Page 24 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘ N o one died,’ I said as soon as Leela entered my rooms. Her posture softened and a little of the worry fell away from her face.

‘I did assume,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’d sit meekly by while he got worse.’ Her eyes sharpened as she took me in. ‘You look terrible.’

‘It was a long night,’ I admitted, crossing to my dressing table and dropping into the chair. I slumped forwards onto my elbows. Even with the glamour, I looked like I’d been blown about in a hurricane and my eyes were glassy with exhaustion.

‘You don’t seem like you’ve had much experience with nursing.’ She appeared behind me in the reflection and her gentle hands began to unpin what was left of yesterday’s style.

‘No,’ I admitted, wincing as she began to draw a brush through my hair. ‘But it seems like you have.’

‘You get used to it when you’ve a handful of younger siblings.’ She was silent for a moment as she continued her work. In minutes, she had it shiny and smooth, and she quickly worked it into an elegant twist.

‘Thank you for helping me yesterday,’ I said quickly, wanting to get the words out before she could say anything else. ‘I know it was… well, beyond what I should ask of you.’

She pursed her lips as she watched me reach up to fiddle with my hair. ‘You could call off your engagements for the day,’ she said, brushing my hand away and replacing a stray lock of hair I’d just dislodged. ‘For the week if you wanted. Maybe you need some time away from court.’

‘All that would do is show weakness,’ I said, plucking at my sleeve instead of my hair now.

‘You said you were attacked yesterday.’ She rested her hands on my shoulders, stilling my nervous fluttering. ‘It’s something to do with what’s happening at Misarnee Keep, isn’t it?’

I looked at her askance in the mirror, biting at the inside of my cheek. How much could I tell her without losing her good opinion of me? I didn’t want to watch her admiration disappear, replaced with horror when she learned about the magic, about the apples, about the princess and Linus and the fact I’d put a man who wanted to drag the country into a war on the throne. And then I’d stopped Dovegni from ousting him.

‘Please don’t brush me off,’ she continued when I didn’t speak. ‘I’m no fool. I know something big is happening. I can see how agitated you are.’

Looking down into my lap, I clasped my hands together. ‘I think I’m in a bit of trouble, Leela,’ I admitted, my voice small and childish. Barely more than a whisper.

She dropped to her knees by my side and looked up at me. ‘I want to help you. But I can’t if you don’t tell me what’s going on.’

I took a deep breath and started to string together words that might be able to communicate some of it. Maybe in a way that didn’t cast me as a villain. But there was a creak of a floorboard by the door.

Immediately, I was out of my seat, snatching up a hairpin as I flew across the room and wrenched open the door.

One of my attendants—Marie, the pretty ash-blonde one with the upturned nose—shrieked and veered away from where she’d been crouching by the keyhole.

But I already had her by the hair.

Slamming her against the wall, I pressed the hairpin against her neck. She whimpered and babbled, but my blood was pounding too loud in my ears to hear it.

‘Who do you work for? Your father?’ I demanded as she scrabbled at my hand in her hair. There were tears in her eyes and she was shaking her head. ‘You’re all just a bunch of spies.’

The rage mingled with fear in a hot concoction that inflamed my head and narrowed my senses until my only focus was the tip of my hairpin against the pulse of the vein in her throat.

But then there were hands at my wrist, and a calm voice at my ear.

‘Let her go,’ Leela repeated, her voice soothing but firm. Like it had triggered a catch in a trap, my hand in the girl’s hair sprung open and she dropped out of my grip, before stumbling to her feet and bolting from the room as fast as her voluminous skirts would let her. I watched her go with a sort of detached bewilderment .

‘Come on. Let’s finish your hair.’ Leela gently lead me back to the dressing table, and I sat obediently.

She had shown perfect calm, sounded so unruffled, but a quick glance into the mirror, a glimpse at her face, revealed eyes wide with shock.

‘She was listening at my door,’ I said, as though to justify myself.

‘That’s what attendants do, ma’am,’ she said simply as she primped at the hair that had once again come loose in the excitement. ‘And when you don’t trust someone, they’ll prove you right.’

I took a breath. Let it out. ‘Are you afraid of me, Leela?’

‘No. But that isn’t because you aren’t worth being afraid of.’

Running my fingers over the hairpin, something thrilled in me, something fierce and pointed and venomous. I was worth being afraid of. I had killed.

I would kill.

