by Natalie Mae
And for what he must have just seen outside.
“Sorry,” he says, his tone guarded. “Marcus said you and Kasta were sparring . . . I got here in time for the end. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thanks.” I glance out the nearest window, but Kasta has already disappeared, and even though there are a thousand questions in Jet’s silence, I motion for him to follow me into the foyer. “Sorry. I would have told you, but I didn’t want to bother you after last night. But I got what we needed. Did Marcus tell you?”
I lift my bloodied sleeve, and Jet exhales in relief. “Oh. That’s all you were doing?”
I blink. “The coronation is in two hours. What else would I be doing?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to guess anything you’re up to anymore.”
There’s a barb in his voice that I don’t like, but I choose to take this as a compliment, and not as an implication that my motives are becoming questionable. Also, I’m in no mood to argue with a boy whose eyes are still red and puffy from grieving, so I let it go.
“I’m sorry if I worried you,” I say. “I didn’t really have time to tell you.”
“It’s . . . fine. Do you think he suspects anything?”
I laugh. I can’t help it; this is the greatest and worst joke of the day. “I almost pulled the forsvine he’s been wearing to hide his Shifter abilities off of his neck. Which is also why he kissed me . . . which I really don’t want to talk about. So, I doubt he knows we’re so far along in our plan, but he definitely knows I’m onto him.”
“Ah.” There is an understandably awkward pause, during which I pray there are no follow-up questions. “We’d better move fast, then. Kasta can do a lot with two hours.”
So he can.
But there’s a problem as we move through the main foyer. A cloud that starts in the back of my mind, growing, darkening as we move between clusters of staring nobles and past a statue of Apos, god of deceit, with the stars spinning between his hands. Because the more I try to convince myself Kasta is lying about how Maia died, the more I realize it couldn’t have happened any other way. Maia had been furious with him at the end. She was so strong; she knew Kasta’s tricks better than any of us. Kasta was weak, bleeding out. By the same logic I determined he couldn’t have survived the race without Healing, there’s also no way he could have survived Maia in the same state.
And then there was the shocked cry I heard from him as we left the caves. Which I’d thought was irrelevant after I learned he was alive, but now that I think of it from this angle, it was definitely not a sound made by someone who was in control.
Leave the monsters to monsters, Maia said.
Gods, this is what she meant by it.
Kasta is telling the truth. And everything he’s done these past weeks . . . has been real.
Odelig. Helping me with Influence, a power he will never master. Breathing life back into me . . . his relief drenching my skin. His, not Jet’s, raw and involuntary and pure, now that I know he wasn’t wearing forsvine when he saved me.
I sway, clutching my aching head.
Jet catches my arm. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m really not.” I scrub my face. “Jet, I don’t think I can do this.”
“What?” He tugs me to the side of the foyer, out of the way of the crowd. Silence closes around us as he raises his bubble. “Do you have heatstroke? You could turn him in before without proof, but you can’t do it with it?”
“I don’t know, I—” I bite my cheek. “I just figured out he didn’t kill Maia.”
“Then he hunted another Shifter. I don’t understand why this changes anything.”
“No, I mean—he did kill her, kind of, but only because she forced him to. She was angry with him for what he’d done. So she sentenced him to a fate worse than death.”
Jet feels my forehead. “You do feel a little hot.”
I jerk back. “I’m fine! I’m not sick. I’m just thinking . . . he’s so different now. He’s been patient, he’s worked with me; gods, he agreed to train me in swords today, after you both just lost your father! He’s focused on Orkena . . . He could help us.”
Jet shakes his head slowly, like I’m suggesting we burn down the palace. “You want to leave him in power?”
“I . . . Yes? No! I don’t know. The gods still marked him, didn’t they? And even your father said we were meant to be a partnership. Maybe we could talk to him, get him to abdicate. I feel like Hey, do you want to be an advisor or in chains the rest of your life? is a pretty clear-cut decision for anyone.”
“You think that conversation will go smoothly? You think he’ll give up godhood, and thus being pardoned of his curse, that easily?”
“I’ll be Mestrah soon. I’ll pardon him.”
“And you believe he’d trust you with that?” He glances at my lips, and horror simmers up his face. “Gods, you do. What has he done to you?”
“What? He hasn’t done anything to me. I’m about to inherit a kingdom. I have to be thinking about our future, not just this moment.”
“But you know this is what he does. He’s putting on a front to get what he wants. What about after he’s pardoned? Did you find out why he stopped the research on forsvine?”
I push off the pearl-flecked wall. “I don’t care. I’ve been assuming the worst of him this whole time, and I just found out I was completely wrong. I’m going to ask him. I’m going to give him a chance.”
I make to leave, but Jet steps in my way. His hands raised, still not touching me. “Zahru,” he says, his voice tight. “That you always want to see the best in people is something I very much admire about you. But this is not that. He is dangerous, and he’s playing you as he would an enemy in a war. He will do whatever he must to save himself right now. You of all people should know this.”
His fear prickles the air, but I only smile. “I’m dangerous now, too. He’ll listen. You’ll see.”
