“I’m fine, Alys,” Evander said. There was a dangerous edge to his tone that Cassa knew wasn’t aimed at his sister.
Cassa sat down, pressing her back against the cool stone. The cell wasn’t any bigger than the last one she’d been in, and they were in close quarters. She could hear Evander’s and Alys’s breaths—his ragged, hers rapid. Newt, as always, was perfectly silent.
“You’ll be lucky if you don’t have a concussion,” Alys said, but she relented and sat down beside her brother.
“I’m fine,” Evander repeated, more softly.
Cassa could tell, even from their shadowy silhouettes, that all three of them were looking at her. She knew she should speak first, try to reassure them, try to explain herself, but she didn’t. For a minute that dragged into eternity, no one said anything.
“Cassa, why did you leave?” Evander’s voice was low and raw, like it hurt to speak.
Reassurances. Explanations. She had neither.
“To kill the chancellor,” she said.
More quiet. In such a small space, it was almost unbearable.
“You just left us there with him,” Newt said. He still hadn’t moved. “After everything.” The way he said it, so simply and resignedly, as if he hadn’t expected anything better of her, rankled in Cassa’s chest.
“What was the point of everything, if I didn’t try to end it when I had the chance?” She squeezed her hands into fists and pushed them against her forehead. It was a good question. What was the point of everything they’d given up, now that she’d had the chance to kill the chancellor, and she hadn’t been able to pull the trigger?
“Solan killed Mira,” Alys said. “He might as well have done the same to her father. He was using her the whole time, just like he was using us. How could you—”
“Mira’s dead?” Cassa’s stomach twisted. In the cavern she’d checked Evander and Alys and Newt to make sure they were breathing, but Mira . . . She’d never gone to Mira.
“Of course she’s dead,” Evander bit off. “You saw him kill her.”
Cassa shook her head. Mira had pulled the knife. She’d been crying. She’d said something about her father. And then there was just blackness.
“I don’t remember,” she said. She didn’t remember it because Solan had taken it from her. He knew she would never leave her friends with him otherwise.
Or at least she hoped that was true. That fire inside her, that intense need—she wasn’t sure there was anything she wouldn’t have done to satisfy it. The thought scared her, and she drove it away. She hadn’t pulled the trigger. She hadn’t killed the chancellor tonight.
But she had abandoned her friends alone with a monster.
“Did—did he—” But she couldn’t force out the words.
“It’s a little late for you to start caring about us now.” Alys hugged her knees to her chest and pressed her forehead against them. Evander’s hand moved to her back instinctively.
“I didn’t know what he’d done to Mira,” Cassa said, well aware that she was pleading now. “I thought you’d be safe.”
“How could you possibly have thought that,” asked Newt, “when you knew what he’d done to Chancellor Dane’s family?”
The words, though spoken in Newt’s usual even tone, were a stinging rebuke. Cassa opened her mouth, trying to find a reply, a reason, a vindication—but, of course, there was none. How did they even know about the chancellor’s memories?
“You knew before the bloodbond, and you didn’t tell us,” Evander said, his voice carrying all the accusation that Newt’s hadn’t. “You just let us go through with it.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Cassa said. “He was the only way to stop the council.”
No one had a reply, and for a few precious seconds, Cassa thought that they understood, that they realized what it had meant to her in that moment, to make that decision. Even if she hadn’t been able to follow through in the end. Then Alys raised her head.
“We could have helped Chancellor Dane.” Her voice was strained but calm. “If Solan was dead—”
“Solan’s death wouldn’t stop them,” Cassa said. “Not having their pet seer and executioner might weaken them, but they would still be in power. They would find a way to cover it up. The chancellor never said he wanted to bring down the council—just kill Solan.”
Even as she spoke, she doubted the truth of her conviction. Vesper had said all the seers were dead. If Solan really was the last one, then killing him really might be enough to destroy the council. Without any new prophecies, they wouldn’t be able to keep their hold on the city for long.
“Does revenge really mean more to you than the fate of the whole city?” Alys asked.
“Solan might be a danger to Eldra, but so is the council,” Cassa said, heat building in her chest. “They’ve slaughtered thousands. Of course I’d do anything to stop them. How can you feel differently—after all they’ve done to you?”
“Look where we are, Cassa,” Evander said sharply. “It doesn’t look like killing the chancellor did us any good, did it? As far as I can tell, our parents are still prisoners, the council is still in power, and we’ll all be dead by morning. I hope it was worth it.”
The flaring anger inside her dimmed. Her chest was so tight, she thought her lungs might collapse at any moment.
“I couldn’t do it.” The words were barely a whisper. Even now, Solan was recovering, gathering his strength, readying for the revenge that had been centuries in the making. It occurred to Cassa that whatever came next was entirely her fault. Whatever was taken, whatever was lost. She was to blame. Aden. Kira. Reed. Rowen. Nima. Aden. Kira—
“What?” Alys asked. She was looking in her direction, but Cassa could only make a dull outline of her features.
