“Oh, I can’t?” Theo says. “Thanks for reminding me. I definitely forgot after he stabbed me—”
I hear scampering feet and breaking glass. But I can’t tell what’s happening to Ale, and I can’t help him, because I’m too busy fighting Verene. When I try to break free, she tightens her grip. We hit the floor and struggle viciously. I do a lot of kicking, because the rest of me is rather restrained, but before I know it, she’s sitting on my feet, pinning me down.
She pulls the bag off my head. She’s managed to get me behind one of the trellises, and even in the dark, the triumph on her face is clear.
Ale is nowhere to be found.
“Well?” Verene sits back. “How does it feel to be someone else’s captive? It’s not fun, is it?”
I shrug. “I’ve had better.”
Instantly, her triumph turns to irritation. Her eyes flicker over me, just for a moment, and I realize that during the fight, my new pants ended up down to my ankles. It exposes the fact that my skirts are ridden up awkwardly around my thighs. With my hands tied, of course, there’s nothing I can do about it.
She grabs my skirts and yanks them down, covering me up hastily, like one would cover a disgusting wound. It’s rather offensive. But, I have to admit, it’s also a relief.
“Nice disguise,” she says. “It wouldn’t have worked.”
“Tragically, we’ll never know for sure,” I say.
“It’s your eyes,” she says. “You can’t disguise eyes that soulless.” She pauses. “It’s also your height. Anyway, I know why you’re out here.”
“Do you?” I say.
“You were looking for the Red Roses,” she says. “And eavesdropping on us.”
“Why would we do that?” I say innocently.
“You’re trapped in our city,” she says. “You can’t scheme against us. Nothing you do will work.”
“Oh,” I say. “How unfortunate.”
She eyes me. She’s very unhappy about the eavesdropping. I can tell. She looks like she’s trying to remember every word she said to her brother.
“So… the vide?” I say. “Is that what you call it? Your little shadow pet?”
“Oh, it’s not a pet,” she says.
“What is it?” I say.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she says. “Also, since it obviously isn’t clear—I’m asking the questions. We’re not sitting around having cake in my parlor.”
“Having experienced both, I still prefer this,” I say.
“My people love having cake with me,” she says, indignant. “I make them happy.”
“And you make me nauseated,” I mutter in Occhian.
“What?” she says.
I remain pointedly silent. She looks like she’s seriously considering putting the bag over my head again.
“I saw the painting you did of us,” I say. “I liked it.”
“I was trying to make you look evil,” she says.
“Well, I look fantastic. Can I take it back to hang in my parlor?”
She puts the bag over my head again. She shifts, and I think she’s looking around for her brother. I wait patiently in the dark. I don’t know very much about Verene, but I know that she won’t be able to sit quietly for very long.
A minute later, she pulls the bag back off.
“Why?” she says.
“Why what?” I say.
“Why did you even end up here? In Iris?”
I can tell the question has been bothering her since she found out where I’m really from. I’m a mystery. I like that.
“We got lost in the catacombs,” I say.
“But why?” she says. “What were you trying to do?”
I stay quiet.
“Did you already know there were other cities when you set out?” she says.
I don’t answer. I’m just going to let her decide all of this for herself.
Her dark eyes linger on my face and the chocolate smeared all over it. Then they go to my ruined hair. I wonder suddenly if she thinks I style it this way on purpose. I don’t care what she thinks of me. But also, the thought is mortifying.
“You’re not just someone who got lost,” she says. “You want something.”
I tilt my head as gracefully as I can while lying on the floor. “What do you think I want?”
She gestures to herself. “This.”
I scoff. “I don’t want you.”
I’m not one of her people. I’m not besotted with her just because she’s my ruler who also happens to have very good bone structure.
“I think you want what I have,” she says. “I think you’d like being worshipped by a whole city. I think, maybe, there was a reason you left your old city. Maybe you thought you could come into a new city and… what? Take over? Are you regretting that yet? Have you realized just how much you underestimated me?”
The back of my neck is very warm. I don’t trust myself to say anything, so I just look at her imperiously.
She plants her hands on either side of me and leans forward. I can see straight down the front of her shirt. Not that it matters.
“Let me tell you a secret,” she says. “I can rule Iris the way I do because I’m a good person. I have principles. I do what’s right for my people. They can see that, and that’s why they love me.”
“You’re stealing from my city,” I say.
“I’m helping Iris,” she says.
“And in the process, my people are getting hurt,” I say.
“Well—” She falters, just for a moment. “I’m pursuing the greater good. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be—”
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” I say.
“What?” She bristles. “That I have something I believe in?”
“I have something I believe in, too,” I say. “I believe in myself. I believe that I can change things no one else has ever been able to change, and do things no one else has ever been able to do. I don’t care if people love me, or if they think what I do is good. But rest assured, they’re going to know I was here.”
She draws back. She’s looking at me with revulsion.
“So all you care about is whether or not you come out on top,” she says.