I move around him, Jet scrubs his hand over his shaved hair, and I start out of the foyer alone. Planning what I’ll say. Feeling grateful Maia wasn’t a victim but a key in our plan, a way to keep Kasta in check.
Except now this story can have a much better ending. Maia would have liked to see Kasta come back like this, to see him prove himself as he has. I know it’s only been a few weeks. I know I still need to be careful, and ask Kasta about the stopped research on forsvine just in case. But what I’m not telling Jet is, depending on the answer and how this goes—and especially now that I know I could Influence Kasta if I needed to, which is really not what I should be thinking about, but there it is—
I may just let him keep his crown.
I’ve reached the base of the stairs when footsteps sound behind me. Jet slows when I turn, his brow pinched.
“All right,” he says, dropping a hand on the marble banister. “All right. If this is what you want, if you believe him . . . then I trust you. To be clear, I still don’t trust him, but I trust you. How can I help?”
I take him in, his worried eyes, his tight shoulders, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and an unexpected surge of relief pushes through me. Whatever’s cracking between us, at least I haven’t lost him completely.
I smile. “Come with me?”
He nods, and we start for Kasta’s room. I’m not actually sure if Kasta will be in, or if that’s even where I want to confront him, but we can speak to his guards, and Kasta will know what I want. We’ll figure this out, and by tonight this will all be sorted, and I can finally, finally check off one of the biggest stress items on my list.
We’re just passing my doors when a crash sounds from inside them.
My stomach dives. My immediate assumption is more assassins, and my guards shove the doors open by their crescent moon handles, lightning and fire between their fingers—and another SMASH sounds as Jade launches herself off a standing
vase on the far side of the room, tearing after something small that runs on the ground. One of my guards brings her arm back, ready to throw her ball of fire—
“Wait!” I say, catching her shoulder. “You could hit Jade!”
Chase! Jade’s thinking. Rat! Eat!
A brown streak shoots under the couch, its thoughts a spike of fear. My first bizarre thought is that Kasta got into my room somehow, as a rat, either to talk or set some kind of trap for me—followed by the jolting realization that I know exactly what’s happening.
“Jade!” I yell, pushing past the guards. “Stop! Don’t eat my spy rat!”
“Dōmmel!” cries one of the guards.
“Stand down,” I say. “She’s just after a rat. Jade!”
CRASH. A display of decorative glass balls tips off an end table as Jade bumps it, but she’s too big to fit under the couch, and her shoulders slam into its low edge. She twists on her side and reaches under, batting and clawing.
Mine, she thinks. Get!
“Jade, I told you to stop!” I heave her up, struggling to keep her as she wiggles. “Friend! This rat is a friend, and he could have a message for me! Don’t hurt him!”
Jade stops squirming and turns to me with betrayed eyes. No chase?
“No, I told you to leave the rats alone! Are you going to behave if I put you down, or do I need to lock you on the balcony?”
One of my guards shifts behind us. “Er, we’ll just . . . be right outside if you need us?”
I consider this is a rather unusual scene for people who can’t hear the other side of this conversation, and I straighten, adjusting Jade in my arms with as much queenly elegance as I can muster. “Yes. Thank you.”
They shut the doors. I share an exasperated look with Jet, as though he well knows the struggles of employing spy rats with an active leopard in the house, but before I can ask Jade again whether she’ll contain herself, the rat zips across the rugs, over a shattered statue of Tyda, and through the smallest crack between the balcony doors.
Outside, never to return again.
“Oh well.” I sigh and set Jade down, who immediately streaks over to the balcony and sniffs at the doors. “Not like anything it found would have helped us now.”
Jet snorts, impressed. “You had a rat spying for you?”
“Yes, since I wasn’t finding anything in Kasta’s room. I thought maybe he had a hiding place we couldn’t reach. You know, like he could turn into a mouse or something and put the pelts far out of sight.”
“That was a good thought.” Jet leans against the couch, still watching me in that guarded way. “So how are we going to do this next part?”
“Well, I—”
Message, Jade thinks, trotting over with her tail high. She jumps up to put her forepaws on my legs, a small, crumpled scroll between her teeth.
“What’s this?” I ask.
Spy, she thinks. Message.
My chest tightens. This is something the rat dropped . . . something it found in Kasta’s room. Though even as I unfurl it, I’m sure it will only be more of the same: another letter about the Forsaken, maybe the reason Kasta stopped researching forsvine. It will be nothing. Jet joins my side, and my breath hitches as I take the drawing in.
A serpentine blade. A balancing scale hilt. Equations cluster the margins in Kasta’s tight scrawl.
It’s a schematic of the sacrificial knife.
* * *
I’m not sure what it means that my first reaction is that it can’t be real.
“This rat is a liar,” I say.
At which point Jet actually grabs my shoulder, his concern flaring through me. “I need you to snap out of it, please. Are you sure he didn’t drug you?”
“He didn’t! I just . . . this makes no sense. He said he was done with this. He promised me. Maybe it’s old, from before the Crossing? What are these equations?”
I have worried Jet to a level I’ve never seen before. He lowers his hands to the schematic, each movement slow and careful, as if I’m an animal that might bolt.
