He nods slowly. “Children.”
I breathe through my nose in an effort to calm my pounding heart, the nausea that surges in me. I close my eyes, and Makers damn if I don’t see the little bodies lying still as death in the street.
I share blood with the man who did this.
“It gets worse,” he says, expression grim. “The evidence he found… It was Starter Cider.”
No. I grip the edge of the bed in an effort not to unleash a torrent of curses. This will be all my father needs for an excuse to use Reaping on an unwitting populace. He’s already been stockpiling the foul stuff.
He’ll see enemies everywhere. He’ll turn it on the people to bring them into submission. He’ll bring it to Clavins to squash any resistance. He’ll use it against Nereidium to win the war.
I can’t let that happen.
I release a shuddering breath and bring my heartbeat under control. “My position in court has been compromised—”
“Shocking seeing as how we found you in a dungeon.”
I hold up a hand, silencing him. “My position in court has been compromised,” I repeat. “But there’s more I can do. There are ties I have to other houses—some that may be brave enough to stand against my father. Use me, Clift. Use me overtly. Not as the Underground’s eyes and ears. Use my influence. My mouth, my arms, my steel.”
Clift grins so broadly the corners of his lips strain to meet his eyes.
“Thought you’d never ask, Your Highness.”
Some days, it goes like this:
We stay off the road, going through the forest. Meddie and Tregle handle the navigating. When we can find landmarks on a map, it falls into Meddie’s territory. She can take care of herself, but she’s better with clear directives, whereas Tregle—though I don’t love to think of it—has plenty of wilderness experience in his time serving under Lady Katerine.
He points to the moss growing on the north side of the tree. We’re heading the right way for Clavins. Depending on the plant life, he redirects us, pointing out the ones that mean water’s nearby.
I follow where he and Meddie indicate. I don’t say: “That’s right. I can feel the water in that direction.” I don’t say: “I’ll lead the way.” I don’t say: “I knew that.”
Because here’s the thing: I don’t know that. I’m no wiser to the water’s location than a non-Thrower right now, which is discomfiting. Even back in Abeline, before my Reveal, I’d managed to sense the location of the river. I’d instinctively known where to find it, even deep in the thick of the woods.
Not so now.
Still, some days, it’s sort of…nice. When Meddie isn’t making some sort of dig at Aleta’s “pampered princess past,” our group has an easy camaraderie. We have enough food in our bellies and water wetting our lips. Nature enfolds us, and I can almost forget about the war and the king.
It’s like we’re the only people in the world.
On those days, here’s what I think about, but don’t say aloud: what it would be like if we could ignore the fact that the Nereid people need us. What it would be like if we could stay here.
Other days—today—it’s like this:
The sniping between Aleta and Meddie holds no good nature behind it.
“Listen, Your Highness, I know you’re unused to having to work like the rest of us peasants, but now seems a good time to learn.”
Aleta breaks from a conversation in undertones with Tregle to laugh sharply. “If, Mistress Medalyn, you’ll assent to learning decorum—”
Tregle opens his mouth, likely to head them off before the conversation grows into a conflict, but Aleta raises a hand, anticipating him. “Don’t,” she says simply.
He turns around to me as their aggravated chatter fills the air, widening his eyes as though he wants me to do something.
Try someone else, Tregle. I have no energy to intervene as I slog through the wilderness, my feet heavy and head hung low. My tongue is thick in my mouth and dry as sand. The air feels dry and far from soupy, but it weighs me down. It weighs us down.
Their arguments die down gradually, sinking into a sullen silence. We’re thirsty. Hungry. The only animals to cross our path in days have been birds, and without the energy to sustain flames, they hover so far overhead that neither Aleta nor Tregle have the range to shoot them down. We chew on roots, trying to suck moisture from them, but even the earth here is dry. Our footsteps crunch against the desiccated plant life.
