by Leigh Kelsey
“Where did you get that?”
Maia swallowed, scrambling for a flippant response. Her soul shrivelled, her gut clenching. She had nothing.
“Maia,” Naemi sighed, her amber eyes bleak. That was disappointment in her voice—and a lack of surprise, as if she’d been waiting for Maia to slip up and break the rules. “Oh, Maia, what have you done?”
Maia swallowed, scanning her friend’s round, golden face and seeing nothing but that hateful disappointment. “The right thing,” she said finally, faintly. She whispered, “The only thing I could live with.”
“Who was that man?” Naemi pressed, looking to the gate. Gone—Kheir was gone. That was good. Maia could buy him enough time to get out of the city, if she could do nothing else. If she couldn’t keep the blade from swinging down to her own neck. “Who did you let him visit?”
Visit?
Maia didn’t let her hope show. Naemi thought she’d snuck him into the dungeons, not snuck him out.
“My aunt tried to kill my parents,” she blurted, searching for anything to stall Naemi before she shouted for the guards, or whatever else she’d do when she realised what Maia had really done. She knew Naemi would never do anything to hurt her, but Naemi had no loyalty to Kheir. “This is the Dagger of Truths, Naemi.” She lifted it, smoky brown stones glowing, as if encouraging Maia. “There’s no way for anyone to deceive me when I have this, and the prisoner, the prince, told the truth. Ismene tried to kill my parents.”
The truth cut the air like a scythe.
Naemi’s nostrils flared slightly, something in her beautiful face shifting. Maia’s stomach twisted sickly even though she didn’t understand why. “You don’t know anything, Maia,” Naemi breathed, her gentle voice edged with steel. A feather sharp enough to slice skin, as dangerous as any blade. “What the queen does, she does for very good reasons.”
Maia blinked.
Blinked again.
Everything in her had gone horribly still, surprise making her a statue. Not even the fat bees buzzing in the gardens, or the birds swooping down for food could unfreeze her.
“Are you saying it’s not true,” she asked slowly—so slowly, “or are you saying it is true, and you’re perfectly okay with my aunt trying to kill my parents?” It came out calm, too calm considering the crash and flare of emotions inside her. The trees of her soul thrashed in the wake of a powerful storm.
“Maia, you don’t know anything about your parents,” Naemi said softly, her amber eyes large and beseeching as she reached out to clasp Maia’s hand. Maia moved out of reach, her fingers tightening on the Dagger of Truths. “You know Queen Ismene; you know you can trust her. She always does what’s right for the Vassal Empire.”
Except Maia had never been able to trust Ismene. She’d always obeyed her, always respected and feared her, but trusted her? No. Not since that day Maia had refused to use her power. Not since the darkness and terror and pain that came as punishment. Naemi would never understand that, would she? She’d never once said no, had never suffered the consequences.
Had she ever wanted to refuse? Maia had always thought Naemi endured the court and crown, the same as she did, but maybe … maybe Naemi had always fit in better than Maia had. Maybe Maia had seen kinship because she’d been looking for it.
“Was this right?” Maia asked, her voice tight. Her stillness broke as she reached for the grime-stained hem of her red dress and didn’t give a shit that she was baring more skin than she’d like as she lifted the fabric to show the white slice across her thigh, hauling it higher to reveal the biggest, most gruesome scar across her stomach. “Was this for the good of the Vassal Empire?”
“Princess,” Naemi sighed sadly, reaching to grasp her hand. Maia let her dress fall and moved another step back. “You don’t know what it takes to rule an empire,” Naemi said in that kind voice, patiently waiting for Maia to see sense.
“And you do?” Maia shot back, starting to shake. Naemi had looked at her scars and seen a reasonable punishment. Maia had been thirteen. Her fae healing had erased all the smaller scars—and there’d been many—but the ones she’d been left with … vicious. Vile. Wounds so bad that even her advanced healing had struggled to close them. And Naemi had practically shrugged. “Since when do you run an empire, Naemi?”