‘Please tell me what’s going on.’ Her request was so quiet, accompanied by a hand on my back.

‘You should get your family out of Lee Helse,’ I said without looking up. ‘Your parents. Your siblings. Send anyone you love somewhere else. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I think it might be bloody.’

The hand left me, and I peered up at her to see she’d drawn it to her chest. Sitting up, I took one last look in the mirror and decided I was ready.

That dangerous thrill I’d felt in my room didn’t stay with me I as entered the gallery where courtiers gathered and socialised. The usual hum of chatter stilled briefly as every eye in the room turned on me, holding me hostage for a moment. Then they all went back to pretending they hadn’t looked, leaning their heads close to one another to talk, shooting me slanted glances that darted away like startled fish whenever I caught them. We would have to address them all, hold the audiences we were meant to hold the day before, sooth their concerns, face their accusations.

My gaze narrowed when I caught sight of Lord Sherman sitting in an alcove, for once not badgering me with requests. He had been the one to move the audiences the previous day, and I had no doubt he’d known exactly what Dovegni was intending to do. He was going to need to be dealt with.

I wondered where Draven was, thought about sending someone to find him. Surely, he would know we needed to be visible today if he wanted us to act as though nothing was amiss. It made me uneasy to be attempting to pull off that feat on my own. What if something was wrong? What if he’d fallen ill again?

‘Do you really think she did it?’

An instinct honed in on the cluster of women before me, balancing glasses of iced tea while they leaned in conspiratorially. Four heads of hair glittering with jewels, watching the room while they whispered. I knew who they were talking about.

‘Of course she did. Have you ever seen the Grand Weaver so absent from court? He must be hideously angry about the attack on Oceatold. He’s always worked so closely with their druthi.’

‘And the Grand Paptich. He’s not here either.’

‘That’s because he’s busy trying to have her arrested. Can you imagine trying to arrest a queen?’

‘Well, she’s hardly a queen. She only wears the title.’

‘How could she possibly be parading about the way she is now if she really did it? ’

‘It’s quite easy, actually,’ I said, taking savage pleasure in the sight of all four of them jumping halfway out of their skins. I smiled coldly as they turned to me. ‘Watch.’ Straight-spined and sway-hipped, I strolled forward, plucked a glass of iced tea straight from one of their fingers and sipped it. They shot shamefaced glances at me from behind madly fluttering fans.

‘That is a marvellous dress, Your Majesty,’ one of them ventured, offering me a tentative smile. The others chimed in their hasty agreement.

‘And such an appropriate colour,’ another said slyly.

‘Isn’t it? Red does suit your complexion,’ a third cut in firmly, and I didn’t miss the way her hand reached out to pinch the other’s.

‘My wife is ravishing in everything.’ Draven’s voice gave me a start, and the ladies bumbled and curtsied before me, their heads inclined, hiding pink-flushed cheeks. Hands caught each of my arms in a grip far more violent than his tone would suggest. ‘Will you excuse us?’

Without waiting for me to consent to following him, he steered me through the room with a force that I couldn’t deny without drawing attention. ‘What has you in a temper?’ I snapped, angry that he thought he could manhandle me like this.

‘A little birdy whispered a rumour to me,’ he hissed in my ear. ‘About a girl living deep in the Yawn. A girl with skin as white as snow.’

Fear shot through me like shards of ice. ‘What does that have to do with me?’ I said, failing to keep the tremor from my voice.

‘That, my dear, is what I’m just dying to find out.’

We were crossing the room too quickly. I fumbled for my thoughts as the door loomed before us, promising an escape from prying ears and watchful eyes. ‘I can’t just vanish. Everyone will want to know where I’ve gone,’ I babbled as my mind raced. What had he heard? Who had told him? How much did he know? Was his information accurate?

Did he know what I’d done?

‘I don’t care,’ he said, his grip unrelenting. As we left the buzz of the gallery behind, I couldn’t help the thought that he was taking me away from any witnesses.

‘Tell me how you got rid of Snow White,’ he continued as he pushed me along, taking a left down a narrow hallway with a low ceiling.

‘I already told you,’ I said, my eyes darting around the stone walls, looking for an escape.

‘Tell me again. But this time, tell me the whole story.’ We came to a door and when he yanked it open air rushed inside, chilling me immediately. He tugged me into the cold, drizzly day and slammed the door behind us. We were standing on a dark, narrow service pathway, confined on one side by a high hedge and on the other by an indifferent wall.

