by Cara Witter
“I don’t know,” Kenton said. “And before I enacted that kind of a solution, I’d want to be sure. But I need to know, if it comes to that, if it’s our best chance for stopping your father—”
“I’d let you do it,” she said. “If it meant saving the world, I’d let you kill me. But do you even think you can?”
“I don’t know,” Kenton said. “Maybe from a distance. With an arrow, perhaps. Or—” he hated mentioning this, “—or if it comes to that, maybe you could do it yourself.”
Daniella paused, closing her eyes briefly. “If it comes to that, I will.” Then she opened them again, looking at him warily. “But you won’t try it. Not until you’re sure.”
“Not until I’m sure,” Kenton said, and he felt the truth of it. If killing Daniella would release the souls and prevent Diamis from using them to unlock the seal on Maldorath’s prison, then he’d do it. But he didn’t want Daniella dead. He didn’t want it to come to that. “After all,” he said, “there’s no prophecy about a girl who has to die to prevent the unlocking of the seal. Only of four bearers bringing the god stones together. And we’re halfway there.” The prophecies talked about one who would die, only. The originator. But Kenton couldn’t imagine any of this had originated with Daniella. It was Diamis’ doing. All of it.
Daniella let out a long breath and nodded. Kenton hoped that was some comfort, such as it was.
“You say you don’t hate me,” Daniella said. “But are you still afraid of me?”
Kenton thought of the throne room, of dark red dripping from walls and pooling on the tiles. Of bodies torn and scattered. And a woman coated from head to toe in their blood, like some creature of nightmares.
“Yes,” he said.
She sat back down beside him on the bench, the fight gone. “Me too,” she said softly. The tears began tracking down her cheeks. “All those children,” she whispered. “All the Drim. All of them, because of me.”
“Because of your father. He’s the one—” Kenton started, but she held a hand up, stopping him.
“I just . . . I need a moment.”
Kenton clamped his mouth shut. They sat silently, and, as usual, Kenton wished that Perchaya was here, rather than him. She was the one who made people feel better about terrible things, the one who brought comfort with a gentle touch, a soft word.
Kenton sat there, uncertain of what to do or say. Wishing there was something he could fight, something he could fix. Hating how helpless he was to do either. And he knew then that, against all odds, he’d grown to care about Daniella. She was one of them, like Nikaenor, like Sayvil, even gods-damned Jaeme.
Diamis’ own damn daughter.
Daniella cleared her throat, and Kenton turned to look at her. Sunlight glinted off of the tracks of tears on her cheeks, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
“I’m not even human,” she said. “Not really.”
Kenton didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could say.
“If I’m made of the blood of—” she shuddered. “Children. If I’m made of hundreds of souls, some thing made of blood magic, do I . . . do I even have a soul of my own?” She met his eyes, desperate.
Perchaya wasn’t here, but Kenton was. So he decided to do what he did best—tell the truth. Bluntly.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how much is human, and how much is magic. But I know this. You’re not evil, no matter what he did to you. If you ask me, you’re a lot more human than the monsters we’re running from.”
To his surprise, Daniella shook her head. Surely, she wasn’t going to make an argument now that she was as corrupt as a blood mage. That would certainly bring them full circle. “I destroyed Erich,” she said. “In the beginning, he was good to me, but then little by little—it was like I corrupted him.”
Kenton wanted to take Erich by the throat and choke him. “No. Whatever he blamed you for, his darkness isn’t from you.”
Daniella shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Kenton said. “Because we served together. I’ve known him longer than you have, and I’m telling you, I would have called Erich a good person once, but the darkness was there. His pride, his desperation for control—it was all there. He just hadn’t chosen yet to fully embrace it.” Kenton looked at her. “And it sounds as if he entered into a bargain with your father before you knew him. It wasn’t you, Daniella. Erich had already traded away his own soul.”
She sniffled. “Thank you,” she said. But still her shoulders shook. Still her hands trembled in her lap.
