by Cara Witter
“Silence,” Jaeme said, raising the stone high above his head. His hands shook a bit for talking to his uncle that way, even after all his uncle had done to him. “I am the bearer of Kotali, god of stone, and I command you all to bow.”
Perchaya alone smiled. Daniella squeezed his hand. Greghor, Hugh, and the other knights stared up at the stone for one breath. Two. Three.
The stone was silent, and from their vantage, Jaeme realized it would look an awful lot like an ordinary rock.
“Interesting,” Greghor said. “And we’re to believe that’s the godstone?”
Jaeme tightened his grip on the stone, resisting the urge to curse his newfound god, which hadn’t taken as long as he might have hoped. “I could toss it to you and see what happens.”
Greghor snorted. “You always did like to bluff when you were holding bad cards. I’m sure even Hugh’s lost a game or two to you that way.”
Hugh was still looking at the rock, his sword drawn.
It was true; Jaeme was bluffing. He didn’t dare let go of the stone, not after all the trouble it had been to get it. Instead, he looked at Hugh, whose money he had, in fact, taken with bad cards. “That body in the hidden room is used to communicate with Diamis. My uncle’s the traitor. He set me up to take the fall, and now he’s going to deliver us all to the Lord General on a platter.” Jaeme paused and turned to his uncle. “Or is it the other way around? Gods, has it already begun?”
Beside him, Daniella shifted uncomfortably, and the implications of what he’d just said settled over Jaeme. If Greghor was working with Diamis, the border might already be weakened. Troops might already be on their way.
Greghor ignored the question. “Is that what the body does? So that’s what you were doing, stashing it in the basement. You’ve been using it to communicate with the enemy. It was clever of you to maneuver yourself into position to be sent to him. Pretending to be our spy.” His eyes flicked wickedly to Daniella. “Pretending to seduce her for us. Waltzing back here to show off your prize as if you hadn’t sold us all to that bloody usurper.”
All the blood drained from Jaeme’s face. “That, that’s not—” He stole a glance at Daniella and saw her glaring at Greghor.
“That’s not what happened,” Daniella said. She looked at Jaeme, as if for reassurance.
Jaeme opened his mouth to lie, and in his hand, the stone burned. Behind Hugh, Perchaya looked at Jaeme with wide eyes, also waiting, no doubt, for his denial. The stench of Jaeme’s omissions hung thick in the air. Even he was having a hard time sorting the truth from the lies. Gods, he should have told Daniella the truth in that forsaken swamp, back when things had been clear. He should have told her the instant he found out about Erich, or better yet, when they’d found each other in Bothran. If she’d never spoken to him again, so be it. Anything to keep her from finding out like this.
“I didn’t seduce her,” Jaeme said. “I love her.” Those things, at least, were the truth.
Daniella’s face, though, was pale, her eyes wide.
“You sent him to Drepaine,” Daniella said to Greghor. It wasn’t a question, but Hugh opened his mouth to respond as if it was. Greghor held up a hand, and Hugh fell silent again. He, like Jaeme, must have seen that she already knew.
Jaeme turned to Daniella as she dropped his hand. She looked at him as if he’d changed into a Nichtee. “They sent you to Drepaine to seduce me,” she said.
Again, it wasn’t a question.
There were a thousand things Jaeme wanted to say in that moment. How he hadn’t wanted to, how he’d feebly tried once or twice to fulfill his mission and that had been the end of it. How she, as it turned out, was the only true and real thing in Jaeme’s life—and though he hadn’t known it, had always been. How he’d never treat her the way Erich did, how maybe Erich’s slight would have been forgivable had he not been a monster. How he’d kept other secrets, but only because he wanted to protect her. How Jaeme would have come clean with her, had wanted to, if not for the stupid fear that it would feel to her like her life was repeating, that he was Erich come to haunt her again.
Only one thing managed to make it from his mind to his mouth, but it was the best, most real, most true thing of all.
“I love you,” Jaeme said.
Daniella backed away, her face drawn in horror.