I shrug. “It’s where I deserve to be.”
“I bet he’s terrified of you,” she says.
“Who?” I say.
“Your accomplice,” she says.
I swallow hard. Ale’s not terrified of me. He respects me. It’s not my fault if she can’t tell the difference.
“He obeys me,” I say, with forced carelessness. “That’s all that matters.”
“Don’t tell me he’s your paramour, too,” she says.
“I have better taste than that,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “Oh really?”
I feel the sudden urge to clear my throat. “So, let’s talk about your brother. Do you both give your blood to the vide? Or do you make him give up more of his, for the greater good?”
“I don’t make him—” She cuts herself off, pressing her mouth into a thin line. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to find out more about the vide. You think that if you stop it, you can escape Iris.”
I don’t say anything. I wait to see what she thinks about this particular plan of mine.
“Well, you can’t stop it,” she continues. “But I’ll tell you this much—Theo and I are working together. I would never make him do something he doesn’t agree with. I couldn’t, actually. We’re both very stubborn.”
“So you two are on the same page about everything?” I say.
“Everything that matters,” she says. “We did recently stay up half the night arguing over a card game, but I was right, and he’ll realize it eventually.”
“You’re not both the leader of Iris, though,” I say. “And that works just fine?”
“Here’s some more advice,” she says. “Don’t try and turn me against my brother. We’re… well, I can’t explain it to you.�
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“You could at least try,” I say. “I’m such a good listener.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to have someone at your side,” she says. “Not the way I do.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, it was very special of you two to be born at the same time.”
I’m not going to tell her anything, but if I were, I could tell her that I know exactly how it feels to have someone at my side. I could tell her that Ale has been with me for every day of my life.
Almost every day.
“It’s not just that we were born together,” Verene says, clearly annoyed. “No one else in the whole city was raised the way we were raised, and being alone in that would have been— You know what? You don’t deserve to know anything else about me.”
She turns around impatiently, trying to get a look at the greenhouse door.
“What was it like?” I hear myself say. “Being raised by her?”
She goes very still, and when she speaks, her voice is low. “What do you think it was like?”
I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s so hard for me to picture the watercrea doing anything ordinary people do, let alone raising two children. I just think about her impassive stare and the feeling of her magic invading my body. I think about her throwing Ale through a glass door like he was a rag doll.
I think about the way her broken body looked after I was done with her.
“Did you have… another parent?” I say. “Or was it just—”
Verene whips around, and all at once, the bag is back over my head.
“Get up,” she says. “I’m tired of waiting for the boys to get their acts together. And I’m tired of you.”
THIRTEEN
APPARENTLY, VERENE HAS A KNIFE. SHE DRAGS ME TO MY feet and presses it into my back, then forces me out of the greenhouse. We’re sneaking somewhere. I can tell from the erratic way she keeps pressing me up against walls and then making me run. When we hit a staircase, she doesn’t see fit to warn me first, so I tumble to the bottom, my ankle twisting painfully.
The ground is cold and dusty and familiar. As soon as I hit it, my skin starts crawling.
I wish I knew what was happening to Ale. I wasn’t supposed to have to do anything else alone. Especially not anything involving the catacombs.
“Keep going.” Verene is right behind me, nudging my rear end with her foot.
“If only your people could see all your generosity and compassion on display right now,” I say, fumbling to crawl.
“No more—” She’s still nudging me. “Talking—I’m so tired of your—voice—here. Stop.”
I stop. I wiggle the bonds on my wrists, trying to subtly loosen them.
“Can’t you at least take the bag off my head?” I say.
“No,” she says.
“Why?” I say. “Because when you can’t see my face, you can tell yourself that you’re not really killing a person?”
She pulls the bag off my head. I sit up, enjoying my small victory. We’re in the middle of a narrow hall. The only light is a lantern on the ground at her feet, and the shadows on her face are startlingly sharp.
“I know you’re a person,” she says. “A terrible person. A person who tried to kill me. A person who needs to be stopped.”
“Must you declare everything so dramatically?” I say.
She glares at me. “I must.”
“You think that I deserve to die, then?” I say.
“The vide isn’t going to kill you,” she says. “It will swallow you and carry you to our prison. And maybe, while you’re there, you’ll think about the morality of coming into a new city and trying to kill its ruler. Maybe you’ll have a change of heart. It could happen, I suppose.”
“Where’s the prison?” I say. “In your cathedral?”
“No,” she says. “At the very bottom of the catacombs. And I do mean the very bottom. It’s incredibly dark and isolated. But don’t worry. We’ll send you food.”
My heart thuds in my ears. I can find a way out of this. I always find a way out.
Verene pulls off one of her gloves to reveal a bandage around her hand, then starts to unwind it. On her palm, there’s a long gash, barely healed. She slices it open with the knife in one quick motion. She turns back to me, squeezing her hand into a fist, and pointedly lets the blood fall onto the ground by my feet.