And Kenton did something on an impulse that surprised him as much as it undoubtedly surprised her.
He reached over and hugged Daniella. She tensed in his arms, but she did stop shaking. He pulled back just as abruptly and cleared his throat. They both sat beside each other, stiffly.
But she gave him a small, tremulous smile and a gentle shove on the arm. “I said I believed you didn’t hate me,” she said. “You didn’t have to go to such extreme measures to prove it.”
He chuckled. “Noted.”
She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, but he could tell there were more to come. Many more, probably. “I need to find Jaeme. But I mean it. Thank you.”
He nodded, and she turned and left the courtyard, her shoulders hunched, weighed down by the kind of knowledge that could crush a person.
He hoped, truly, that it wouldn’t break her.
Daniella didn’t know exactly where she was going after leaving the courtyard, but she knew she had to get away from Kenton before she completely fell apart. Kenton was getting to be someone she could talk openly with, but he wasn’t who she needed right now.
She wanted Jaeme, wanted to melt into his arms and sob and hear him tell her he still loved her, no matter what she was.
If that was indeed what he would say. She paused just before the stairwell, placing a hand on the carved-stone banister. Her breath felt too short, her lungs aching.
What if this was too much for him? He’d seen what she’d done in Tirostaar, and he’d held her afterward, kissed her, told her none of it mattered, that she was still Daniella. He’d fallen in love with her. But this . . . this was worse. There, she’d unleashed a horrible power, but in doing so she’d saved them all.
Jaeme might be able to love a girl with a power she couldn’t control, but could he love her even if she might not be human at all?
She was a weapon, Lukos told Erich all those months ago, in the depths of Castle Peldenar.
She’d thought she’d discovered what he meant by that, but maybe it was so much more. Maybe the girl herself, all that Daniella thought she was, was really a façade. Maybe she was just a weapon, and nothing more.
A weapon made of the blood of innocent children. So many children.
She wheezed in a breath, leaning on the banister for support.
“My lady?” a matronly servant carrying a tray of discarded dishes from the upper living quarters came within a few stairs of her and stopped, concern stark on her face. “My lady, are you well? Do you need—”
“No,” Daniella said, gasping the word out. The flood of tears threatened behind her eyes, and she would not collapse in some helpless puddle right here. “No, please continue on. I—have you seen Lord Jaemeson?”
“No, my lady. I’m sorry.” The servant shifted the tray between her hands, looking as if torn between obeying and setting the thing down to help Daniella. “I could send for him immediately, though.”
Daniella forced herself to straighten, to stand without the banister’s aid, even though her knees felt weak enough to buckle. In her mind, she could hear the screams of all those children.
Screams and blood and darkness.
All pieces of her creation, of her being.
“No need to send for him,” she said, gathering back as mu
ch composure as possible. “I’ll look in his rooms.”
The servant nodded, though she didn’t seem terribly convinced.
Daniella made her way up the stairs, her shaking hands holding the fabric of the long skirts to keep from tripping over the hem. Her breath was still coming in short gasps, and the world seemed dark and fuzzy around the edges.
Maybe she should have had the woman send for Jaeme. But she was as equally afraid of seeing him right now. She couldn’t keep a secret like this from him, even if it was physically possible for her to pretend everything was fine. But if she had more time to think things through, to make sense of it even a little—
No, there would be no making sense of this. There would only be surviving. And hoping she didn’t lose the friendships she found and the man she loved in the process.
She made her way to Jaeme’s bedchamber—their bedchamber, he’d called it often enough, though she’d been hesitant to read too deeply into that—grateful not to encounter anyone else along the way. Her stomach was twisting, beads of sweat forming along her brow.
“Jaeme?” she managed to call out as she stumbled in.
Nothing. He wasn’t here.
Her vision was narrowing enough that she was certain she would pass out. She made it to the newly cleaned chamber pot and fell to her knees in front of it just in time. Her stomach tightened one final time, and she heaved the contents into the pot.