And Jaeme could feel in his bones that he’d truly, finally lost everything in the world that mattered.
Fifty-four
Daniella stood, surrounded by knights and dukes and Perchaya and Jaeme—Jaeme, who stared at her pale-faced and beseeching, his lips parted like he might speak again but didn’t know what to say. She stood there among all these people, but the truth was crashing down on her, stealing the breath away.
Numbness spread through her, allowing her to take in the scene as if she was no longer part of it. An observer, outside of time, pitying the idiot girl who’d believed all the lies again—the same bloody lies she’d fallen for before, because she’d wanted so desperately for it to be true this time.
Especially this time.
“Dani,” Jaeme said, his brown eyes soft. Pleading.
“We’re not falling for this charade,” Duke Greghor said. “Enough with the lies, Jaeme, and come peacefully, for all our sakes.”
Jaeme didn’t take his eyes from hers. “Dani,” he said again, softer.
The numbness around her heart cracked apart; heat flooded through her, heat and sharp pain and memories, all tangled together—Jaeme’s arms around her, her face burrowed into the crook of his neck as she woke in the mornings; his infectious laughter, which had quickly become her favorite sound in all the world, as they sat with their bare feet in a creek, away from the others; the tension, that awful tension, which had settled in since arriving at Grisham, making their normally easy conversation clipped and uncertain.
This was why.
He’d been using her all along. For Mortiche, for Grisham, even for sex, maybe. The reasons didn’t matter. They all had their reasons, but the end result was always the same—she was a tool, a pawn, a weapon.
“You lied to me,” she whispered, because she couldn’t make her voice louder or she might shatter like a thin pane of glass.
Jaeme’s shoulders slumped, his expression wilted, but she couldn’t believe his words, she couldn’t believe his actions, she couldn’t believe any of it. She could never allow herself to believe again.
And for no reason other than that she couldn’t bear it anymore, she started to run.
Reality sunk in quickly enough. She heard Perchaya call her name, as she ran around the smithy the way she and Jaeme had just arrived—so happy then, we were so happy and we were holding hands, was it only moments ago?—and then Greghor yelling “Go after them!” as she made her way over the grass and wending pathways of the outer courtyard.
She ran and kept running, dodging around trees and past flowering hedges, her soft shoes torn up by gravel, gritting her teeth as branches scored her ankles, welcoming the pain because it was so much better than everything else she was feeling. It wasn’t until she had reached a tall hedge that she could duck behind and catch her breath that Greghor’s words hit her.
Go after them?
She turned back to see Perchaya running as well, her skirt catching in the same thorny hedge that had wounded Daniella. Behind her were two guards, swords drawn.
Daniella froze. They might not see her here, but she couldn’t let them hurt Perchaya.
You think she’s your friend? some part of her mind whispered. Perchaya must be using you too. They all are.
Even so, she couldn’t abandon her.
Daniella grabbed a rock from the ground, the only weapon she could find, even if a likely ridiculous one, and stepped out from behind the tall hedge just as Perchaya cleared the thorny one. Perchaya’s eyes met hers, but before Daniella could read the
expression in them, one of the guards all too close behind her tripped and fell.
Perchaya reached her and clasped Daniella’s hands just as the other knight—no, not a knight, but Matthon Buras, the peasant-turned-guard from the tournament—stopped by where his fellow had floundered and leaned down, cracking him over the head with the hilt of his sword.
Daniella gasped, but Perchaya gripped her hands tighter, as if keeping her from fleeing. “It’s all right. Buras is with us. I think.”
Daniella gaped at her; she wasn’t sure in that moment what that meant, ‘with us,’ when she didn’t even know who she was with anymore.
Alone. In the end, she was always alone. In the end, they all somehow sensed the truth. She wasn’t even human, just a creature of blood magic. They all used her, because that’s what she was made for: to be used.
Daniella shook herself free of Perchaya’s grasp, wishing she could shake herself free of all the thoughts.