“So it’s not just your brother,” I say. “You feed the vide, too.”
“I would do anything for my people,” she says.
I remember her random dizzy spells that I saw in the cathedral. I know how dizzying it is to lose your blood. It seems she’s doing quite a lot for her people.
At my feet, a shadow is starting to form. The air is getting colder. I shiver.
I don’t have much time. I have to get her to tell me something I can use. Anything.
“You know,” I say, “in a way, you’re even worse than your mother was.”
Verene goes very still. Her eyes are fixed on me, dark and intent and, suddenly, unblinking.
“What?” she says.
The shadow has eaten up her blood.
“You think your powers are noble, don’t you?” I say. “Instead of the people of Iris bleeding for you, you bleed for them. But what you conveniently neglect to realize is that when you steal water from the other cities, that’s still water that somebody had to bleed for—”
In an instant, she’s on the ground and in my face. I flinch away automatically, and she grabs a fistful of my hair, forcing me back.
“Don’t—” she says. “Don’t you ever—”
I feel something cold against my neck. It’s the blade of her knife. It’s shaking in her hands. It’s digging in a little too hard.
“Don’t pretend that you know me,” she says. “Don’t pretend that you understand me. I did this for my city. No one will ever hurt them again, and it’s because of me.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I say. “You were born into this life. You were born into this magic. Your power obviously doesn’t look like your mother’s, but that doesn’t make you—”
I falter. Because, just for a moment, I felt her falter, too.
I meet her gaze. We’re close. Too close. I can feel the warmth of her breath and I can smell her sweet hair. And I can see something deep in her eyes. Something that she’s trying to hide. It looks almost like fear. Like she’s afraid of what I’m saying. Like I’m getting too close to asking a question she doesn’t want to answer.
She believes in her power so strongly. She believes in it like it was something she chose.
People don’t choose to have magic. Our rulers are born with magic, and that’s why they’re our rulers. That’s what I’ve always been told. That’s what I’ve always believed.
But so many other things I’ve believed are turning out to be wrong.
I know that I only have a split second to act, so I do the last thing she would expect me to do. Instead of trying to throw myself away from her, I throw myself forward.
The knife cuts into my neck with a sting. Before it can go too deep, she flings herself back. The knife lands in my lap, and I twist around in my bonds until it falls to the ground. A drop of blood flies off it and lands in the dust.
Verene and I both used the knife to cut ourselves. I don’t know if the blood is hers or mine.
Either way, the dark shadow is already underneath it. I scoot away and watch as the vide swallows it up.
It pauses. Like it’s considering.
I look at Verene. Her eyes are wide. She looks like she doesn’t know what’s going to happen now, either.
“What are you so worried about?” I say. “Surely you don’t think a terrible person like me could just… use your magic?”
And then I feel… something. There’s a cold, tingling sensation in my neck.
Experimentally, I look at the vide, and I will it to go after Verene.
It does.
The rush is unbelievable. Verene is scrambling away
on her hands and knees, and I’ve never felt so powerful.
I’m so caught up in the euphoria that it takes me a long moment to realize the vide has turned around. It’s coming for me again.
Down the hall, Verene is squeezing her wounded palm. It’s still dripping.
Of course. She gave it more blood than I did. She must have more control than I do.
I throw myself at the knife. I rub frantically at it with the bindings around my wrist, and right as the vide is almost upon me, I manage to saw through and break free.
I seize the knife and cut my hand. I don’t even feel the pain. I splatter my blood on the floor and silently tell the vide to swallow Verene up and take her to her own prison.
She’s already unwinding the bandage on her other hand. The wound there is only semi-healed, too, and when she presses them both into the floor, the vide comes back at me.
I meet Verene’s eyes. They’re burning with pain and righteous fury in equal measure.
She’s not going to stop.
That’s… perfect. I don’t want her to stop. I want her to fight me the way I deserve to be fought.
I back up, leaving a trail of blood for the vide. From the tingling in my hand, I know that it’s swallowing up my offering. Verene hunts around on the ground. She finds a sharp rock and slashes at her hand, gritting her teeth.
It’s unsettling to watch. It makes me wonder just how far I can get her to go.
The vide comes for me again, and I steel myself and slice the one place on my palm that’s not already shredded.
Verene gets to her feet. She’s breathing hard and trembling. She’s all passion and rage and a burning desire to be rid of me, and I can’t take my eyes off her.
She presses the sharp rock into her wrist. The first drops of blood well up.
And then, abruptly, she sways. I see a flash of panic on her face, but it’s too late. She’s already crumpling. She hits the ground with a dull thump, sending up dust.
I tell the vide to stop. I don’t even really think about it. I crawl down the hall, picking up the lantern as I go.
Verene is collapsed on her side. Her eyes are closed and her bloodied hands are limp, but she’s breathing, slow and soft. I wait to see if she’s just faking it to lure me closer to her. But she doesn’t move.
Beyond the Ruby Veil Page 15