Chapter 40 #2
“No!” If anything, him doing so much for me makes tolerating his presence more difficult. I blush, realizing I just admitted I like Alaris. As a friend and ally, I clarify to myself.
“Well, maybe it’s the same for him.” She pauses. “You are going to remember that I compared you to a plant, aren’t you?”
“I very much am,” I say, pawing the stubborn roots for a better grip. “I’m going to think about it a lot, actually.”
“This is why I can only talk to you,” she mutters to the leaf in front of her.
We both dig back into the dirt.
Despite Siro’s words, I only feel worse morning after morning as Alaris greets me. Even though his smile remains light, his eyes grow a little harder each day.
I still don’t know how Alaris plans to destroy the Eternal Flame, but against an already impossible task, every advantage matters.
He needs all his strength. All his focus.
He doesn’t need me distracting him or delaying his sleep.
When I hear that door open well past midnight, I hold my breath, just to make sure he doesn’t come check on me.
Even when I hear a soft “Ly?” in the dark, I don’t answer.
Solstice isn’t far. Lives are at risk. I need to make up for the time I cost him.
So I start keeping my own late hours. In the evenings, I head to the basement through the mirror in the closet. No one else comes down here at night, and I’m able to peruse the maps uninterrupted in the candlelight. I revisit every single one I worked on with Dashol before my memories came.
I mark corridors and pathways I never walked in this life.
The images rise as my pencil moves: a maid ahead of me on a back stair, a stolen bottle cold against my ribs.
A lord I flirted with lifetimes ago walking me through a private garden.
The details come faster than I can sort them, layering one over the other until I can’t tell which life I’m pulling from.
Every time I delve into memories, I’m racing a headache building behind my eyes.
But the tidbits are worth it, so I write each one down, as tension spreads along my jaw.
Even with the late-night mapmaking, I’m still always upstairs and behind the curtains before Alaris gets back.
When does the man sleep?
I split my daylight hours between the meetings, the aviary, and a few visits to the greenhouse.
With the hawks flying above me, I can safely cross the grounds.
They perch on the frame of the glass building as I work with Siro.
We make quick progress with the lobell, the other seedlings exploding into leaves and the hint of buds.
No one else asks me about my rooming arrangement, but more eyes follow me than usual as Dashol escorts me through the castle.
I spy Drina in a corridor once, and she gives a little wave, coming closer as if she wants to talk.
I nudge Dashol’s elbow, and he quickly steers us away.
If Captain Orso didn’t hear about the new hawk keeper in Drina’s last report, I’m sure I’ll get a mention in the next one as the lord’s new paramour.
Two more of Alaris’s “lovers” arrive with information.
The gowns and jewels and carriages now look like clever costumes, not genuine attempts to attract and seduce.
The women swan through the halls, making a show of their presence as they wait for Alaris to receive them.
It’s clear now why I always noticed their arrival; they want all the servants to spread the gossip of Alaris’s affairs.
I wonder if the rest of the staff pities me, his newfound lover, who tolerates him meeting with other women. The servant who rooms with a sovereign but can’t keep him for herself.
Even though I know it’s just a story, it turns my stomach. He isn’t really meeting with visiting women for sex. He implied he hasn’t been with anyone for a very long time.
My toes curl when the thought comes unbidden: except me. Almost.
On both visits, Alaris has me listen from behind my curtained area in his room.
“The fewer people who could recognize your face, the better,” he says, swinging the velvet shut between us.
I stare up at the crystals as the informants share their news. The somber voices discussing alliances and trade routes sound nothing like the passionate encounters I imagined with every arriving carriage.
The first time, I emerge from the curtains with nothing to add to the report. But the second, I offer a contradictory detail.
“She said Lady Owens can convince her husband to join our side, but…that’s risky.
Lord Owens isn’t loyal to his wife.” I root around in my own mind, wondering how I know that, before I realize it’s not a memory from this life.
It’s from the life where I was thrown off a balcony, when I spent most of my time drunk.
Lord Owens brought his mistress to a late-night gathering, and her presence became the talk of the party.
I lock eyes with Alaris as I swim my way back to the present.