I tried to school my expression as I faced him, chaffing at my bare arms. ‘I have nothing else to tell you. I paid Cotus to kill her. He dragged her off somewhere no one would find her and buried her.’ His eyes glinted as he stared at me. If I’d thought there’d been a strange new tenderness between us that sick bed night, there was no sign of it now.

‘I know another version.’ His voice was deadly calm. ‘Once upon a time there was a reckless woman who made a deal, but she didn’t have the spine to do what needed to be done.’ He caught my chin and held it, defying my attempt to shake him off. ‘So, she told a lie.’

‘I didn’t,’ I gasped, fear rendering me stupid, making me lie like a little girl who’d been caught breaking a tea set. ‘I told you the truth.’ Oh, gods. He knew. I’d spent so long living as though he never would , and now he knew. My whole world was fracturing, splintering, crashing down.

‘How do you think the story ends?’ His hot breath was a stark contrast to the chill air. ‘Everything has a price. What do you think yours will be?’ He released me and I stumbled, catching myself against the wall. ‘Let’s try this again. Tell me what happened to the princess.’ What I saw in his face wasn’t that cold ruthlessness I’d seen when he’d watched Lord Boccius be eaten alive. No, this was more frightening. It was all heat, the sort of anger that would lash out and burn anything it touched. It was personal. Intimate.

Despite the tremors of fear running through me, I straightened up, lifted my chin and stared him down. ‘I paid Cotus to take her away.’

‘And?’ He slowly placed his hands on the wall either side of me, caging me in. ‘Where did he take her?’

I swallowed. My mouth was as dry as cotton. My stomach was turning somersaults. ‘Into the Yawn.’

He began to slowly tap his fingers against the stone, one at a time. ‘What did he do with her then?’

‘He… he told her I’d ordered him to kill her.’

‘And did he kill her?’

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

‘No.’ The word was barely a whisper as it escaped my mouth.

‘No,’ he repeated. ‘He let her go. As you told him to.’ The rage beneath his still expression was boiling and churning. I could see it in his eyes, could sense it in the tension gripping his body, in the flickering tick of his jaw.

‘Why does it matter? She’s far away and she’s too scared to come back because she thinks I’ll kill her if she does. She’s no threat to us. We don’t need to kill her.’ The words gushed out in a babble, like a bloated river flooding its banks.

He slammed his hand against the stone, right by my ear, and I flinched.

‘It matters,’ he snarled, ‘because you lied to me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Self-preservation made me shrink down, trying to appear small and unthreatening, my very last line of defence when charm and lies failed me.

He laughed, a mirthless sound, cruel and cold. ‘I don’t care how sorry you are, my dear,’ he said. ‘I made you my queen. It would have been easier to cast you aside.’ He leaned closer, until his face was all I could see, until his eyes threatened to swallow me. ‘And you deceived me.’

I raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek. ‘It was stupid. I was scared. I didn’t know what else to do,’ I said, making my voice timid, widening my eyes.

His lip curled, exposing teeth. ‘Don’t pull that shit on me, Rhiandra.’ He pushed away from the wall. ‘You can’t sell me on the helpless act. I think too much of you to believe it.’ He turned and looked up at the grey clouds racing above us in an endless parade. Then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. A gust of wind tousled his hair. I tried to find something to say, tried to find a little of that dangerous daring I’d felt when I’d plunged that pin into the druthi’s neck. But the finality of this moment, the fated disaster I’d always known would come back to bite me, had me in a choke hold. I’d promised myself that I would use the time it bought me to find a way thwart him.

I had found a way. And I hadn’t used it.

‘Luckily, I’ve discovered your lie before it could do lasting harm,’ he said slowly, ‘and I’m going to give you an opportunity to fix it.’

‘How?’ I asked, already knowing I wouldn’t like the answer.

He turned back to me and I saw nothing of the tenderness I’d seen so recently, of those hushed moments before dawn, full of whispers and mingled breath and skin-on-skin. ‘By doing what you agreed to. Find the girl. Kill her. And this time, I insist you do it yourself.’ He reached out and took a lock of my hair that had fallen loose, weaving it between his fingers. ‘Don’t fail me again, Rhiandra. You won’t enjoy the consequences if you do.’

