Page 19

Morgana

I avoid Leon for the next few days, throwing myself into training.

I even ask Gallis if she can give me extra evening sessions.

Anything to distract me from my confusing feelings about the fae prince.

With my focus locked in, I finally start to get better at the “precision” Gallis keeps demanding of me.

The celestial flame stuff is…less successful.

I can’t seem to manipulate the inner flames of the plants we practice on without overwhelming them and burning them away entirely.

But the proctor keeps telling me being able to affect them at all is a big deal.

It shows I’m capable of doing what needs to be done, even if I’m still very far from the mark.

A few more days slip by and then, one morning, I do a double take when I see Alastor at breakfast looking tired and rumpled.

“You’re back,” I say abruptly.

“Some version of me,” he says, his voice flat and low. “But I suspect I won’t feel like myself again until I’ve eaten every piece of food the kitchen can give me.”

He straightens at the sight of something across the room, then abruptly stands. I turn to see Leon heading toward us and silently curse. I can’t walk away now without it being obvious I’ve been hiding from him.

“Actually, breakfast will have to wait,” Alastor says, and there’s a sad note in his voice. I don’t think it has anything to do with him missing out on food.

“We should talk,” he says to Leon when the prince reaches our table.

An expression flashes across Leon’s face, something so hopeless it startles me.

“Bad news, then,” he says.

Alastor just heads for the dining room door, beckoning for Leon to follow. But the prince turns to me first.

“Come with us,” he says.

“Why?”

“Whatever Alastor has to say, you should probably hear too.”

I wonder for a moment if he can read my mind.

Because for the last few days I’ve been like a pendulum, going back and forth on whether Leon really is opening up to me or whether the displays of trust I’ve seen from him mean nothing after all.

Adding fuel to the fire was the fact he didn’t tell me why Alastor left, but apparently, I’m about to find out now.

I follow him out, and at least Alastor doesn’t look surprised when we both join him in his room. In fact, the blond fae addresses me first.

“I’ve been talking to Filusian intelligence,” he explains. “We wanted to see who this Parvus guy was in communication with. If he didn’t know in advance that you were coming here, it’s likely he sent a message or received some orders during his stay.”

“Did you find anything?”

“The Morelium themselves are too close knit for us to infiltrate on short notice, so we won’t get any answers directly from them.

However, our spies did manage to track down a Filusian messenger who’d been paid to keep quiet.

They told me they carried something from Parvus across the border.

But they were instructed to leave the message in a random location in the middle of nowhere, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the trail goes cold from there. ”

“That at least confirms that they’re in contact with someone in Trova,” I say. “Which means my aunt could very well be involved.”

Still, that presence I glimpsed when Parvus used his sensic magic—that dark, hungry entity—didn’t remind me of Oclanna at all. Whoever it was, a chill runs through me at the thought that they know where I am.

“I’m afraid that’s all I have on Parvus for now. As for the other matter…” Alastor turns to Leon. “Would you rather we talk about it alone?”

I smile. Trust Alastor to just come out with the fact that there are things Leon doesn’t want me knowing. Except Leon immediately shoots this down.

“It’s fine. She should hear this,” Leon says.

Alastor inhales and gives Leon an apologetic look. “Alright. The news from the palace is not encouraging. Your brother’s condition has worsened since we left for Trova. According to the healers, there’s barely any lucidity left.”

I see it again now—the hopeless expression that appeared so briefly in the dining room. Now it shines out clearly on Leon’s face. I have to look away before I fall into wanting to do anything I can to free Leon of that despair.

It’s possible that Leon wanted me here specifically to hear this so that I would be guilted into helping him. But whether I’ll choose to help his brother is overshadowed by the reality that I still don’t know if I can.

Leon talks to Gallis. He must know about my lack of progress. What does he think about that? He’s staked everything on me and my abilities, and I might turn out to be a losing bet.

“We shouldn’t delay much longer,” Leon says, glancing at me. “Whatever the outcome, I need to see him.”

Alastor nods and sits down on a chair, exhausted, like a man carrying too many people’s burdens.

“That’s not even all of it,” he says, rubbing his face.

“There’s someone else I need to speak to, but now I’m wondering…

” He looks up at me, and the strain on his features sends a spike of fear through me.

“Perhaps she should get it from you. It’s better, I think, to hear this kind of thing from a close friend. ”

“What is it?” I ask. My voice jumps up a few octaves, climbing with my anxiety. “Is this about Tira?”

He gives me the saddest look—and I know the answer is yes.

“We asked Wadestaff’s smugglers to keep an ear to the ground about Otscold. If we’d been able to get word sooner…but there wasn’t any warning. I’m so sorry, Morgana.”

Alastor usually calls me Your Highness, so his use of my name only makes my heart thud harder.

“The Temple went back. They executed everyone who they believed had helped kill the clerics in the purge. Tira’s family is dead.”

When I was growing up, I had two mothers. Neither of them was the lofty queen who lived in her palace many miles away. One was a dryad who tended to my needs and poured poison down my throat.

The other was a peasant woman with golden skin and colorful clothes.