No one asks me about water, about pulling it from the air. It’s possible Aleta and Tregle don’t even realize I once had the ability. More likely, they’re too fatigued to think of it. These traveling conditions are taking their toll on all of us. Even Tregle is snappish sometimes, although he apologizes almost instantly. Especially when he snaps at Aleta.
I think this is more difficult than she expected it to be. Imagining strife isn’t the same as experiencing it. It’s different to say you know you’ll be hungry than to feel it gnaw on your insides like you are the meal fit for consuming.
I’m not sure if it’s worse or better when you already know what that hunger feels like.
I’ve spent nights hungry before. Some winters in Abeline were lean. The tavern closed down. The villagers hunkered in their homes. Farmers brought their livestock inside where it wouldn’t be preyed upon by hungry wolves or, worse still, by hungrier people. One winter, the village watchmen hung the corpse of a man at the town square’s gate as a warning after he’d stormed a home and slaughtered a goat that didn’t belong to him.
There’s a hard, determined gleam in Meddie’s eyes and a weary one in Tregle’s that suggests that hunger isn’t entirely new to them. But I do know this: Aleta’s never been hungry like this before.
On these days, though, it’s the thirst I worry will be our undoing.
It affects me more than the others, but I already knew that. I hitch my pack a little higher, its weight feeling heavier as I think of our trek from Abeline to the capital, of that long stretch of desert before we arrived at the city’s gates. My throat and lips had been dry. Too dry.
“Here.” Meddie shoves a canteen into my hands. Accepting it, I shoot her a questioning look. “You’re barely lifting your feet and your lips are cracked.”
I drink greedily before it’s snatched away.
“Not all of it!” She glares, closing it. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t tell me you’ve caught sick already.”
I shake my head, not trusting my words.
“It’s something,” she insists. “We’re all tired, but it’s like you’ve died and a Rider’s carrying your body on the wind.”
“Don’t say anything to the others,” I say and my voice is raspy. I stumble over something—a rock—and catch myself. We need to keep moving.
Tregle and Aleta lead us for now, and they’re thick as thieves up there. She points to something in the distance and lifts her face to him in a question. He answers her, and it’s like he’s looking at the damn moon, his expression is so rapt.
“That’d be damned foolish of me,” Meddie says, though she lowers her voice anyway. “I’m to get you to Nereidium, preferably alive. Nothing will slow us so much as burying you.”
That stops me.
“We’ll camp here,” she says, shrugging off her pack. It lands loudly on the ground. “If you recover, I’ll keep my mouth shut. We haven’t seen a decent spot in ages anyway, and we’re all tired. I doubt things will improve if we keep walking. Oy!” she calls ahead to Aleta and Tregle, motioning for them to stop.
Giving up, I sink to the ground, my legs boneless in relief.
I could almost believe that the darkness closing in on me is the night sky.
“Breena.” A toe prods my side and I groan. “Breena,” it insists. I crack an eye open.
There’s a blanket over my body that I’m sure wasn’t there when I laid down. Aleta and Tregle peer at me, brows furrowed in identical expressions of consternation.
“At long last,” Ale
ta says. “Her Highness awakens.”
At that, my eyes shoot open, heart pounding before I realize Aleta’s speaking sarcastically.
Is it possible that you can hear someone’s eyes roll? It’s too dark to see Aleta do it, but I just know she did. Wordlessly, she hands me a canteen and I drink before I speak.
“You’re one to talk, princess,” I say.
“Do not start using my title as an insult like Mistress Medalyn does. And don’t you dare think you’re going to get off without a rebuke. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“That I was thirsty?” I sit up, eyeing Meddie’s sleeping figure across the pile of smothered tinder. How long was I out? “What good would that have done? You were all thirsty, too.”
“No.” She makes an impatient sound and looks to Tregle, huffing when he does nothing but shrug. “It was worse for you,” she says. “Certainly, we’re all thirsty, but not to that degree. We were able to ration our water—we didn’t need it as much as you did.”