When her stomach was empty, she sat back on her heels, wiping the sweat from her face with a trembling hand.
Strangely enough, she felt somewhat better. Her vision broadened again; the dizziness passed. Her stomach settled once more, even though her throat burned.
She would find Jaeme and tell him all of it. She had to believe that their love was enough, that it would always be.
And that no matter what she was, no matter how she’d been made, she had to be human enough to stop her father, once and for all.
Forty-eight
Jaeme left his uncle on the balcony and went immediately into the basement. Hope was a squirmy feeling, one he wanted to be rid of as quickly as possible, whether by fulfillment or disappointment. He headed down the stairs and into the far part of the castle, to the vaults that held the ashes of the former dukes of Grisham, sealed in stone. On his way he passed several doors with broken locks. He cursed Kenton silently and made a note to tell his uncle about it so he could have them replaced.
Beyond the sarcophagus Jaeme found the wall where the brick was different, the stones slightly more even and a deeper color than the surrounding wall. It was barely noticeable in the light of his charm, even knowing in advance, and it wasn’t as if the sun would ever touch it here.
Jaeme set his shoulder against the wall and pushed. As he strained against it, for a moment he thought his uncle was wrong, that it had rusted shut long ago, or that it was simply the wrong wall to begin with, but then with a crack and a soft scraping sound, the wall gave way and swung inward on silent hinges. Jaeme looked into the room.
And found a wide table, on top of which lay the naked body of a boy with black tattoos marked up and down his flesh. The lines were sharp and jagged rather than the swirling runes of the old script, and while Jaeme had never seen them before, he could guess what they were.
His breath caught. His uncle had to have hidden the body somewhere, of course, but if he’d left it here, he could have at least warned him.
Shivers crawled over Jaeme’s skin as the boy’s eyes opened, black as night even where they should be white, and the boy sat up and looked at him.
Panic crawled in his throat, and Jaeme’s hand went to his sword, remembering too late that he didn’t have it with him—he rarely wore it when he was wandering around his own home. The boy stopped moving, eyes watching him, unblinking. Jaeme took a step back, but the body—it had to be dead, didn’t it?—didn’t move to climb off the table. It just continued to look as if waiting for something.
“All hells,” Jaeme said. “Stop looking at me.”
Its glassy eyes still fixed on him, it spoke. “What do you want?”
Jaeme’s eyes widened. Had someone heard him? Would that be Diamis on the other end? Or Tehlran? How could he tell who he was talking to, and how would either of them know if it was him?
“You’re interrupting,” the boy said. “Is there no purpose to it?”
“No, my lord,” Jaeme said, trying to think of what he could say to mislead Diamis, to get information out of him. Even Tehlran might know something that Jaeme could use.
The boy stared at him with dark, empty eyes, and Jaeme absently took a step backward.
And nearly jumped out of his skin when he collided with someone standing behind him. Jaeme shouted, his voice echoing through the tunnels, and felt a pair of hands settle heavily on his shoulders.
“Jaeme,” Hugh said. “What are you doing down here?”
Jaeme’s heart beat in his throat. Hugh? What was he doing down here? Jaeme wished he could pull the wall closed again, to keep Hugh from seeing. Gods, what excuse could he give to another duke to cover up what Greghor had done?
Too late, Jaeme watched Hugh set eyes on the body. He would have certainly heard Jaeme speak, calling the thing ‘my lord.’ Oh, gods. Jaeme pressed himself against the open door, watching as Hugh’s face contorted in horror.
“By Kotali’s strength,” he said. “What in all hells is that?”
“I don’t know,” Jaeme said. He cursed himself. Was that the best he could come up with?
“You don’t know?” Hugh said. “And yet you were talking to it?”
The boy continued to stare, not at the doorway, as he had when Jaeme walked in, but at the place where Jaeme now stood, as if it were waiting for his instruction.
