Page 19

19

ESSA

“I t was reckless,” Ollie said, pacing the room.

“I’m a dead girl. Why shouldn’t I be reckless?” I asked.

Dagar chuckled. He, Lure, and Pocha sat at a table in the corner of my suite, devouring a platter of roast chicken and cheese. I sat on my bed, wincing as Rohree blotted at my shoulder wound with witch oil.

Ollie threw his hands up in frustration. “You want to be reckless? Have a tryst with a courtier. Spend the night drinking in on the wharfs. But don’t insult the queen.”

“She’s my mother,” I pointed out.

“Exactly,” Ollie said. “So, we know just how ruthless she can be. And insulting her in front of the entire court is just…” he shook his head.

“All I did was refuse to kneel,” I tried to sound dismissive, but the truth was, I knew what I’d done. Throughout history, there were many who had suffered greatly for lesser infractions than mine.

Maybe refusing to kneel was just a petty act of rebellion. Maybe I was jealous of Laynine and how Mother favored her. And when Laynine had come back and knocked me from the sky… If Braimar and Zaman hadn’t swooped in to catch us and break our fall, I’d be dead. Had Mother counseled Laynine to do that, to end me now, before the final challenge came? I didn’t know. But the fact that it even seemed like a possibility had given me all the fuel I needed to hate Mother.

And standing tall in front of everyone, refusing to kneel and seeing that look on Mother’s face… it had felt good.

Ollie’s cheeks were getting red with frustration.

“Essa—”

“Look, Ollie. I get it. Your job is to keep me safe, and I’m making that job harder. The problem is, I’m really starting to have trouble caring. Ow?—”

Rohree tugged the thread as she stitched my wound. “Hold still then,” she grumbled.

“You might just have to decide to let me go,” I said, turning my attention back to Ollie.

My friends in the corner looked up at me as one in a way that almost made me laugh. Ollie straightened up, his face going pale now instead of crimson. “Never,” he said. “Never.”

“Oh, Ol,” I took his hand and squeezed. “You’re too sweet, really. I’m sorry you got saddled with a broken egg like me. You should have been paired with Laynine. Then you’d be like Hoatan one day.”

Don’t get defeatist, Othura said in my mind. I nudged her back out and closed my mind to her thoughts.

“I don’t want Laynine. I don’t want to be like Hoatan,” Ollie said, kneeling in front of me. “And I won’t let you give up on yourself.”

“None of us will,” Pocha put in.

“I’m not giving up. I promise. I’m just…” I searched for the right words. What was I doing? Letting go? Releasing all my dreams, all my hopes for the future? Changing my skin like a molting dragon hatchling? Becoming something else? I didn’t know how to explain it, but I wasn’t giving up exactly. I was giving up on a specific idea of what my future would be. And it didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like a new beginning, somehow. I just didn’t know what was beginning.

Probably my afterlife…

Regardless, I had a sense of something coming. Something new, vast, revolutionary, and somehow hopeful, like the feeling in your chest on the first warm day of spring.

I sense it too, Othura said, wriggling back into my mind again. It scares me. But it excites me.

Rohree finished tying off her sutures, nodding in satisfaction as she snipped off the thread. “There,” she said. “At least we can say this wound isn’t the one that will do you in.”

It had been a shallow one—lucky for me.

“What about Braimar?” Lure said, and all eyes snapped to me.

“What about him?” I asked.

Lure arched an eyebrow. “Don’t play dumb with us, Essa. We’ve known you too long for that. Braimar helped you. What does he want?”

“I know what he wants. It’s between her legs,” said Dagar said, and Pocha slapped him on the arm.

“He offered to run away with me,” I said as casually as possible. Everyone gaped at me.

“Yikes,” Dagar said.

“That’s so romantic, though!” Pocha exclaimed.

Ollie crossed his arms, thoughtful. “Anytime Braimar does something, I always look to his durram. Why would Kortoi want Braimar to run off with you…? I’ll tell you. The queen is almost out of her child-bearing years, which means the nobles will soon begin pressuring her to put crown aside. There are only two more of the royal line, you and Laynine. If Braimar takes you away and defiles you, you have no chance of becoming queen.”

“I have basically no chance of becoming queen anyway,” I pointed out. “Because I’ll probably be dead. And there would still be Laynine.”

“There would,” Ollie agreed. “But with you gone, and Laynine as the Irska, she’d be only one bad flight away from leaving the throne empty. And you know who would be the first to sit his arse on that empty throne...”

“Kortoi,” Lure said, venom in their voice.

“Or Lord Natath,” said Pocha, “with Kortoi behind him pulling the strings.”

“Exactly,” Ollie nodded.

I flipped my hair. “It is possible Braimar is just enchanted by my beauty.”

“Possible, but unlikely,” Dagar grinned.

I took a wad of bloody bandage and chucked it at him. He ducked it, laughing. Dagar was always teasing me like a brother, and I felt suddenly overcome with love for the misfits in this room. In the whole court and the whole kingdom, these were the handful of people I knew I could trust. There was no way I could have lived without them.

“The question is, how do we turn Braimar’s advances and the queen’s ire to our advantage?” Ollie mused.

I rose, patting him on the shoulder.

“I’ll leave you to ponder that, wise councilor,” I said. “Tomorrow will be a busy day of playing hostess. I plan to take our poet friend to see the dragon hatchery.”

“And to see Kortoi,” Ollie said. “He’s requested an audience with our guest. And Kit asked to see him, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. How has the prelate’s fame has made it all the way across the sea?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” Ollie said. “It makes me uneasy. But perhaps we’ll learn more when they meet. Hoatan has asked me to observe their audience closely.”

I nodded. “And so you shall.”