Page 20 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Twenty

T he curtains remained shut against the daylight, the door locked. There was platter on the side table that had been long picked clean of the food Draven had scrounged from the kitchen in the middle of the night. He’d wanted to go find more, insisting I eat. I hadn’t let him. I’d pulled him back into bed instead. It was a method of persuasion that always seemed successful.

The fire in the grate burned low. We were going to run out of fuel soon and I hadn’t decided whether I’d let him unlock the door for that, or if we’d just let it die away. I didn’t really want the tangle of sheets to wind up pulled up to our necks against the cold. I liked looking at him, liked the smooth lines and hard edges of him, like tracing the litany of scars on his skin. Some he told me the stories behind. A fall from a horse, a fight as a gangly teenager, a slip through the ice on a frozen lake. Some he didn’t. That raised one beneath his collar bone had turned him silent. I’d kissed him until he’d forgotten I’d asked about it .

Our murmured voices had risen and fallen throughout the day and the night before, winding around and between memories and stories and little pieces of history that made us up. I told him about trying to learn to pickpocket, and how terrible I’d been at it; about Madam Luzel and the girls at the Winking Nymph; about how I’d once dreamed of being an actress, then of inheriting the suvoir. I didn’t tell him how before all that I’d simply dreamed of a safe place to sleep. He told me that it snowed in winter in Yaakandale and he and Lester would sneak out to tear down hillsides on sleds they made themselves. He told me about his mother, how she’d carved him wooden animals and sung to him, that she’d died when he was still a child. He didn’t tell me how.

Once, someone knocked on the door. He had stepped out and spoken to them in a low voice. Whatever he’d said, no one had knocked since, and the hours ticked on. I told him about Jerren, the lover who’d promised to marry me when I was young and stupid, and he told me he would like to find him and make him bleed for ever having looked at me. I didn’t tell him about the deal Dovegni had offered me, and he didn’t tell me about why he’d ordered the attack on Oceatold. And I didn’t ask again. We didn’t talk about the dead men in the tower. We didn’t talk about the future and how we would eventually have to leave the room and face it.

What a stupid, fragile bubble to have locked ourselves in. But every time I closed my eyes I saw flesh splitting beneath a blade, and the only thing that seemed to dissolve the image was sinking into him. For a while, I would be stupid. For a while, I would grip him tight, would hang on his words, would lose myself in the way our bodies fit together like we were two pieces of a split stone. And for a while, it wouldn’t bother me if it was real or not.

‘Rhiandra?’ Leela’s whisper found me. I sat up, my gaze dropping to the figure beside me in the bed. His eyes were closed; asleep, or at least dozing. With a sigh, I crept out from beneath the covers and went to the door. She’d cracked it open already—I hadn’t even heard a key in the lock. When I slipped through, I closed it quietly behind me.

Leela, as unflappable as ever, didn’t even glance down at my bare legs, or up at my mussed hair. Her expression remained mild. ‘You’ve been locked in there a while.’

‘I don’t feel like being queen today,’ I muttered, wrapping my arms around myself.

‘You might never have to be one again if you don’t come out soon. The court is in a bit of an uproar. I’m doing my best to keep them all out, but I don’t think I can for much longer.’

With another sigh, I ran my hands over my face and tried to clear the fog from my head. I didn’t want to go back to thinking and assessing and plotting. I wasn’t ready to let go of the dim room and the tangled sheets and the soothing quiet. But I could already feel it slipping away as reality came bleeding back into my awareness. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Your council is angry,’ she said quietly. ‘A lot of people are. They’re demanding we open negotiations to try and avoid an outright war with Oceatold. There are wild rumours flying around, so many I can’t catch them all.’

‘What kind of rumours?’

