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Chapter Fourteen

I dream of the Fate of Morta.

Only, unlike before, when her face was a mere void underneath a pitch-dark hood, I see her.

But it isn’t the face I expect. Dimly, I recognize her, but I can’t place her no matter how hard I try. Pale skin, soft eyes gray like the ocean at dusk. And she’s so familiar, so close—why, why can’t I re-member her?

Though I sense this is a dream, I know where I am. I’m in my room on the Isle of Anell, my hands splayed on the window. It’s as cold as ice against my fingertips, and through it, I see her like a reflection on the glass.

But she isn’t a reflection. Her lips move independently from mine, forming words I cannot hear.

Has she come to claim me? Offer me death? Beyond her, a tempest stirs the sea like a pot of soup, heavy clouds pouring sheets of gray into the waves. Lightning crackles and pops. Thunder shakes the floor.

She becomes the thing you want most. Someone told me that, once upon a time. A time I can’t recall. A voice I can’t remember.

I try to discern what she’s mouthing, but I can’t understand. Is it a song? A lullaby? But her eyes tell a different story; they flash like the lightning outside.

And then I hear her. Audibly. Loudly. Vasalie!

I jolt, but then she speaks again, her voice a trumpet in my ears. Open your eyes!

My heart stampedes, thundering within my chest. I know I am asleep, but this feels so real, so visceral—

Open your eyes, she pleads again. But I don’t. I can’t. My eyelids are weighted like clamps of steel. They won’t budge. The sleeping tonic—Laurent gave me one. It’s locked me in a dream, like a coffin I can’t escape.

Oh, Vastianna, my darling girl, please! Her eyes are frantic—

Frantic, like the time she pushed me into a closet.

Frantic, like the time she shoved a suitcase in my hands, pressed a ring into my palm, and told me never to return.

Frantic, like the last time I saw her alive.

“Emilia,” I choke. She reaches for me. I see her now, so clearly. Emilia, who saved me. She’s young, unbroken, so beautiful it cleaves my heart in two. My breath comes in short gasps. I throw my fists against the glass, pounding. If only I could shatter it, I could reach her, save her—

Lightning rends the bruise-colored sky. Thunder shakes the palace, fissuring the very walls.

Wake up, she tells me. Now!

I snap awake.

Lightning catches the sharp planes of King Illian’s face.

I lurch, my pulse ratcheting.

He’s lounging in the chair next to the bed, his fingers inches from my skin, hovering over my thigh. But he drops them like he’s been caught. Almost as if here, under the shadow of night, he had nearly done something he’d never dared before.

Light flares once more against the smooth stone of my walls, offering me a better glimpse.

He’s shrouded in a black cloak, shadows pooling around his eyes, though his hair is still styled back from the day.

A low growl hums then, from beyond the window, faint as the vestiges of my dream.

The storm was real, it seems, but not nearly as violent.

I draw in a heavy breath.

Silence yawns.

Illian sighs, resting his hand next to my leg, just above my quilt. “Have you recovered? I heard you were ill, and I was worried.”

He knows what I’ve done.

He has come to punish me.

Fear squeezes my lungs in a choke hold, but I manage, “Almost recovered, Your Majesty.”

Two days have passed since I woke up in Anton’s wing—two days spent in bed, healing from the effects of the poison, which kept me in a feverish ebb and flow until earlier in the night, when the fever broke for good.

Rivulets of rain drizzle down the pane of my window, thunder still rattling the outside air. For a breath, all I can see is the whites of his eyes.

His lips quirk. “Either you were foolish or brilliant.”

I draw an uneasy breath. “Your Majesty?”

“Tell me, Vasalie. Did you realize what I gave you was cut by duskbane, making it safe for you to consume so that you might, too, play a victim? Or,” he says, his fingers sprawling out like a spider, “did you mistake the poison for straight bellamira and try to spare the man by consuming half his dose?”

Duskbane. A rare root that tames the effects of bellamira. I only just resist loosing a breath and coat my response with frost. “I would not risk my freedom for a man I hardly know.”

Only, that’s exactly what I did.

Get to know your opponents. You may find you like them better than you do your allies.

I loathe Anton for those words, for the way they infected my thoughts. All I could think about was how I would be depriving a sick girl of her kind father—a rarity in this world.

But I had to find a way to complete my task. I had to.

Only, if Illian is to be believed, the poison wouldn’t have killed him anyway—not if it was tempered by duskbane. Illian never intended him to perish. My effort was pointless, and now Illian has reason to doubt me.

I am of no use to him if he can’t trust me.

Was this a test, then? For him to see what I might be willing to do? But that doesn’t make sense, either.

“I want to believe you,” he murmurs. A sigh, and then, “Regardless, it was a success, and I have what I need.”

I have what I need.

If he didn’t want Gustav dead, then what, exactly, did he need?

Again, I feel like I’m missing something. My mind spins through the events of the banquet, but I can’t seem to focus under the intensity of his gaze.

Then I remember something else, something Gustav had said.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Eduard Sarden and his wife, Anita. He’s been traveling on Crown business . . .

Wouldn’t Gustav have heard about Lord Sarden’s death, particularly if they were friends? The death of a lord is no small thing. And yet Gustav had said he was traveling.

I think of the time I spent in Illian’s palace. Donatette’s reaction. The attendants, too—not once did I hear a whisper about the crime I was supposed to have committed. Brigitte was the only one to mention it.

“No one knows what happened to Lord Sarden, do they?” I say. “No one knows he was murdered.”