Naemi put a hand on her heart over her dress, imploring Maia to listen. This was the friend she’d known for years, but Maia no longer recognised her. Couldn’t stand to look her in the eye. “I’m her lady in waiting; I’m privy to things you’ll never know. And that’s okay, you don’t need to know them—”
“Yeah, that’s enough of that,” Maia cut off, turning away and taking a random path into the gardens, anything to get away from her friend. The friend who looked at her scars and saw a reasonable way to treat a thirteen year old, who told Maia to her face that her parents’ murders would have been good for this empire.
“Princess,” Naemi called, hurrying after her. Maia didn’t expect her to catch up; Maia had always been swifter, stronger. It was about the only good thing her aunt had done for her—given her training. “Maia!”
She’d never expected to hear this horseshit from her best friend, never expected such lack of care in her face, especially at the marks of the worst pain Maia had ever suffered.
Why was she so loyal to Ismene? Maia had colossally miscalculated, had thought Naemi was her best friend so would be most loyal to her, but … she was the queen’s lady through and through.
I’m her lady in waiting; I’m privy to things you’ll never know. And that’s okay, you don’t need to know them—
The words cut into her heart like barbs, festered in her mind like poison. Maia took turn after turn through the hedges and flower trails, hardly even seeing the living arches she walked through, the fountains she raced past. The sounds of trickling water and birds chirping barely filtered through the noise in her mind. If Naemi was still calling her name, she couldn’t hear her.
Finally, she lost Naemi among the rose bushes and lily ponds, not seeing the greenery and colours spinning around her. Her twisting path only exacerbated the merry-go-round of her thoughts. She dragged sharp breaths into her lungs, honeysuckle and gardenia coating her tongue like delicate poison.
She felt … betrayed. That was the only word for the feeling corroding her insides, making her emotions brittle and her bottom lip tremble wildly. She’d thought Naemi would always back her up, even factoring in Maia skirting the edge of treason. She’d thought Naemi would always be on her side, no matter what life threw at them.
Even in those murderous fantasies, Maia had never dreaded Naemi turning on her, had only feared the palace guard. Naemi would never do something like that—she was Naemi. But maybe Maia had loved Naemi more than she’d ever loved Maia; maybe she’d been Maia’s best friend, but Maia had been a friend, plain and simple. A worse thought crept up like an assassin in the night: maybe she’d only been friends with her because Ismene had asked her to. Was Maia’s entire friendship a command?
The gardens blurred as Maia shoved past citrus-bearing hedges and elegant, flowering trees, her shoes trampling the fluffy grass underfoot. She was deep in the gardens now, but she didn’t care, might never leave them.
She questioned everything. Every time Naemi had laughed at one of Maia’s jokes, had it been forced? Every night out—had that been her job, to accompany Maia, to keep her in check so she didn’t embarrass the crown too badly? Every hug and smile and shared lightning biscuit … was every moment a fabrication?
Maia marched around a row of orange trees—and slammed into a solid body. She reared back, blinking hard to clear her tear-slick eyes. For a second, dizzy with heartache and betrayal, she expected to look up into the Sapphire Knight’s tanned, handsome face. Instead, it was a face that made her blood run cold.
He was pale, icy-haired, and strikingly elegant, the sort of man you looked at twice, but the utter lack of humanity or feeling in his hazel eyes warned you to stay far, far away
. He was ten years older than Maia, and had used every moment of that extra time on the earth to hone his cruelty to a degree that had never been seen before. Or since.
“Your aunt’s looking for you,” Etziel said mildly, putting a hand on Maia’s shoulder and steering her away from where she’d been heading. Her skin crawled where his hand rested, and her heart beat like a panicked rabbit, thumping her ribcage, trying to escape, to flee. “She seems worried about you, princess,” he went on, as if this was ordinary, as if they were friends. As if he hadn’t carved her up until she screamed.
“I thought you were in Thelleus,” she breathed, ducking out from under his hold and walking a step behind him, refusing to put him at her back. Her whole body vibrated with awareness and threat, her chest painfully tight. Escape—she had to escape. But there were two ways this would play out; Maia could protect herself and play along, or run and make herself his prey.
