The Cruelest Mercy

by Natalie Mae

  “No.” Kasta moves for the main hall. “She’s the only one who can stop this. Zahru, come with me.”

  “Absolutely not.” Jet helps me to my feet. “Maybe you’re used to seeing her near death, but it scares the stars out of me. I’m getting her out of here before someone else tries to kill her.”

  “They’re killing our Wraiths.” Kasta jabs a finger at the foyer, his cape snapping. “You can use your Influence from here. On all of them. But you need to do it now, before another mercenary gets too close.”

  Jet pulls my arm around his neck, and I notice Marcus for the first time, his hazel eyes heavy with worry. He aims his crossbow around the corner, over a trail of gray-clad bodies that the three of them must have taken out getting to me. But I only make it two steps with Jet, the cries and clangs of the fight shadowing us, before I stop.

  “No,” I say. “I should try.”

  “You almost died,” Jet says. “My mother will handle this. She’s already barricaded the royal guests in the banquet hall and gotten as many of the nobility to safety as she could. You need to get to safety now, too.”

  “If I can stop it, I have to.” I turn for Kasta, but my legs buckle. Jet catches me in an instant.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  My grip on him tightens. Someone screams in the other room, a scream that I know will be their last. “Will you help me?”

  Jet closes his eyes, and his fear chills my fingers. But he nods.

  We follow Kasta to the corner. A heartbreaking number of guards, mercenaries, and the Orkenian nobility lie bleeding and motionless on the floor, like bright jewels cracked open. At least three white-clad Wraiths lie amongst them. Five more Wraiths engage dozens of mercenaries outside the banquet hall doors. Jet said the royal delegates were barricaded inside, but if the Wraiths die, the assassins will find their way in.

  Undoing everything we did today. Showing our allies we are helpless against forsvine, threatening them into changing their minds.

  Proving, again, that violence is stronger than peace.

  Rage boils low in my stomach. I reach for the emotions spiking from the opposite side of the room, but while it’s easy enough to feel them, I’ve never tried focusing on more than one person at a time. This is like tracking a dozen flies. As soon as I’ve gripped someone’s anger, someone else’s fear or shock or pain replaces it. They’re a rainstorm of emotion, and they slip through my fingers the same way.

  “There’s too many,” I say, gasping. “I can’t focus on any of them.”

  “You don’t have to,” Kasta says. “Do the entire room. Don’t try to narrow it down to the mercenaries.”

  “But the Wraiths—”

  “Will be fine. Do it now!”

  The mercenaries have noticed us. Ten of them sprint our way, swords raised, daggers glinting, and I don’t know what the radius of their forsvine is—it could be two meters; it could be twenty. Marcus raises his crossbow. One falls under an arrow. Two.

  “I only have one arrow more,” he says, fitting it into the notch.

  Despair, pain, eagerness crash into me like a tide. Kasta and Jet draw their swords. Marcus fires his last arrow, and the excitement of the mercenaries, the bloodlust, reaches me in a tsunami—

  I let it in. I let their savagery become mine, as scalding and heavy as a wildfire, until they are no longer separate people but one terrible force, an extension of my anger; until everything they send at me is mine. Darkness presses in on my vision. Heat bursts from my palms, from my face, and vaguely I’m aware of the black glow curling my fingers, as if I’ve taken their hatred and made it tangible. My chest rises. My toes skim the ground, the power of it lifting me.

  I thrust my arms out and shove back.

  Darkness bursts from me in a gale. It cuts the room like a thousand diving falcons, and the mercenaries running toward us lurch, eyes rolling as they go slack and slide on their stomachs like puppets cut from strings—

  And behind them, the entire room follows.

  Armor clatters. Swords drop. Bodies fall like a house of cards, and a bowl flips from a pedestal, singing across the floor before it finally hits the wall.

  And then it’s quiet.

  Terribly, terribly quiet.

  Kasta, Marcus, and Jet stand motionless at my sides, mercifully unaffected. But a tremble starts in the deepest parts of me as I take in what I’ve done. I stumble forward, collapsing before the nearest mercenary and wrenching her around, tears brimming in my eyes as I feel for a pulse.