‘There’s one that you’ve been assassinated, another that Prince Tallius and the rest of the Oceatold delegation are being tortured in Sentinel’s Tower. I just heard a footman telling a maid that Princess Gwinellyn is actually alive and is rallying forces over the border ready to invade, and the Grand Paptich is demanding you stand trial for murder. He has members of the palace guard reciting some story about you murdering prisoners.’ She studied me as she listed off the tales, and I had the feeling she was measuring my reaction, trying to determine if any of those rumours were true.

‘Alright,’ I said, straightening and gathering all of my courage to my chest. ‘I suppose the least I can do is show them I haven’t been assassinated.’

‘There’s also this.’ She pulled a tiny scroll of paper sealed with a dollop of wax from her bodice ‘The Grand Weaver asked me to give it to you while you’re alone.’ Her eyes flickered to the door.

Dread filled my throat as I took it. Popping open the seal, I unrolled it to see just a few words scrawled in black ink. Remember our deal. The moment I’d finished reading it, it began to smoke, then a hole appeared in the centre, spreading like I’d held the paper to an ember. I dropped it with a hiss as whatever was on the paper ate through it until there was nothing left. Staring down at the curled remains, I considered what to do next.

‘I just need a few minutes,’ I said. I felt so off balance. Not at all ready to think about Dovegni. Did this note mean he was getting ready to strike?

‘Perhaps I’ll order some coffee sent up, and then I’ll run you a bath?’ she suggested gently.

‘Yes. A bath.’ I needed one of those. I surely smelled like sex. And like him. ‘I just need a few minutes.’

‘Of course. When you’re ready, just ring for me.’

I took a deep breath and opened the door, stepping back into the room to find Draven sitting up, turning one of my hair pins over in his hands. I sat on the bed by his feet.

‘I don’t think anyone has caught me off guard the way you did when you threatened me that night,’ he said, flicking his eyes up to me. He reached out and slipped the pin gently into my hair. ‘You always manage to surprise me.’

I almost didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to pop the bubble. But I did. ‘Why have you been trying to start a war with Oceatold?’

‘War can be useful.’

‘Useful how?’ He didn’t respond, simply dropped his hand to my cheek. ‘You’ve been stirring up conflict within the country too. Using magic to ignite the anger at the Burnings and starting riots. You want instability.’ He didn’t deny it. He seemed to be waiting for me to take my guess further. So I did. ‘You’re going to overthrow the Guild and the Sanctum, aren’t you? You don’t want to share power.’

His mouth twitched in a half smile. ‘Clever.’

My heart sank. I didn’t believe much in the way of guiding moral principles, but I did know that wars only made those who were already suffering suffer more. The Great War had been brutal and bloody, with so much life lost and destruction wrought that former enemies had been turned stalwart allies sworn to peace. I didn’t know if I wanted to be party to starting another.

‘Don’t frown, my dear,’ he murmured, smoothing his thumb over my brow. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I can’t let you.’ The words were out of my mouth before I’d consciously decided to speak them.

‘Why?’

‘Too many people will die. I don’ t want that responsibility.’

He lowered his hand. ‘You’ve killed people before.’

‘No one innocent.’

‘The princess was.’

I snapped my mouth shut, feeling the blood drain from my face as I dropped my eyes. Please Madeia, let him not be looking as closely as he usually did. Please let him not read my thoughts on my face.

‘This is what happens when you wear a crown,’ he continued. ‘You make sacrifices for a greater purpose.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, pulling myself together, pulling up the cracked and brittle walls that had long been failing to keep him out. ‘Maybe you can tell that to the court. We have a long list of people demanding an explanation. And the Grand Paptich wants my head for what I did yesterday.’

‘No one will lay a finger on you, Rhiandra. I swear it.’ He lifted my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm.

‘Well, you’d better let me bathe and dress first in case they do.’ And then I could try and figure out what the fuck I was going to do.

He cocked his head, a spark of suspicion lighting his eyes. ‘Why do I feel like you’re going to go back to seeing me as some sort of nemesis the moment I step through that door?’