“I was in Thelleus,” Etziel agreed cordially, linking his hands behind himself as he strolled through the gardens, the picture of courtly grace in his pale blue jacket and trousers. But she could smell the iron and blood on him, no matter how saintly he looked, he was—and always would be—a monster. “But I’m here to oversee some business, at our queen’s behest. This way.”
Maia almost followed him, almost fell back on her old habits of doing what she was told in a panicked bid to avoid consequences, but … with Etziel here, with her shoulder still burning where he’d touched her… No. Not in a thousand ages would she follow him anywhere.
It wasn’t smart, and she knew how it would end, but Maia twisted off the path and leapt over a low hedge. As she landed heavily on the other side, she sent a growl of power off her tongue, a song or melody beyond her fear-addled mind.
It landed messily, making Etziel trip over his own feet, but not knocking him onto his ass the way she’d intended as she threw herself through the rows of fruit trees. Shit, he was going to catch her. He was the queen’s best hunter after all, her favourite assassin.
Maia needed to think clearly, to sing a complex song, but her throat had closed up, and every memory of those long days he’d tormented her replayed, wrapping around her neck like a noose. A traitor—she was a traitor to the crown for freeing Kheir, and Etziel had been brought here to torture her again.
It didn’t matter that there hadn’t been nearly enough time between her letting Kheir out and Etziel arriving to allow the two-day journey from Thelleus. Her terrified mind told her he had come for her, and she would die—but not before he wrought so many screams from her throat that skin tore and her voice broke. Maybe this time her voice would give out for good, and she’d never regain the ability to speak.
“Why do you run, princess?” Etziel called, close behind her as she leapt over rose bushes and swung around pear trees. Too close. She’d never found out what power Etziel had, if he had any at all, but she was surely in range of it now. Maia tried to sing a shield around herself, to make her skin impenetrable as steel, but she could barely gasp out a note, the gardens spinning around her. Lack of air, she knew, but could do nothing about it. “Her Majesty just wants a word,” Etziel went on, loud enough to make every cell in her body scream at his nearness—and then there was a fist clutching her hair, wrenching her back, and agony roared through her skull as strands ripped out. “Running makes you look guilty, but you don’t have anything to confess to, do you princess?”
Maia shook her head, her chest a mess of pain and panic. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t stop shaking. Overhead a lone gull paused to observe them, but no bird could save Maia now. Nothing could.
She plummeted rapidly into her self-preservation instincts: obey, be silent, give them whatever they asked for without even a blink of defiance.
“Who do you think set the shields around the dungeons, Maia?” Etziel asked, his tone of voice too normal as he yanked her body back against him. “She knows you went to visit the prince.”
But not about Kheir’s escape? Maia’s chest hitched, a breath of relief trying and failing to form.
“I think she’ll let me loose on you again, don’t you?” Etziel asked, a smile in his disgustingly civil voice. He turned her around to face his hateful, beautiful face and let go of her hair, smoothing the silver strands back into place. “You’re not going to run again, are you, Maia?”
She shook her head fast, tears of pain burning hot paths down her cheeks. It would happen again—every bit of torment, every nightmare that still sent her lurching awake in the middle of the night nine years later. Etziel’s smile softened, real warmth in it as he brushed her cheek. He didn’t seem to notice that she shook so hard that her teeth rattled.
“Come on, let’s not keep the queen waiting.”
It was sheer luck that kept the Dagger of Truths concealed in her skirts, or maybe some saint’s hand turning his gaze away from Maia’s right hand.
Maia was paralysed as Etziel took her hand, his smile still in place as he tugged her down the garden path on uncooperative feet. Frozen with obedience, Maia followed, and wondered if Naemi would say this was for the good of the Vassal Empire, too: this hand her attacker had coiled like a deadly snake around her own, ready to strike and fill her with unbearable venom until she blacked out.