  When it comes, faint and steady beneath my fingers, I let out a sob.

  They’re not dead. Relief fills me as I look over the fallen shapes of our Wraiths, the eerie quiet crawling over my skin like scorpions. They’re not dead; this is fine. What I did was good.

  “Gods almighty,” Jet whispers. I don’t miss the pause, the hesitation in his steps, before he slowly kneels at my side. “Are you all right?”

  Now he definitely doesn’t touch me. I shiver and pull my arms in, afraid to touch him, either.

  “Yes,” I say, though it feels like a lie.

  Kasta’s footsteps sound behind us, heavy and sure.

  “Very good, Zahru,” he says. “Very good.”

  XXV

  I don’t register the walk to the Healer’s temple. Or Melia’s concerned face as she works over me, repairing the damage from the poison. Or the whispers in the halls as Kasta and I move for the throne room, Jet trailing us, a hundred new rumors peppering me like sand.

  My secret is no longer a secret. I am no longer just a Whisperer from Atera.

  I’m not sure what I am anymore at all.

  * * *

  Chaos greets us in the throne room.

  The Mestrah slumps in his bronze chair, his brow glistening with sweat, and the queen sits beside him, her manicured fingers resting on his arm. All thirty of the army’s top officials gather below them in full armor: commanders and captains and lieutenants and Jet’s mother, her General’s honors swinging from her biceps. Only the Wraiths are missing, having been sent off to be Healed or to mourn their fallen comrades.

  “We should march on Wyrim now!” bellows a commander, his pale cheeks blotted with fury. “This was an outright assassination attempt. Not to mention the twenty they slaughtered trying to get into the banquet hall.”

  A lieutenant steps next to him, her red hair cut to her chin. “And we’ll march on the Pe next. We know someone fed Wyrim our security protocols, and it’s no coincidence the Pe minister excused her entire company for a break right before the attack. They can’t have fled far. We’ll kill the minister before she even returns home!”

  “Agreed!” calls the commander. “This was an act of war!”

  “That’s exactly what the Wyri want,” snaps Jet’s mother. “We have no proof of any of this yet, and the Pe minister is well liked. Her murder would spark outrage, and the Wyri would use it as further evidence we abuse our power. We must be strategic.”

  “Company,” the Mestrah grumbles, raising a half-hearted hand in our direction. “Your dōmmella.”

  The officers go silent, the rustle of their armor the only sound as they turn and drop to their knees. My ribs tighten. These are some of Orkena’s brightest minds and most vicious fighters, most of whom could get away with a nod in the presence of royalty.

  This is a gesture much deeper than a bow.

  Beside me, Kasta smiles.

  “Company dismissed,” growls the Mestrah. “Dōmmella . . . Jet. Stay.”

  “Mestrah,” the commander says, with an uneasy hand on his sword. “What about the assassins? What are your orders?”

  The king sighs. “Burn their dead, and take the survivors to the prison. Arrange escorts for the other rulers and ensure they’re delivered safely home. As for Wyrim and the Pe . . .” The Mestrah coughs, once. “Gather your ideas, and ret
urn to me in an hour.”

  The officers touch their foreheads and file out, casting appraising—and sometimes anxious—glances my way. I shudder, still not quite well even after Melia’s healing, and press back against the pride their attention stirs in me. This is different from the pitying, reverent looks I received as the Living Sacrifice. They’re not looking at me as they would a victim.

  This is admiration.

  This is fear.

  The General pauses beside Jet on her way out, her hand light on his shoulder. I’ve never seen her look at him with anything but fondness. But her lips thin, her orange eyes narrowing with disappointment. She shifts that same gaze to me and continues out, her jaguar-headed cane clicking on the floor.

  The Mestrah takes a small, painful sip of tonic from his chalice and slumps against the throne.

  “The Pe have made their alliance with Wyrim clear,” he says, his breath labored. “And news of the attack, and your near-death, Zahru, is already spreading throughout the continent. They’re not even speaking of the impressive power you used to subdue the assassins. Do you know why?”