She was hired to do no more than cook and serve my food, but it wasn’t in her nature to let a lonely little girl go unmothered.

She worried when I was unwell, brewing steaming broths to help my colds.

She made me feel special on my birthdays, baking teetering cakes I couldn’t possibly eat all on my own. And she gave me my best friend, Tira.

The same girl I now hold in my arms, weeping. Because Una Holms is dead.

I should be weeping too, except I don’t have any tears left to shed. They all poured out after Alastor gave me the news. What’s left behind is a stiff, brittle state, as if I’m one touch away from crumbling inward.

Tira isn’t just a mirror for my pain. She amplifies it.

Every deep, wrenching wail reverberates through me, every sob that racks her shoulders I feel in my bones.

I absorb it as best I can, rocking her from side to side where we sit together on the bed.

The despair comes in waves. When it ebbs, we sit in silence until the next flood hits us all over again.

It occurs to me that when I learned my parents died, I didn’t cry like this.

It’s true, I didn’t know them like Tira and her family, but there’s grief in the fact that I’ll never get to know them.

Not grief like this, though. It’s a quieter, duller pain, like a deep ache you don’t notice until you call attention to it.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Tira says eventually, her voice a broken croak. “I should never have gone.”

I knew this was coming—the blame she was sure to want to place on herself—and I’m quick to shut it down.

“No Tira, if you’d stayed you would be dead too.”

“Maybe that would be better,” she says, so sincerely it hurts my heart. “At least then I’d be with them.”

I put my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at me.

“Do you think they’d want that? Don’t you think it’s some consolation to them, even in the Eternal Realm, to know you’re safe and alive and here with me? Your family loved you too much for you to wish that.”

Her face crumples again, acknowledging the truth of my words.

“I just don’t think I can believe it. It doesn’t feel like it can be true—that they’re gone.” Something in her face shifts, hardening into anger. “Not gone, taken from me.”

She straightens, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress. “Whoever is responsible for this, may they rot in the Gloamlands forever.”

The venom in her voice calls to me. I also have that rage. There’s so much of it within me, waiting to be felt. Surely that won’t hurt as much as sitting with this pain.

“It was Oclanna,” I say. “She started all this. She sent the Temple to Otscold. Even if she didn’t personally make sure that bearer, Sophos, escaped to tell the Temple everything, all this death is on her hands.”

My conversation with Leon after the library attack comes back to me.

What a fool I was to think I was out of her reach here.

I was deliberately blind, not wanting to face the reality because it would mean I would have to take a stand.

It would mean accepting that I can’t run away and hide from my problems in Gullert.

Not until I get justice.

“She murdered your family and mine,” Tira says, as if she can hear my thoughts. “And after all that, she thinks she can sit on the throne, rule your kingdom? That evil, loathsome bitch.”

I don’t know if I really think of it as my kingdom—the people of Trova wouldn’t think of me as their queen, not if they knew the truth—but I don’t disagree with Tira.

“She can’t inherit the crown until I’m dead,” I say. “So she’ll keep on murdering until she has what she wants. She’ll keep coming after me and the few people left in the world that I love.”

I meet Tira’s eyes, and see she knows she’s right at the top of that list.

“But she can’t do that if we kill the bitch first,” I say.

“Damn fucking right,” Tira breathes, reaching out and squeezing my hand.

I might not know what the future holds for the throne of Trova, but to be honest, right now I don’t know if I can find it in me to care. All I know that as long as I still have breath in me, I won’t let my aunt sit on it.

We wanted a quiet life, to retreat to the safety of Gullert and find some peace, but we won’t get peace until she’s in the ground.

I’m starting to realize you can’t run from some fires.

No, there are flames you can only fight by lighting a blaze yourself.

Bargaining with Leon for freedom, or even protection, isn’t enough anymore—and he’s no longer the enemy I want to bring low.

“Stay here,” I say, and I rise, letting the heat of my anger fuel me into action.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“To make a deal,” I say.

I know Leon won’t have gone far. He’s still committed to watching over me, making sure I’m safe. And just as I expected, when I leave my room he’s right there, stationed outside the door like a statue.

“We should go to your brother,” I say. “From what Alastor says, time isn’t on our side. We shouldn’t risk delaying any longer.”

“You’ll heal him?” he asks, and the note of fragile hope in his voice shakes me a little. I’m not used to hearing him unmoored like that. He’s usually the single, solid point in an unstable world.

“I’ll try,” I say. I can only hope that when I see his illness firsthand, it will help me work out exactly what I’m missing. That I’ll finally discover the trick to properly manipulating celestial flame.

He takes a step forward, and for a second, I think he’s going to kiss me again. Panic runs through me, as well as a spike of desire. I don’t know what I’ll do if he does.

But he simply takes my hand, lifting it to his lips. Heat rushes to my cheeks as his mouth brushes my skin, his eyes pinning me in place.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I say, withdrawing my hand. “There’s something I want you to do for me in return.”

“What is that?”

I inhale, letting the hunger for revenge wash over me.

“You’re going to help me kill my aunt.”