Chapter Sixteen
Kheir Rizian was going to pass out. He knew it, and could do nothing to stop it as he followed the princess’s instructions, hugging the palace walls as he stumbled as fast as he could down the path, flinching at every distant shout and rattling carriage. Blood crusted his tunic beneath his arm and all down his right side, a gift from a cruel guard that had ultimately failed to get what he wanted: Kheir’s acquiescence to Queen Ismene’s plans to expand the slave caravans.
Why she wanted it so badly, and why she needed V’haiv’s permission, Kheir couldn’t imagine.
What he did know was that she’d never get it from him, and certainly not from his parents. He’d been sent on this diplomatic mission to achieve the opposite, to establish an alliance and dismantle the caravans if possible, or reduce them if Ismene wouldn’t budge on their existence. This was their first method: diplomacy and negotiation. Their next step wouldn’t be quite so polite, and would involve deploying the deadliest, swiftest, and cleverest soldiers in their armies to stop the caravans ever reaching their destinations. Wherever that actually was—none of his parents’ best spies had been able to find out.
But he shouldn’t have been worrying about that now; he should have been focused on the itchy feeling of Maia’s magic wearing off and the weakness seeping back into his body, the blood seeping out with every step down the steep path to the city proper.
He made it to the street at the bottom through sheer stubbornness, pausing to drag in three panting breaths as he scanned the street for the guards people called Foxes, checking for their burnt orange uniforms in shop porches, or weaving among the clusters of people browsing the boutiques that lined the street, or patrolling down the broad avenue to his left. He spotted one of them standing outside the imposing council building down the street, but as long as Kheir kept his wound hidden and stayed on the other side of the road, the crowd should carry him along. And of course, as long as he didn’t faint in the middle of the road. At least the sweet, perfumed air coming from a fragrance shop a few paces down would mask the scent of his blood. Saints knew that coppery tang was all he could smell, not helping his lightheadedness at all.
Kheir drew another breath, wishing like hell that he wasn’t alone, wishing his mum and dad and sisters were here, even across the city waiting for him. Fuck, he’d even take them being across this saintsforsaken empire—rather than across the sea and the continent, months away. But he had nobody to encourage him, to give him strength as he struggled down the road, focussing hard on not missing a step. Pain raging through his body, but he gritted his teeth as his vision wavered and struggled on. Oddly, it was Maia’s face that stuck with him, that kept him putting one foot in front of the other no
matter how much it hurt.
He passed the council building, passed the boutiques selling delicate, sculpted cakes, beaded dresses worth a king’s ransom, and furniture carved with intricate scenes of the saints, and by the time the awe-inspiring, elaborate shop fronts had changed to stately terrace houses—likely belonging to minor councillors—Kheir could smell the river’s citrusy musk, could glimpse the white stone arch of the Erythrun Bridge Maia had told him to cross.
“Thank the saints,” he gasped under his breath, the barbers he passed blurring into streaks of colour and light like magic, the people he passed nothing more than formless, unknowable monsters.
The street became a whirlwind around him as dizziness took firm hold, and Maia’s face crossed his mind again as he was forced to stop to let a cart and procession of horses go clattering past. She was stunning in the same way the stars were beautiful—distant, cold, and mysterious. But there was so much pain within her, so much anger and hate that it bled through her icy mask. And when she’d helped him escape, that bright, smiling person she’d unveiled like the petals of a night-blooming flower … he’d listed towards her, as if she sang a siren song to his soul.
The cart rolled on, the road clear. It seemed an insurmountable distance to cross now he’d stopped moving, but he had to keep going. If only so Maia’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. She would be punished, he knew. Kheir wouldn’t squander the gift of freedom she’d given him.
Almost there, he told himself as he staggered across the road to the bridge, wishing his mother was here to say the words, to hold his hand. Saints, he was a baby for wanting his mum right now, but he did. He wanted her so badly, and he didn’t think he was going to make it across the bridge and out of the city. He didn’t think he’d ever make it back to V’haiv City, ever see those copper domes and verdigris towers ever again. He’d never hear the twang of his father’s music or his sisters’ chorus of laughter, would never smell honey and spices—home. He focused on those memories, holding them close as he stumbled down the endless bridge.