“I couldn’t kill him.” Admitting it didn’t hurt any less the second time. She still wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing—back there in the pouring rain with Dane staring down the barrel of her gun, it hadn’t even been about right or wrong. It was about pulling the trigger, and she just couldn’t.
“Oh, for seers’ sake,” Evander muttered, leaning his head back against the wall. “I can’t believe this is how it ends.”
Cassa squeezed her eyes shut. The tightness in her chest was scalding now, burning up the back of her throat. She’d stopped breathing, and she couldn’t remember how to start again. She tried to fully understand her own guilt. Tried to wrap herself in it, to drown in it. But it didn’t feel real. What felt real, even after all this time, was being told that her parents were dead. That their bodies had been burned. That there would be no good-byes. What felt real was the crushing weight of her own failure. Solan had been right. There was nothing great about her after all.
She kept her eyes closed, kept her hands choked into fists until they went numb. She thought she’d already lost everything, but it turned out there had been more to lose. She knew without opening her eyes, without seeing their faces, that she’d lost the last people in the world that she loved. A sob was building inside her, but she forced it down. No one said anything more.
FORTY
VESPER
Vesper listened to the muted ringing of the eleventh bell and tried to keep her mind from wandering to the fond, distant memory of her bed. The past couple of hours had been a study in the art of focus. Whenever she let her guard down, even for a moment, Crispin would find his way to another memory. She refused to give him anything, even though that refusal was more on principle than anything else. He would have already read her uncle’s memories before coming to her. The council had to know she wasn’t an unwitting pawn in her uncle’s schemes, but apparently they wanted her confession. They had always been precise about matters like these. They were ruthless with dissenters but clever enough to keep every judgment seemingly aboveboard. If their corruption ever came to light, it wouldn’t be because of their own carelessness.
Now that Vesper could barely keep her eyes open, she was having a hard
time remembering why she was resisting—especially when Crispin looked as fresh-faced as when they had begun, sipping the tea he’d had a guard bring him and making polite conversation as if they were two old friends having a chat. The council was going to execute her anyway. She just wanted some sleep.
But she couldn’t. There was one thing they couldn’t have learned from her uncle’s memories. One crucial fact that she had to keep from the council as long as possible if there was any hope of seeing this thing through. They still had the poison. They still had a chance.
“Vesper, I assure you, I find this as tiring as you do.” Crispin set his cup on the saucer with a tiny plink.
“Unlikely,” Vesper said, straining with effort as she felt the invisible fingers tugging at the threads of her mind. He was very subtle, and he was very good. She wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.
“You know I’ll get to the memories eventually,” he murmured.
She didn’t know if he had caught a glimpse of something that betrayed her hopelessness or if he was just stating the obvious. She said nothing. He was rooting around again, his solemn eyes roving across her features. With a burst of defiance, she concentrated on spinning her memories into the roiling storm that had made him dizzy during their last encounter. The results were equally satisfying this time around.
Crispin squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head. He wasn’t fast enough to hide his nauseated expression. Vesper allowed herself a small, private smile.
“I know you took those memories from Cassandra Valera to hide them from me,” he said, once he’d regained some equilibrium. He didn’t look at her. “And I know you’ve been doing the same with your uncle.”
“You don’t have any proof of that.”
“We don’t—” He stopped himself short and frowned.
We don’t need proof.
She wondered if the frown was at his near slip of the truth or at the implication behind it. The councilors liked to have all their papers in order, but at the end of the day they would rid themselves of anyone they deemed a threat. What was legality but semantics, anyway?
“They don’t want you dead,” Crispin said, after a few moments of tense silence. “For seers’ sake, you’re just a kid.”
Vesper bristled but held her tongue. It wasn’t as if he was much older than her. And she carried more inside her now than most people would in a lifetime. The memory of every memory she’d ever taken was entangled with her own. Other people’s childhoods, other people’s nightmares, other people’s plans and dreams and regrets, knotted up inside her head. She always gave memories back, but the imprints remained, much the way a bright landscape stayed seared on her eyelids for just a moment when she closed her eyes. Other people might be able to forget, but she never could.
It occurred to her that if anyone could understand that, it would be Crispin. Didn’t he see the echoes of people’s pasts in their every expression, their every gesture? Didn’t he know what it was like to be an intruder in other people’s minds?
“If the council really doesn’t want me dead,” she said, “then stop interrogating me so that I can get some sleep.”
To her surprise, Crispin stood up. He walked out of the room without another word, and for a few seconds Vesper just stared at the closed door in confusion. Minutes passed. She let herself bask in the hope that he was actually going to leave her alone. They had very generously left her uncuffed, so she buried her face in her arms and shut her eyes with hazy relief.
The bliss lasted a couple of minutes more, until the door opened again. Vesper didn’t move. Let Crispin try to read something from the top of her head if he was so desperate for answers.
“Vesper.”
She shot up at her uncle’s voice. Ansel stood just inside the room with Crispin at his shoulder. Behind them a guard loomed in the corridor. Her uncle looked dead on his feet, but he was still standing at least.
