And after she died…the best I could do was try to see some of it for her. Keep it, even.”
My fingers still on the pommel. She.
Something in his expression tugs at my memory. “Is this the…the friend of yours, who couldn’t leave her bed?”
He pauses for a moment, then nods. “That’s right. She was bedbound for a long time.”
The look in his eyes is far away, but steady. An old wound, the pain scabbed over by time. I think of what Dashol said about everyone having their reason for being in this fight. “Did the wither kill her?”
His eyes lift to the crystals above my head. “Not directly, but…yes. It was the reason she got sick and eventually died.”
I press my lips together. I’ve pried enough. “I’m sorry.”
“No need for you to be sorry. I’m going to stop it, Ly.” He reaches up and taps one of the crystals. It spins, casting sparkles on the velvet. “Collecting these things reminds me that we haven’t lost yet. That life is still flourishing. That there is still time.”
His dark eyes track the crystal, absorbing every point of light.
This room of rarities from across the continent takes on new meaning. These objects don’t represent careless wealth and opulence, or even a simple love of beauty.
They represent what Alaris is fighting for. A vibrant world, full of color. Full of life.
And also, someone he lost.
She.
I turn my face away. How distasteful of me to be jealous of the dead.
“You must be tired,” he says. “I’ll let you rest.”
He lifts the tray with one hand and drags away the chair with the other.
“Sorry if I…sorry if I brought up painful memories,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter. She isn’t in pain anymore.” That sad smile is still on his lips, but when his eyes fall on me, they are hard and gleaming, like obsidian. “And I will stop this. No matter what.”
The velvet falls closed.
That look in his eye…he’s determined. With a look like that, I’m not surprised he went to test his shadowgates, even though he easily could have been caught and burned for treason. He’s not going to wait for next winter, whether there’s a safe plan to get inside the palace or not.
Alaris is going to die.
The unwelcome words run through my head, and I throw myself under the heavy fur. I press my face into the pillow and curl my fingers around the voidstone.
He’s strong and beautiful, and I want to imagine he’s invincible, but he’s not. Up against the scorching, burning force of the emperor and the Eternal Flame, this lord of night will fall.
I need to help him find a way in. But I don’t think I can bring myself to leave this room.
I roll over and stare at the lobell shoot, the first leaves starting to split free at the top.
I feel like I’m slipping back into something I used to be—a princess, safe in her marble cage, shut away from the realities outside.
I’m back to being the girl who never left the Sunrise Palace, with little to do but watch flowers grow.
I can’t help anyone hiding here, and I can’t protect myself without answers. I need to understand who hunts me and why.
I need an oraculi.