“Who’s there?” the boy asked. “Have you been compromised?”
Jaeme had half a mind to slit the thing’s throat, but he wasn’t sure even that would stop the spell.
“Oh, Jaeme,” Hugh said, still staring wide-eyed at the dead body. “What have you gotten yourself involved in?”
“No!” Jaeme said. “I didn’t—I’ve never seen this thing before. I—”
Hugh held up a hand to silence him, tearing his eyes away from the boy to look at Jaeme with a mixture of fear and pity. “Your uncle told me you’d been acting strangely. He said you’d been stealing off into the tunnels. He was worried you might have developed a snap habit, and he asked me to investigate.” He looked back at the boy. “But I never would have thought—”
No. Jaeme looked up at the walls, but found no strange writings, no runes resembling what his uncle had described. But this was definitely the room Greghor had indicated. And he’d obviously been down here recently. A lump formed in Jaeme’s throat, so thick that when he spoke, his voice strained. “My uncle,” he said. “When did he ask this of you?”
“Just now,” Hugh said.
The lump swelled, so Jaeme’s voice came out almost as a squeak. “He told you which part of the castle I’d been frequenting. He told you I’d just gone down here.”
Hugh nodded. “He was worried about you, Jaeme. Tell me what it is you’re caught up in. Is Daniella involved?” He paused. “Perchaya?”
By the gods. By all five of the damned gods. Jaeme had been set up. His uncle had set him up. After Jaeme had agreed to cover for him. After Greghor had promised to protect him.
Jaeme had wanted Kenton to be right, but not about that.
“She’s not,” Jaeme said. “None of us are involved. I swear to you, I’m seeing this body for the first time, same as you—”
“Jaeme,” Hugh said, his voice even, as if he were trying to calm a panicked horse. “I know you. I know you would never have meant to get involved in blood magic. Tell me what’s happened, and I can speak for you with your uncle, with the Council, if necessary. I just need you to tell me the truth.�
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“I told you the truth. I’m not involved in this. It’s my uncle. He—”
“Your uncle trusts you,” Hugh said. “He brought your name to the Council to go after Daniella because he believed in your loyalty to Grisham and to Mortiche.”
Jaeme blinked at him. “My uncle didn’t want me to go. He spoke against the assignment.”
“No,” Hugh said. “Your uncle is a modest man, but he’s the one who brought the idea to us in the first place. I was the only one who opposed, but not because I didn’t trust you.”
Hugh went on about his motivations, but Jaeme couldn’t follow. His uncle had lied to him. He hadn’t tried to get Jaeme out of the assignment. Hadn’t tried to play Diamis and the Council off each other to protect him. He’d been asked something of Diamis, and then delivered it.
Gods, had he never been trying to protect Jaeme or Grisham at all?
“Everything’s gone to the lowest hell.” Jaeme’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it felt like it echoed and echoed.
“You can still fix it,” Hugh said.
At that moment, Jaeme knew. Hugh was wrong. There was nothing he could say to fix this. Nowhere he could look for Kotali. Nothing he could do to keep his uncle from descending on the others, now that he knew Jaeme would be on to him.
Gods. Nikaenor. His uncle knew that Nikaenor had Mirilina. Now Jaeme would have more than Nikaenor’s father’s blood on his hands. More than the people of Ithale. Jaeme hadn’t meant to do it, but he’d betrayed them all. Jaeme looked into Hugh’s eyes, and he knew in his heart.
There was nothing he could ever do that would make this right.
Forty-nine
Nikaenor leaned against the apothecary’s door frame watching the slender woman across the street twirl sticks of fire. She wasn’t drawing a large crowd, despite her skill. In Ithale, everyone in town would have come to see a show like this—the twirling brands creating rings of fire, spinning through the air as she tossed and caught them in smooth, easy motions. Here in a big city like Grisham, she was just one of dozens of street performers. Fewer now, maybe, with the tournament officially over and the thick crowds beginning to disperse.