And there, a crack in his composure. It’s in the twitch of his lips, the slight widening of his eyes.

But he quickly recovers, leaning back. “It wasn’t politically expedient to reveal his death at the time, so I put out a rumor that he was traveling on kingdom business for the last two years. You should thank me for it.”

Is that the real reason he kept me secluded in his wing once he pulled me from prison? Why he didn’t let me wander around the palace? Not because others would wonder why he let a murderer out of prison, but because Illian didn’t want me to find out that no one knew ?

A cold sweat breaks across my forehead; I feel moments away from retching.

“Of course,” Illian adds, too casually, “those two years will be coming to an end shortly, and rumors will start to fly if he does not return on schedule. Should you do as I command, people can easily be convinced that he met with some misfortune while abroad. But if you defy me . . .” He shrugs.

“His body is preserved in the icy tundras of Brisendale, frozen and available should I send word to have it returned. And with him are all the letters you two exchanged during your little love affair, letters that will prove you were furious with him when he refused to leave his wife for you.”

“Affair? Letters? I—I never touched him,” I say, my hands numbing. “I never wanted him. I never wrote him letters . . .”

“Try to speak against me,” Illian says, “and all I need to do is produce the body and its evidence. Do you think they will take the word of a king, or that of a dancer? The story is rather simple; it writes itself. You left my court of your own volition. Found him during his travels. What a nasty confrontation you had, the two of you, a few weeks before the Gathering. You thought you got away with it. You fled to Central Miridran thereafter, charmed an adviser into garnering you an audition, and here you are.”

I shake my head.

How very prepared he is.

I defy him, and he publicly pins me with the murder, ruining my name before every country in the north.

But why?

Why?

He knows the story is false; he penned it himself. He imprisoned me to make it believable—even to me. And for what? So that I might come here and do his bidding?

Maybe it’s that simple. He wanted Lord Sarden dead for his offense, and he needed a way to control me. Two birds, one stone—but to what end?

“But none of this is necessary,” he adds, “should you be a willing participant. It would be much more pleasant for the both of us if you were. Perhaps we might even find a way to be friends once more. Perhaps,” he says, wetting his lips, “there is an even greater reward at the end—one far more satisfying, if you come to accept your place in all this.”

Is he really so deluded? I bark out a laugh. “Such irony, when I might have spied for you willingly once.” Such lengths he went to, when I might have done anything for him without half a thought.

His hand stills atop the quilt.

And just like that, I am unable to restrain the barrage of emotions I feel for him—the rage, the hurt, the cavity of loss left gaping in my chest. Or perhaps it’s because I am desperate to make him feel something, to make him remember what we could have had—that I would have gone to the ends of the earth for him, had he only hinted that he wanted me to.

“You were my everything. ”

I hadn’t let myself fully accept it amid my devastation, but it’s true.

And my adoration might have even blossomed into something more.

“I looked up to you. I was devoted to you. I could have even loved you one day,” I go on.

The secret smiles he gave only me, the gifts, the attention.

The belief he had in me. I flourished under his appraisal. And more so, we had a bond.

Or so I had thought.

“Then you became someone I did not recognize. You ruined what I was. You ruined me. ” I can’t help the hate steeped in that last admission.

His brows notch, and if I’m not mistaken, I see a hint of regret. It’s in the way his lashes shudder against his cheeks, the way his chest rises and falls.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he says softly. “But one day, you will see that there is a reason for everything.”

Almost an admission. The closest I’ll get.

“A reason, you say.” I glare until his eyes connect with mine once more. “Is it one you are too ashamed to admit? Or is it so vile a thing that words could not possibly convey it?”

His hand closes into a fist, but only for a moment. I wait for him to answer, to snap at me, even. He does not.

He just . . . watches me.

An uncomfortable feeling flits across my skin. I want to wrap the blanket tighter around myself, but I can’t act like a sheep. I fear that if I do, he’ll become even more the wolf.

“Your Majesty,” I say, patience thinning. “I am still unwell. Are you going to inform me of my next task, or may I go back to sleep?”

He stands, folding his arms behind his back. “So charmingly short-tempered. I am pleased to see the Head of Staff spending so much time in your presence. Another job well done.”

A sick feeling swarms beneath my skin, though I’d known this—whatever this is—was coming.

“He will find himself rather overwhelmed, what with the requests about to come in. Requests for performances, banquets, and so on—and of course you understand that, for him, it means arranging the entertainment, the food, the livery, the seating, the music. Even the decor, down to the last candlestick. And while he might handle most of it, he’s understaffed in .

. . certain areas.” Illian cants his head toward me, a half smirk hugging the corner of his lips.

“You, charming Vasalie, get to be his savior by offering him the services of a very special tailor friend of yours who can help—so long as he brings her in.”

“But the restrictions,” I say. No one can enter the isle after the Gathering has begun unless they secure all the courts’ permission. It’s for everyone’s protection. “He won’t do it. And even if he would, he wouldn’t hire just anyone—”

“Oh, I think he will. Just give him some sob story or another about her. Annais is her name. Do what it takes, Vasalie; I need her here. This is your next task.”

“And even if I convince him to break the rules, what then? How would she get here?” The Gathering is nothing if not heavily guarded.

“I’ve made your job easy. She is already aboard my ship, waiting for you in my cabin. An easy fetch.”

My insides twist. “We can’t just waltz through the front entrance—”

“Laurent knows this palace as well as anyone. That is, in fact, the point.” He strides toward the door, then pauses. “You have two days.”

And then he’s gone.