“We should have guessed at it,” Tregle says. He stops stooping over me like a mother over her sick child and settles down, leaning back onto his hands. He nods to Aleta. “Same way it’s worse for us in the cold.”
She tilts her head, inviting him to go on, and he rotates his hand, searching for words. “You know…in the northern regions? In the winter? Our blood runs hotter. When the air’s leeched of its warmth, we suffer for it.”
Aleta seems to shrink as she thinks about this. “I didn’t know that,” she says quietly.
We’re all quiet for a minute as the implication sinks in. Of course Aleta didn’t know that. She’s never left the south, rarely even left the palace grounds.
Tregle clears his throat, uncomfortable. “It was some adjustment period, I’ll tell you that much,” he says, forcibly injecting cheer into his voice. “When I went with Lady Katerine to the north to fetch a truant Elemental, it was so damn cold…”
And there his voice dies again and I look at the ground, prodding a finger into the dirt.
Because Da was that truant. That’s how all of this started.
“At any rate,” Tregle says, sufficiently awkward now that he’s brought up things both Aleta and I would prefer not to think about. “Beyond the occasional drink, you’ve been deprived of your element for days. You’ll need to drink twice the water we will, and we should make finding it a priority tomorrow.”
Suddenly, I feel like crying. My throat closes with emotion. It’s not fair. After everything I’ve already lost, is Throwing leaving me, too? And why is it punishing me before it goes?
“It’s a plan, Tregle,” I say around the lump in my throat.
It’s the suggestion of a plan. It’s the hint of one. But it is far from the plan we need.
After forcing me to drink more from both of their canteens, the two of them retire to their own bedrolls, but I lie awake for a while longer. I’d slept a dreamless sleep after losing consciousness, but I’m somehow sure that nightmares wait for me now. I shift, trying to get comfortable. Bad dreams or not, I need to sleep.
A shadow rises from the ground. For a moment, I think I’ve drifted off, but no. It’s only Meddie.
She prods at the sleeping embers and swears quietly, unable to get them to light again. Regardless, she settles in front of the makeshift fire pit and threads her fingers together, staring morosely at the kindling.
“Can’t sleep?”
Her head whips around to me, and a tiny smile lifts the corner of her lips. “What gave me away?”
“Hard to say.” I stretch, sitting up, and shuffle over to her.
She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “From the way you fainted dead away like that, I thought for sure you’d be out until morning.”
“Your concern is touching,” I say drily.
She laughs. “Never fear. I checked on your breathing and all of that. You were tired and thirsty, but otherwise seemed fine. Feel better now?”
“A bit.”
“Good.” She nods, then jerks her head at my bedroll. “Best get back to sleep.”
“Yeah,” I agree. But I don’t move. “What about you?”
Her gaze springs to mine. “I’ll get to it soon. Just…thinking for a minute.”
“Mmm,” I hum. I don’t want to pry, but on the off-chance she feels like opening up, I settle down.
“I’m just…” She sighs. “I’m thinking about my mother,” she finishes quietly.
I don’t say anything, letting her continue or stop if she wants to.
“She’s the reason I learned to fight,” she says. “When I was…I dunno, around ten years old, I suppose, she got involved with this…good-for-nothing man. He was nice to us at first. Brought us both presents. Brought us flowers.
“They got married and things changed quickly. They’d fight over the stupidest things. Ma started sending me to help Clift at The Soused Turkey to keep me away.”
“He knocked her around?” I asked quietly.
Meddie smiles and holds up a finger. “Once. Only once.” She pulls one of her knives free and contemplates it, still smiling vaguely. “She was laid up for a week, but when she got back to cooking his meals, she slipped him some poison. He never bothered us again. Clift helped us then, too. With the body. With finding someone to teach me. My ma was determined that no one would ever do to me what her husband had done to her.”
“Is she still…?”
Meddie shakes her head. “No. She passed a year or so ago, but I was just thinking… This is exactly the sort of thing she’d have wanted for me. Fighting for the Underground. Fighting back against the king.”