He left me standing there, slamming the door as he returned inside. The biting cold had gone completely from my mind as I stood frozen and staring, my heart aching like his words had been weapons he’d aimed directly at my chest. I meant nothing to him. Nothing. It was like everything that had happened since he’d given me that apple, since I’d told the lie, had dissolved in the space of a few minutes. I had always known he would turn on me the moment he found out, but for some reason that didn’t make living through it any easier.

What were my options now? Brave the Yawn to find the princess? The Yawn was crawling with the unnatural creatures of the fall. Few ventured into that infernal valley, aside from binders, and they had a troublingly high mortality rate. And even if I did find her, then what? Kill her? I thought of Gwinellyn, of her whispering a piece of gossip to me in the library, her face flushed and her eyes gleaming like she was doing something wicked. I thought of the way she’d let me berate her while she was in an infirmary bed, of how readily she’d accepted the swoon the night I’d sent her away. I thought of her hiding behind the wagon at the Burnings, telling me about her mother, her hand squeezing mine. Killing binders and druthi was one thing, but to kill Gwinellyn…

I could run , I thought. I could run from him and hope he never finds me. The idea left me feeling desolate, not just because I would face leaving everything I had fought for behind, but because he would make it necessary.

Would he do as he’d once threatened, take away the glamour and denounce me as a murderer and a witch? It had been so easy to frame Boccius for Gwinellyn’s disappearance. How easy would it be to convince the court that I had been responsible for Linus’s death? What would they think of me once they knew the face I’d hidden beneath forbidden magic?

The cold eventually drove me inside, but I didn’t return to the gallery. I trod the endless flights of stairs to my suite. It was warm in anticipation of my return, but the rooms felt unwelcoming, strange, like they belonged to someone else. Their emptiness exacerbated the alien feeling, but I was glad to have some time with my own thoughts, to slide the trunk I’d brought with me from the Winking Nymph out into the open and begin carefully placing clothing and other essentials in it. I would take care of the preparations myself, would pack and then send for Cotus, who could organise the horses and supplies. No one else needed to be involved.

After I’d just about filled the trunk with the most practical clothes I owned, I opened the liquor cupboard I’d gone to such pains to have installed, revealing that face that seemed to belong to a long-ago ghost, the one that tormented my dreams. I didn’t linger before the reflection, hefting the mirror from the wall and placing it in my trunk, tucking garments around the edges.

The door latch clicked and I quickly dropped my heavy travelling cloak over the mirror, straightening up and preparing to snap at whoever had entered my rooms without permission, but the spark of anger quickly fizzled when I saw Draven standing in the doorway.

He ran his eyes slowly over me, over the trunk at my feet. ‘When will you leave?’ he asked, cold, detached.

‘When dark falls.’

He nodded and closed the door behind him. ‘A parting gift,’ he said, and my stomach dropped when I saw what he was offering me.

‘Why?’ I asked.

He tossed the apple into the air and caught it. ‘Because this way I’ll know you’ve done as you say.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Consider our original bargain reinstated.’ He approached me, took my hand and pressed the apple into it. It was warm from his touch. ‘An apple for Princess Gwinellyn. Once she eats it, you’ll be released from your obligation to me. Fail to deliver it, and I’ll know the deal was never fulfilled.’ He dropped my hand and I found myself wishing he would keep touching me, would drop the guarded expression on his face, would smile at me, would remind me that he wasn’t just this stony, callous man.

‘Just like that,’ I said bitterly. I couldn’t help myself. It felt like we were standing on that street corner again, like he had all the power while I sold my soul in the rain.

‘Just like that.’ His gaze held me, dropping to my lips for a moment, like he was going to kiss me. But he didn’t. ‘Do you know what happens when you break a deal sealed with magic?’

Silence.

‘You die,’ he said. ‘If I call in the debt and you fail to deliver, your heart will stop where you stand.’

Oh, that hurt a lot more than I wanted it to. I tried to remind myself that I’d known that this was who he was, but it didn’t lessen the turmoil of nausea and disappointment and betrayal swirling in my stomach. Was I really so insignificant to him?

‘At least I know where we stand,’ I said, and my words were barbed with cynicism.

He scanned my face, his jaw ticking, and I hoped he saw every raw, vicious emotion tearing at me. He lifted a hand, balled it up, dropped it back to his side.

‘Don’t try to run when you’re done, Rhiandra,’ he said. ‘Because I’ll find you.’

With that, he left me alone with my trunk in my alien room, facing down a perilous journey without so much as a goodbye.