“Have a seat, Chancellor,” said Crispin, moving the teacup aside.
Vesper glared at Crispin as Ansel slowly lowered himself into the chair, using the tabletop for support. If he thought that bringing her uncle into this was going to damage her focus, he was going to be sorely disappointed. Crispin’s eyes weren’t on her though. He was watching Ansel, his expression unreadable.
“Are you all right?” her uncle asked her, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He was somehow older than the last time she’d seen him—only hours ago. The wrinkles folded into his features were starker. His usually bright eyes were dim and sunken. Vesper could see every vein on the backs of his mottled, tremulous hands. Even his attire seemed wilted. His shirt collar, which had been so impeccably starched at the beginning of the evening, drooped to his shoulders. His maroon silk tie was loosened almost to the point of slipping off his neck entirely. The sleeves of his jacket were speckled with mud.
“I’m fine,” Vesper managed. “Are you—”
He lifted one hand in a vague, dismissive gesture, and she bit down on her words. Even as weary and bedraggled as he was, the chancellor could command a room with ease.
“Listen to me very closely, Vesper.” He reached across the table to cup both her hands in his own. His skin was icy cold. “The council is offering you amnesty if you’ll give Crispin access to your memories. They just want to make sure there aren’t any more threats.”
Vesper swallowed hard, trying to find in his gaze what he wasn’t saying. Surely there was something he wasn’t saying. Surely he didn’t intend for her to give up now. The councilors had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t care how many innocent lives Solan ruined with his far-reaching rook abilities as long as he kept providing them with the prophecies that kept them in power. They would do anything to keep him alive and under their thumb—even execute the high chancellor.
But there was one thing Crispin couldn’t have gleaned from Ansel’s memories. Ansel didn’t know where the vial of poison was right now. She never told him she’d given it to Cassa, and even Vesper didn’t know what had happened to it after that. Maybe it was still safe. A small hope. Vesper couldn’t give up their last chance—however slim—of stopping Solan.
“I—I can’t,” she said, aware of Crispin’s eyes on her now. He wasn’t trying to read her though, not yet. “What about you?”
“I want you to take the deal,” her uncle said. “Just take it, Vesper.”
He squeezed her hands, his gaze never leaving hers. Then she understood.
The memory he offered was waiting for her the moment she reached for it. The thread, invisible to everyone but her, snaked across their linked hands. Vesper let it dissolve into her, become her own. She saw the councilors at their table, gauzy and dreamlike beneath the ghost globes. The seat at the center of the table was empty. She listened to Councilor Adara make the offer, and it was just as he’d said. Vesper’s life in exchange for her memories. We don’t want any more bloodshed, said Adara. But we have to protect our interests. You know we do.
On its surface, that’s all the memory was. An offer of mercy in exchange for security. But because Vesper was seeing it through Ansel’s eyes, she saw so much more.
The twitch of disdain in Councilor Barwick’s lips. He’d always been at odds with the chancellor. He’d tried to block Ansel’s accession from the beginning—secretly, of course. The fascination with which Councilor Vicaro studied him, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. The way Councilor Andras stared at the table for the entire conversation.
The way Adara’s mouth closed over her words as something like regret slid across her face. She wasn’t happy, but her hands were tied by her fellow councilors. You know we do.
The council was lying.
Vesper knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but the knowledge still burned in her chest as she gave the memory back to her uncle. Maybe that twinge of betrayal was actually his. She glanced at Crispin, who was eyeing them with marked suspicion. Any second now he would read the exchange in Ansel’s face.
His hand flew to the gold pin that designated his status as a sentient. Vesper wished that she could read his face as easily as he could read everyone else’s, because his expression wasn’t the contempt she’d expected or the shame she’d hoped for. It was something more twisting, more complex, and then it was gone. He stared back at her with cool indifference.
“An amusing question, coming from one of the most privileged girls in Eldra.”
She felt the sting he’d intended but kept it off her face. She glanced in her uncle’s direction, wondering if he was going to say something, but then the door opened.
“Not now,” Crispin snapped at the guard who entered.
The guard didn’t reply. Vesper saw his grip on the doorknob, knuckles white. With his other hand, he clutched his head. His lips were moving, but no sound came out. He was so pale that when he doubled over, Vesper thought he was going to retch all over the floor. Two seconds later he collapsed into a heap. He didn’t move again.
Crispin moved toward him but stopped suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself. He let out a gasp, color draining from his face, wide eyes fixed on nothing.
“Something’s wrong.” Now Ansel was cradling his head in both hands. She couldn’t see his face. “It’s the—it’s—”
It was Solan. Vesper felt the tug in her mind a moment later, as if someone had gathered up a handful of threads and was pulling. She gritted her teeth and yanked the memories back out of his reach. A few of the threads snapped, splintering those memories, but they were still hers. That was what mattered. Solan might be powerful, but he wasn’t going to steal from her that easily.
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