She’s lost a parent, too, I think. Emotion squeezes at my heart as I think of Da. In a way, I think this is what he’d want for me, too. He wouldn’t have wanted me to stay in King Langdon’s palace, doing his bidding.
“You miss her?” I ask.
She exhales and stows her knife. Her head falls to her hands. “Every damn day.”
A conversation, overheard only by tree roots and twilight
“I am not blind.”
A head jerks up. Green eyes land on green.
“That is… I would never presume…” He lowers his head and sighs. “You are a princess.”
A step closer. A chin tilted up.
“No. I am a queen. One without a kingdom. It is your king who calls me a princess to further his false claim to my realm.”
His mouth opens—a protest presumed. Her raised hand halts it.
“You are Egrian. He is the Egrian King. You may not feel loyalty to him, but that doesn’t change these facts.”
“I would swear loyalty to you,” he whispers.
“I don’t doubt it. But would you still swear it if I refused your affections?”
“Yes.” Her wrist is seized in an iron grip. His head lifts again, but his eyes don’t waver this time. “Yes.”
We do find water the next day, but it takes until the late afternoon. There’s an intimation of a town here with a watermill and scattered cabins in the area. We retreat into the woods, away from the people, but close enough to get to the river the next day.
Immediately, I shrug off my pack. Thank the Makers we came upon the river in a place where it’s calm and shallow. I fall to my knees, intent on drinking until my belly is full. I pay little attention to the others, but their packs thump onto the ground behind me. Splashing fills the air as we scoop water into our mouths and our canteens.
I roll onto my side on the riverbank, thirst blissfully quenched. I am heavy with water now, but it’s a welcome change. I feel worlds better, more alert than I’ve been in days after surviving on sips.
Aleta, done with drinking her fill, takes a seat next to me while Tregle and Meddie seek out camping grounds.
“We won’t be far,” he says softly and points to a tree with a scarred trunk several feet from where we sit. “Head southeast from that tree. We’ll be along that line.”
“Thank you, Tregle.” Aleta glows up at up h
im, and a wicked smile spreads over my face as he walks away.
She scowls when she catches me. “What can I do for you, Breena?”
“Nothing,” I say brightly.
She crosses her legs and looks away, toward the water. “That could have been wiser,” she sighs. I keep the smile glued to my face. “Our gorging from the river,” she clarifies. “It’s all very well for you. Elements don’t harm their Elementals after all, but for the rest of us… Tregle or I should have boiled the water first.”
“Tregle, is it?” I nudge her. “What happened to Adept Tregle?”
She glares at me, but I grin wider when I see a mortified look behind her eyes. “In the interests of expediency, I have decided to dispense with titles for the time being,” she says loftily.
“Oh, but calling Meddie ‘Mistress Medalyn’ is incredibly efficient.”
The glare intensifies. “I will end you,” she whispers.
I laugh for the first time in days and stretch back languorously. “It’s fine to care about Tregle, Aleta. It’s good, in fact.”
She hesitates, looking around. Her mouth opens like she wants to say something, but closes quickly. “I have never had the luxury of caring.”
I sober. Right. Aleta’s used to people listening to her every word. To having anything she cares about being used against her. To being betrothed. The thought strikes me uncomfortably. She can’t be worried about Caden, can she? Not in that way?
“It’s not…Caden, is it?” She looks incredulous and I elaborate. “You don’t feel guilty? Like it’s some sort of betrayal to your engagement?”
If I’d asked her if chickens could sing, I don’t think she’d have been more surprised.
“Lady Breena.” She speaks to me like a child, and despite the fact that I’m the one who asked the ridiculous question, I can’t help but bristle at the patronizing tone. I also resist the urge to point out her use of my erroneous title. “I never chose Caden. He never chose me. We were thrust together by someone who wanted to use us as his pawns in a war. I do care for him very deeply…as a friend,” she emphasizes. “Not a lover.”
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