“He has a mistress his wife doesn’t know about yet. ”
Alaris nods, eyeing my brow. I clench my teeth as the headache that accompanies sifting through my memories pangs once. I make an excuse and retreat behind the curtains to lie down.
That night, as I stare at the maps before me by flickering candlelight, I dare to touch on the memories of my deaths.
If I can remember gossip I didn’t care about at a party I attended half-drunk, maybe I can remember some additional detail about the masked man.
I picture him on the balcony, stalking toward me with those even steps, and a second later my body jolts, rocked with pain as I crash to the stone. I shake my head and clench my teeth.
Even if I force myself to relive them, I don’t think I’ll learn anything useful. The chest of oraculi catches in the corner of my eye, but I turn my head away. I want to know, but touching one of those again is too great a risk. I can’t spin into memories for days. I can’t do that to Alaris.
Still, the map in front of me blurs. So I pull out a clean piece of paper and switch to reviewing names instead.
Before the oraculi, the only name I could put to a pursuer was Norville.
But I never set foot in Norville’s manor in my other three lives.
I still can’t be sure whether the masked man wants me dead himself or was sent by another, but it’s clear it’s the same man every time. That means the same motive.
And I know something new about myself: I’m not ignarian. With that truth on the table, I can think of several people who might want me dead.
I write down the first name: Hilaria Ignaros.
The empress. My mother. I follow it with a curling question mark.
If the emperor isn’t my father, she would at least suspect it.
She famously got pregnant faster than any other empress.
She could have gotten married while it was still too early to tell she was with someone else’s child.
Or, she could have lain with a cyralian man in those early days at the palace.
It is also possible that my mother has no idea something is amiss, because she herself is cyralian.
All of the red-haired empresses had their lineages scrutinized to ensure no other divinial blood could show up in the royal line.
Her mortal lineage would have been verified.
If there was a mistake, anyone involved could face execution.
I write down: Advisors? Archivists?
Then: Emperor Belzas?
He could have also sent an assassin. My father acts with fire and violence, but if he ever found out about my cyralian blood, he might choose to deal with me privately rather than publicly name himself the fool.
I start listing my siblings but decide to save the ink; they wouldn’t bother coming after me if they knew.
My brothers are only concerned with each other, and my sisters are all in distant lands except Rinalda.
I was always at the bottom of the succession, and with the truth of my blood, I’m even less of a risk to their inheritance.
Seran? He has been at my mother’s elbow since she was selected to become empress.
When my blood came and the power of the flame did not, Seran facilitated a meeting with sophirian priests.
They all insisted I could bear ignarian heirs, and that I just had some personal blocker on reaching Ignar’s power.
Clearly, they were either fooled or coerced into lying.
Seran didn’t help me out of affection. The trajectory of his power followed the empress’s, and therefore mine. But would he have vouched for me if he knew the truth?
My jaw tightens a notch with each new name. I press my thumbs into the hinges and rub, trying to work out the tension. When the names run out, I feed the edge of the paper to the fire, letting it burn to ash before blowing out the candle.
I greet Alaris with a somber nod the following morning, and he’s generous not to throw my own words about looking terrible back at me.
Not getting enough sleep makes it harder to stay in the moment as Dashol and Karns argue about an approach from the river. I try to focus, applying the pencil harder than needed to the map in front of me.
“We can’t wait until the day to test the entrance,” Dashol says. “We need to send someone without armor first to make sure they don’t drown.”
“If we test it first, we lose the advantage,” Karns replies. “It’s a risk, but…”
Then the window next to me is the warm marble of the banquet hall.
A lord from Marithos is at my ear. I’m laughing, tilting toward him, letting him believe I’d make an amiable bride.
The wine is sweet and I keep drinking it, until the floor tips and a maid’s hands slide under my arms, helping me to bed.
Then my feet are bare and bleeding on stone, and I’m kicking at the guards who drag me toward the tower.
“Lyra?” Dashol jerks me out of my visions. “Ready to go?”
I nod, reorienting myself in the jaw pain that belongs only to this life. I don’t miss Alaris’s eyes boring into me as I follow Dashol out the door.