Buras approached. Daniella wanted to run again, flee from all of them, but she knew in the same way she couldn’t abandon Perchaya, that she couldn’t truly abandon Jaeme. He might have used her, but he wasn’t a blood mage, and he wasn’t working for her father. He’d been working for them—his uncle and the dukes who’d just turned on him. His relationship with Daniella might have all been a lie for him, but it never had been for her. She loved him. And he needed help.
“We need to find Kenton,” she said. Perchaya nodded, and Buras looked back towards the castle.
“Your bodyguard?” he asked. “If he’s inside, the best way would be through the kitchen entrance. We’re bound to attract some attention either way, but we’ll likely find fewer knights there.”
It seemed reasonable enough. Daniella’s thoughts were too fragmented, her world too shattered for argument. There was a part of her that thought that if she could find Kenton, if she could just last long enough to send Jaeme help against his uncle, then she could fall apart.
She didn’t know what that would mean, not really, only that her eyes were burning now, her legs trembling and unsteady, and she wanted to curl up somewhere far away from everyone and everything.
But not yet.
They followed Buras to a small side entrance to the castle, an open door from which heat poured, sweltering enough it made the rays of the mid-summer sun feel like a gentle spring breeze in contrast. The sheen of sweat across all their faces began to drip, as they made their way through the kitchen, past scurrying servants cleaning broken ceramic vessels from a fallen shelf, sweeping up clouds of flour and mounds of grain spilled onto the stone.
Her hair plastered to her face from the heat of the massive hearth and Daniella couldn’t tell if she was crying, if those were hot tears tracking down her cheeks or not. It didn’t matter, not really. Now or later, the tears would come, and they might never stop. She avoided looking at Perchaya, who she knew would be watching her with pity.
Pity was for humans, not things. Especially not things made of the darkest magic.
Out of the kitchen, they kept to the servants’ passage at the back of the large dining hall, and then out into the corridor that led to the great hall. A few wall ornaments had fallen, and they stepped around them, walking quickly but not so fast they’d draw unnecessary attention. In the aftermath of the earthquake, though, maybe they wouldn’t have anyway.
They were about to head up the stairs to the living quarters when Perchaya grabbed Daniella’s arm. “Kenton!”
Daniella followed her pointing to the end of a hallway, where Kenton was standing close to Nikaenor and Sayvil, all looking anxious. Nikaenor especially, who was pointing frantically in the direction of the castle’s front gates. Which meant that he was not likely talking about Jaeme’s troubles right now, an event happening on the opposite side of the castle.
Whatever he was saying was clearly not good. Kenton’s expression was even more murderous than usual. It occurred to her that of all of them, Kenton was perhaps the only one she could trust. He’d never pretended she was anything to him. He’d been open from the beginning at how quickly he’d wash his hands of her if it suited his needs. He’d told her the truth about herself.
It was a cold comfort, but it was a comfort.
They ran up to their friends—not my friends, Daniella reminded herself, I can’t have friends if I’m not real—and Kenton’s eyes narrowed at their approach. Or maybe at the look on their faces.
“Thank the gods you’re all right,” he said. “I came looking for you all after the earthquake but could only find Sayvil and Nikeanor. Where’s Jaeme?” His narrowed eyes focused suspiciously on Buras, who stayed several feet back, keeping watch behind them.
“Jaeme—” Daniella started, but her voice choked on his name, and she knew then that she had been crying, that the tears spilling from her eyes now were running in already-worn tracks. She wiped her face, but they kept coming, and she could only wrap her arms about herself like maybe she could hold herself together just a few moments more.
I love you, she could hear him say, in so many different ways, so many different memories—serious, the first time he’d spoken those words; lightly, laughing as they told each other stories; desperate, whispered in the dark as they made love.
She both wanted to believe and didn’t want to, all at once. But either way, she couldn’t let herself. Never again.
“Is he dead?” Nikaenor asked, his eyes wide and panicked.
Sayvil glared at him. “Of course not. We’d feel it.” But she sounded less sure of that and looked back at Daniella for confirmation.