I leaned in and kissed him. ‘Because you are . The fact that you’re also a good knock doesn’t change that.’

Looping an arm around my waist, he pulled me in. ‘Then I’ll trust the second fact to continue eclipsing the first.’

‘Go on, get out.’ I slipped out of his arms and padded into the wash room. ‘Before the whole kingdom comes crashing down around us.’

I splashed water over my face as I listened to him leave, trying to shock myself out of the strange stupor I’d been in since I’d taken hold of that knife. I had to make a decision, now. An important one. I had to decide whether I was going to comply with whatever it was that Dovegni might demand of me. I had to decide whether I still wanted to end my marriage by betraying my husband. Why was that so difficult a question to answer? What had changed? He was still dangerous and unpredictable. This whole business of starting a war was proof of that.

And then there was the matter of Gwinellyn.

Moving back into the now empty bedchamber, I rifled around in the drawers of my dressing table until I found the black box I was looking for. Inside was the string of blood stones Dovegni had given me. She was surely just fine. If I looked, I would see her cozied up in a cabin, eating her way through the supplies Cotus had left for her.

Picking up the necklace, I brought it before my eyes, examining the faint glow in the heart of one of the red stones. What had Dovegni said? Touch it and think of what you want to see? I thought of the little princess, remembering her big blue eyes and anxious expression. I imagined her in a cabin, as if I could persuade the necklace to show me what I wanted, and I touched one of the stones.

My fingertips tingled slightly, then pain tore through my head and my vision went dark. I inhaled sharply, tried to drop the necklace, but my fingers felt welded to it as I rapidly blinked my eyes, trying to see. When the darkness cleared, I wasn’t standing by my dressing table anymore. I was at the base of a soaring cliff face. The details were indistinct, my surroundings seeming to fade out into a whirl of grey mist at the edges of the scene, but I didn’t need to look far to see the dark-haired girl before me, craning her neck to look up. There was a man, too, one with aquiline features and hair that shone like bronze. He was smiling and holding out his hand as he mounted the first stair of a staircase that seemed to defy logic in the way it clung to the cliff face above. My gaze caught on a pointed ear.

‘Gwin!’ The name was out of my mouth before I’d realised I was going to say it, and I lunged forward to grab her just as she reached out to take that offered hand. My own grasp passed through her like she was made of nothing but smoke. But she glanced behind her, and I caught sight of her face tight with worry. Then the scene dissolved and I crashed back into my body, still standing clutching that necklace. It fell to the floor with a clatter as my fingers sprang open. A bitterness coated my tongue, so strong I gagged, and I doubled over, bracing myself against the dressing table for balance. The necklace lay curled on the floor at my feet, a gleaming string of red and gold, except for a single stone. It had turned a cloudy grey, and the gold touching it was tarnished with black corrosion.

Scooping it off the ground, I stowed it back in the drawer it had come from and tried not to think about what price had been paid by some creature in a dungeon for that one little glimpse. At least I knew Gwinellyn was alive. The thought eased a tension in me I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying and I closed my eyes with a sigh to feel the relief of it. But if the pointed ears were anything to go by, she was keeping potentially dangerous company .

If I complied with whatever Dovegni’s plans were, I could end her exile. I could find her, could explain, and she would surely forgive me for sending her out there in the first place if she thought it was to save her from a worse fate. I could continue as her regent, maybe, and then perhaps as an advisor on her council. I could prevent a war, saving lives and avoiding hardship for thousands. If Draven was bent on overthrowing the Guild and the Sanctum… he might even end up starting a war within our borders as well as the one he was hankering for without. I couldn’t let him tear the country apart like that, could I? But I tried to imagine standing before a courtroom and denouncing him and it made me feel so sick I had to stop. There had to be another way.

Sitting down at the dressing table, I studied my face in the mirror, touched my swollen lips, the beaded flower in my hair where Draven had pinned it. I had run out of time to make my decision. I either needed to warn him now, or be ready to lose him.