  There’s an icy edge to his voice that raises the hairs on my neck. This question is a trap. I knew this meeting would be tense considering what just happened, but I assumed we’d be focusing on the assassins.

  I grip the sides of my jole. “No, Mestrah.”

  “Because all they can talk about is how easy it was to catch you unguarded! Why weren’t you in the banquet hall, where I had Wraiths and commanders to watch over you? What were you doing, that a group of amateurs almost killed you without trying? You had better pray to the gods your answer is different from the one I’ve heard.”

  His gaze, fevered as it is, cuts to Jet. Heat bursts through my body. I do not have a better answer. I don’t think I actually want to answer at all.

  “Well?” he snaps, his anger thick as smoke. “What is your explanation?”

  “Fara, it was my fault,” Jet says, stepping beside me. “It was my idea to—”

  “I was not speaking to you,” the Mestrah says. “You are not dōmmel. It was not your responsibility to consider the risks.”

  Oh gods, this is why the brothers have so many father issues. No relief we’re alive, no praise for Jet, who saved my life, or—as reluctantly as I want to acknowledge it—for Kasta, who assisted in that. No praise even for me, who stopped the attack completely. Instead, shame prickles down my arms, and I grimace.

  “I needed a break,” I start. “We only stepped out for a minute—”

  “Into a pantry? Without notifying a guard or checking the servants’ entry to the room?”

  The servants’ entry. I close my eyes. Of course there’s a tunnel at the back, so the waiters can supply the room without moving through the halls. We’re lucky only one assassin found their way in.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking—”

  “That much is very clear,” the Mestrah growls. “But you are not a stable girl anymore, Zahru, free to tumble whomever you’d like at your leisure. You are a crown princess, and your country must always come first. Your safety must always come first. Your actions today not only risked your life, but could have resulted in a full-on invasion if the assassins had succeeded. You and Kasta are the only two powers right now standing between us and total collapse. Is that clear?”

  I can only stare at him, shaking, both furious he would reduce me to a tumbling stable girl and terrified by what he’s just admitted. That he is no longer the one the world fears.

  It is up to me, and Kasta, to stop this war.

  “I’m seriously considering demoting you to advisor. You would already be, if you were not also the one who stopped the attack.” His scowl twists, as if I’m all the worse for having done so. “But your power has, for now, convinced the other rulers to keep the agreements you secured today. And I must reluctantly agree that your decision to wear forsvine was a monumental part of keeping their trust. So you will get one last chance. But one more careless mistake, and you’ll be relegated to advisor—or less, depending on where Kasta sees fit to put you.”

  I clench my jaw. Beside me, I wait for a smile to ghost Kasta’s lips, for his father focusing his disappointment on someone else again—and especially for the possibility of taking the throne without me. But he is stone.

  “Do you understand?” the Mestrah asks.

  “Yes, Mestrah,” I say, bowing stiffly.

  “You are dismissed. Kasta, come with me.”

  I turn on my heel, not even caring what the Mestrah could want Kasta for that wouldn’t involve me, and burst out of the throne room doors. Jet jogs to keep up. My cape tugs behind me like an anchor, and I bite the inside of my cheek, but I won’t cry, I won’t let this get to me. Just because I made one mistake doesn’t mean I’ll be terrible at ruling, and I can’t believe the king didn’t say one good thing—not one—about how I handled it.

  But my vision still blurs as we start up the stairs to the royal wing. I blink it clear, and Jet touches my arm. Softly . . . briefly.

  “Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry. I should have said more—”

  “It’s fine,” I say, turning. “Your father wouldn’t have let you. And it’s not like he was wrong.”

  “But that was truly my fault. You haven’t grown up in the court; you shouldn’t have to be thinking about assassins when you’re with me. Gods, you should have been safe.” His voice cracks. “I’m sorry. From now on, I’ll be much more mindful.”