“He’s alive,” Perchaya said, stepping in. “He’s in trouble, though. He has Kotali, but his uncle and the knights are there, and—” She glanced at Daniella briefly, pressing her lips together, then looked back at Kenton. “And he, well—”
“He betrayed us,” Daniella said, her voice sounding like something detached from herself. “The Council sent him to seduce me. He was working for them all along. His uncle was working for my father, just like you suspected.”
She noticed Buras frowning and crossing his arms and was suddenly unsure that he wasn’t a spy from Greghor. But no, he’d sworn fealty to Jaeme, when it would have been more appropriate to do so to Greghor himself. Surely Greghor hadn’t planted a peasant to win the tournament just to use him as a spy. That was elaborate at best and downright stupid at worst.
He was probably concerned, though, that the people he’d followed weren’t on Jaeme’s side, after all. Perhaps that was even why he’d come after them.
No, Greghor had ordered him to. Daniella’s head spun.
Gods, she said, growing impatient with her own circles. Not everyone can be out to get you. You’re not that important.
She wanted desperately to be less important.
“He didn’t know about his uncle, though,” Perchaya said hastily, and Daniella swallowed and nodded, although in that moment it occurred to her that maybe all of it was a lie, not just the parts about his involvement with her.
Could Jaeme have been working for my father as well?
No, she thought. No. Jaeme might have used her, but he wouldn’t sell his whole country to Sevairn. He wouldn’t sell the whole world to Maldorath. Not on purpose. If seducing her had been her father’s plan—gods, of course it had been her father’s plan, again—Jaeme probably hadn’t known it.
Kenton’s face darkened. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes,” Daniella said, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “His uncle betrayed him. He’s out there, at the back entrance of the castle with Greghor now, and he needs your help.”
Kenton cursed so vehemently that Nikaenor blanched and drew back, and even Perchaya looked uncomfortable.
Buras nodded confirmation, though the look he gave all of them was still deeply disapproving.
“It was him all this bloody time, and now he needs m
y help to—” Kenton started, but Perchaya cut him off.
“To save one of the godbearers,” she said.
Kenton cursed again. “Fine. But you need to know what we’re up against. Erich’s here.”
Daniella had thought nothing could shock her emotions further after all they’d just endured, but Kenton’s words drove a spike of ice into her gut. “What?” she whispered.
“Nikaenor and Sayvil saw him in the city. Which means we need to go, now.”
“But the ravine—”
“Keeps us from doing that, exactly. The castle is cut off. We’re trapped here. So if I have to go drag Jaeme’s ass out of the fire, then I need some of you to figure out a way for us to get across that chasm.” He looked over at Buras, who was still glaring silently at them.
Gods. He couldn’t be possessed by Greghor, could he? But no. Greghor was in the courtyard with him, and he wouldn’t dare do blood magic in front of the other knights, where he could be easily noticed—
By the gods. Daniella didn’t know who to trust anymore, so she pressed her lips shut and left that decision to Kenton, who returned Buras’ glare two-fold. “I’m assuming your intention isn’t to arrest or kill us,” he said. “Because you’re failing at both.”
“He’s on our side,” Perchaya said. “He knocked out the other guard Greghor sent after us so we could get away.”
Buras snorted. “I’m loyal to Lord Jaemeson. Moreso than many of you, judging by what I’m hearing. But he says to protect you all, and so that’s what I’m doing. Perhaps against my better judgment.”
Kenton studied him for a moment, then met eyes with Perchaya. Something passed between them that Daniella couldn’t read, and Perchaya nodded, just a touch. Kenton sighed and seemed to err on the side of trust, which for Kenton was a heroic feat. “All right, then. Nikaenor, go with Daniella and Perchaya, find a way out for us. Sayvil and I will get Jaeme—you said you have supplies?” This last bit he said to Sayvil, who nodded with an almost gleeful expression, patting a large bag at her side. “And you,” Kenton said to Buras, stepping up to him until the two men were face to face, their noses mere inches apart. “You protect them, or—”