“I don’t actually know,” he says, slipping the parchment from my fingers and hurriedly rolling it. “Yes. Maybe it’s old. Why don’t we have Melia take a look? She’ll know what these equations are.”
“All right,” I say, though I suspect he’s only agreeing to placate me, especially after he strides for the door without a glance. I follow, twisting the shoulder of my jole. I don’t want this to be what it looks like. Like instead of focusing on forsvine, Kasta is still researching the knife; like he still hopes to get Influence, one way or the other.
Like I am wrong, again.
Nausea curls my stomach as we make our quick way out of the royal wing, skirt the indoor pool outside the gardens, and slip into the residency halls. Water cascades down the center of the hall in a silvery sheet, and Melia’s door lies a few meters in, droplets flecking our backs as Jet knocks.
She answers, and we step inside.
I’m no longer surprised to see Hen already here in a green jole, lying on her stomach on Melia’s bed, her fingers working over a swatch of blue satin. An abandoned game board sits on a low table alongside empty chalices. Hen bounces up to join us, and I have time to regret that, in another life, this could have been the way I spent my morning, when Melia crosses her arms.
“Marcus told us you found proof yesterday,” she says. “Did you get Kasta’s blood?”
I nod and raise my sleeve, adamantly not speaking to the proof part.
“Good,” she says. “Then what are you doing here?”
Jet hands her the rolled parchment. “Zahru is . . . considering changing the plan.” He’s speaking in that slow, careful way again. “This should help make up our minds. One of her spy rats smuggled it from Kasta’s room.”
“Spy rats?” she echoes, unfurling the paper.
Hen squeezes between Melia and me. “Brilliant. Also, I have a lot of questions about what just happened in the arena.”
“Later, please,” Jet says, cutting her a meaningful glance. He points to the markings and turns back to Melia. “Can you translate these equations? They’re far above what my tutors ever covered. Maybe you studied these in your Healing courses?”
Melia inhales—she recognizes the blade. She moves to the purple couch, brushing aside the gemstones from the game board to lay the scroll over it. We crowd around her, shoulder to shoulder.
“These are formulas.” She traces the numbers drawn around the hilt. “Give me a moment to work them out. They look like energy equations, but no one still alive knows how this knife works.” She grabs a scrap of parchment and a quill from the game and turns the paper over.
Hen, all business now, taps a list with a red box around it. “This is a materials list. Firestone, holy water, leather, gold.”
I work one of the game’s sapphires between my fingers. “Can we tell how old it is? If it’s something he drafted before the Crossing?”
“Yup,” Hen says. “But it’s new. Right here it says Zahru lived. Blood sacrifice must die, to prevent repeat—and then an arrow to one of the formulas Melia is working on.”
“What?” My blood spikes. Both at the realization that Jet should definitely have been able to tell this wasn’t old when I first asked—and didn’t trust me to believe him—and the more horrifying implication of that statement.
This is not the research of a boy who has changed.
“He’s going to try and get Influence again?” I say, my ears going hollow. “The same way he got it before?”
“No. It’s worse.” Melia stops mid-stroke. “The sacrificial knife can’t be activated without the power of the three High Priests. Otherwise any royal heir could use it at their leisure, if they disapproved of the Crossing’s results. Kasta is not trying to find a way to use the knife again.” She shows her work to Jet. “He’s creatin
g a new knife, one that will bestow a different type of magic with every kill.”
“Gods.” Jet takes the paper, nearly crushing the edges. “If this works, he could possess every power imaginable.”
Melia nods. “This is a weapon for war. Every soldier he fells will make him stronger.”
All the power he could ever want. This is my answer for why he’s not working on forsvine. He doesn’t want a solution, because a war is the perfect place to test this weapon on unlimited bodies.
A fire ignites inside of me, dark and searing.
“Oh.” Hen looks up. “I wonder if that’s what you cut your foot on in the closet? One of his prototypes?”
But I’m hardly here. I’m back in the hunting meadow weeks ago, when I reminded myself not to believe anything Kasta was doing, because it would only last as long as things went well for him. And this is why. Everything is going his way down to the smallest detail, so of course he claims he’ll do anything for me now—he’s already halfway to having all the magic he can dream of.
Jet shifts, and even though he doesn’t say it, I can practically read the Do you believe me now? in his eyes.
“You’ve been concerningly quiet,” he says. “What are you thinking?”
That fire snakes through my core. “That I’ve already wasted way too much time. Hen, Melia, take this to the priests. Jet, let’s get this done.”
XXX
HEN rolls the scroll with a flourish, and she and Melia start for the temple while Jet and I turn for the armory. My mind buzzes like a hive. I’m furious I let Kasta get to me. That I let him play me like one of the kingdom leaders, as he knew exactly what I’d soften to, exactly what I’d want to hear. How foolish I would have felt if I’d let him keep his crown, thinking he was an entirely new person, only for him to manipulate me into fighting at least one battle so he could use his new knife.
And after that, the war would explode.
This is possibly the wrong lesson to be taking away from this, but I’m so glad I went ahead with framing him.