  “I said it’s fine.” The words crackle like sparks, and I immediately regret their bite. But the reminder of why he was so distracted, of what we were arguing about, grates against my bones. Now I’ve even been yelled at by the Mestrah, the same as Kasta. “I don’t want to talk about it. I think I just want to be alone for a while.”

  “Zahru, wait.”

  I’d taken a few steps without him, but I look over my shoulder, my heart clenching. There’s already a new distance between us, like I’m looking at him through a fog.

  “I’m sorry about what I said before,” he says. “It just surprised me is all. I know you must have had a good reason to use Influence on the Konge. I know you wouldn’t have if there’d been any other way.”

  A little of that fog fades, and I breathe out. “Thank you.”

  He waits for me to say more, but I don’t know how to tell him how afraid I am that he was right earlier, or how terrifying it was that he so easily believed me capable of falling into Kasta’s ways. And he slowly starts off in the other direction. Without me.

  This is how it started with him and Kasta, too. A small split. A crack that kept growing until it was a chasm, but I grip my cape and remind myself that I’m nothing like that, that this is temporary. We’re just stressed and running out of time. Neither of us is at our best right now.

  I pull the crown off of my head and shake my fingers through my hair.

  “Jet?”

  He turns, and I feel instantly guilty for the way his eyes light up, hopeful I’ll say something that fixes this. But I’ve already moved on. Back to my current obsession, to the only thing I know how to do.

  “What’s star hazel?” I ask.

  His smile falls, but he shrugs. “A type of cactus. Their flowers harden into brown husks that look like stars, and sometimes the chefs use them in soups. Why?”

  I make a face. “Why was Kasta talking about a soup flower when he was trying to save me?”

  This is understandably a sentence that seems to come out of nowhere, and Jet’s brow rises accordingly. “I don’t remember him saying anything about star hazel. He said ‘poison,’ and then there was some rude shoving, and then he gave you the antidote.” He thumbs the hilt of his sword. “Actually, I just remembered star hazel can be concentrated into an antidote.”

  A spark pushes through my veins. “But you didn’t hear him say th
at. I know the name of the antidote he gave me, that you didn’t hear him say.”

  “No. So how did you?”

  I almost laugh, which would really top this day off with literally every emotion possible, and I sink back against the wall, my fingers trembling over my brow. Gods, I can’t believe it finally happened. I can’t believe Kasta messed up, and now I have the proof I’ve been so desperately seeking, proof that I’m not just paranoid, that I was right about him killing Maia from the start.

  That I’m still me . . . and he is still him.

  Sorrow spikes through me, unexpected and sharp. I’ve been waiting for this, hoping for this, but for some reason it suddenly hurts to know for sure.

  I look down at Jet, my smile weak. “I know,” I say, tapping my head, “because I heard him think it.”

  XXVI

  THIS is not quite the case-cracking evidence we need it to be, first for the simple reason that I was very delirious when all of this was happening, thus we have no way to prove to anyone else that Kasta didn’t say it aloud and Jet just didn’t hear. But also because it was clearly temporary. I haven’t heard a single one of Kasta’s thoughts since, despite spending time with him both at the Healer’s temple and with the Mestrah.

  But any lingering doubts I had about him are now gone. Kasta must be a Shifter if I heard him at all, meaning all his behavior up to this point has been exactly what I suspected: an act to win my trust, so that I don’t think him capable of it. Even saving my life is just part of his strategy, to survive and ensure his own safety as Mestrah until he masters Influence himself.

  He can’t really have changed if the first thing he did, after making that promise to me in the caves, was murder his lifelong friend.

  I task Jet with telling Hen, Marcus, and Melia what happened and warning them to be especially careful, and I spend the walk back to my room strategizing how I’ll use this. Ignoring the ache in my chest. Focusing on what I can do so I don’t have to acknowledge why this hurts. I’ll get Kasta to drop his guard again; I’ll ask where he might be hiding something in his room and get the answer through his thoughts. Clearly his Influence must protect him most of the time, which is why I can’t hear him normally, so I just have to figure out what was different about earlier. The high stress of the situation, maybe. Or that he was touching me.