This was who Maret had skooled to be dangerful from.
Zhade reached out to the dagger again. This time he felt a spark, but it was sole in his mind. Tsurina loomed above him, larger than life. Zhade poised himself for a fight. Tsurina raised her hand, as Maret used to when he wanted to show off that he was casting a spell. Zhade tensed.
The hilt of a sword came down on the back of her head. Tsurina fell to the ground. Behind her, pale eyes gleaming—
—was Meta.
Zhade stared at her, stunned, and, for a moment, all she did was stare back, her spiked brown hair falling into her face, sweat glistening on her brow.
In a single swift motion, Meta flipped the sword in her hand and brought the blade up under Zhade’s chin.
He froze. “Evens, I was going to say thank you, but . . .”
Meta’s lip curled. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Um, Maret?”
The edge of the sword bit into Zhade’s skin, strikingish close to where Maret had held him at sword point last moon. He felt the first cut of flesh.
“His brother,” Zhade confessed, voice strained.
“Maret doesn’t have a brother,” Meta sneered, muscles tensing to strike.
“Neg, for true! I was a shameful secret. We’re half-brothers.”
Meta didn’t back down. “Then why do you have his face? Is that for true his Crown?”
Zhade swallowed.
“Is it?”
“Firm, firm!” There was a pinch of pain at his throat, and Zhade was on his toptoes to get away from it. “But it’s because . . . Maret’s in hiding. I took his face and Crown because . . . I’m a decoy. Someone was trying to assassinate him.”
Zhade had full time been good at coming up with lies on the spot, but even he was proud of this one.
But Meta didn’t look convinced. “Why didn’t he tell me, tell his guards?”
“He didn’t tell anyone. Not even Tsurina.” Zhade recked his lie would fall apart if Meta had heard any of the previous convo. “Please, I’m doing this to save Maret.”
Something in his voice must have convinced her—maybe the fear he didn’t have to fake—because she lowered her sword. Zhade rubbed his throat. Sole a trickle of blood, but the skin felt raw.
“I’m Zhade, beedub.”
Meta’s eyes widened. “Zhade?”
Oh, fraughts. If she recked the name from the time he was the Third’s guard, he was in trouble. He tensed, prepped to fight, but Meta sheathed her sword.
“I . . . I’ve heard so much bout you. I mereish didn’t realize . . .” She frowned. “. . . you were his brother.”
Zhade took a step back. Maret had mentioned him? To the guards?
“Hear, whatever he told you . . . Maret and I didn’t have the best relationship . . .”
Meta stared at him for a moment, and Zhade prepped himself to run. She mereish shrugged. “Fams are diff.” She shook her head. “How’d you take his face, beedub? Some magic.”
“Some magic,” Zhade agreed. “Hear, we can convo bout this later. Soon and now, we need to decide what to do with . . .” He nodded at Tsurina’s unconscious body.
A dark grin spread across Meta’s face. “We kill her.”
Zhade scrunched his nose. “Uhhhh, but should we kill her though?”
Meta pointed a stiff finger at Tsurina’s prone form. “She made Maret’s life a living pocket, and I heard from her own lips she wanted to destroy Eerensed. My duty is to guv and city, and she threatens both.” She kicked Tsurina’s body onto her back. The Grande Advisor’s face was smeared with dried blood. “I reck you’ve found your mysteriful assassin.”
Zhade crossed his arms and leaned against the sofa. “Seeya, on the norm, I’d agree with you, but you have to reck most of the guards are loyal to her. And the army. And the citians. If we want Eerensed to survive, we can’t kill her.”
Meta’s eyes narrowed. “If we want Eerensed to survive, we can’t hold her alive.”
She unsheathed her sword, but Zhade stepped afront of her. It wasn’t a conscious decision, and he couldn’t believe he was doing it. Was he for true putting himself in harm’s way to protect Tsurina?
Meta sighed, lowering her blade. “Then we need a third choice.”
“There isn’t one.”
Zhade was struck again by the dilemma he’d faced since becoming guv: he couldn’t rule Eerensed how he wanted with Tsurina. He couldn’t rule it at all without her.
“If there isn’t a third choice,” Meta said, tilting her head, “then maybe we make one.”
Zhade groaned. “I don’t reck you full well, but I’m guessing this is marching toward badness.”
Meta flashed her teeth. “I’ll take her face.”
Zhade barked a laugh but stopped when Meta didn’t join him. “Oh, for serious?”
Meta started pacing, stepping over Tsurina’s prone body. “Mereish like you took Maret’s face. I’ll take Tsurina’s. That will give us full bars time to find the assassin.”
“You can’t take someone’s face.”
“Why not? You did.”
“Firm, but it’s . . .” He didn’t have words to describe the pain. “. . . permanent. Sides, it takes a lot of magic, and I don’t reck how long I’ll need to create the spell.”
“Evens, you have bout a day before people start to wonder where she is.” Meta bent over and looped her arms under Tsurina’s. “Now, where am I dragging this body?”
Zhade groaned and grabbed Tsurina’s feet. “I haven’t agreed to this.”
Meta mereish smirked.
* * *
In the end, they put Tsurina in Andra’s old room. It was a diff trek as there were no secret passages to the Third’s suite at the top of the westhand tower. Zhade had briefish considered taking Tsurina to the First’s—it was blocked off and out of the main marchway—but it was too close to the hidden passage to the Vaults. Zhade didn’t reck if he could trust Meta, so he was for certz not letting her get that close to where Andra was staying.
Soze, they had to sneak through the palace with their prisoner. Zhade had Gryfud distract the guards stationed along their route, and they’d had to gag and bind Tsurina, who had finalish woken. She didn’t fight the full march there, which bothered Zhade. Perhaps she was going mad, or perhaps she was exactish where she wanted to be.
It didn’t meteor. They had no choice. They couldn’t kill her, but they couldn’t leave her free to reveal Zhade’s secret to the city. As much as the Eerensedians hated Maret, they wouldn’t follow Zhade—a bastard prince, the son of the First, and all-round disaster human.
Once they got Tsurina to the suite, it was then a meteor of making certz she couldn’t escape. Zhade sorcered Fishy—his mam’s favorite angel—to secure the room. It stood long and lanky, skin the color of paper. Its skullcap was clear, revealing the sparking magic inside, and its face lit up in various expressions. It was anow drawn in concentration as it set up the magic shield on the balcony. Tsurina watched, hands bound, from Andra’s bed, where she lounged almost like she was at a spa.
“I’m so disappointed in you, Zhade,” she said. “Your sorcery is so . . . limited. Maret could have used the Crown to do all that magic with a mere thought. You’ve wasted half a bell of your time and mine.”
“Am I going to make you late for something?” Zhade snapped.
Tsurina stretched, the sheet rustling neath her. “And you, Meta. You were always so attached to Maret. I’m not surprised you betrayed me. Though I am surprised you betrayed me to help Maret’s murderer.”
Zhade froze in his final bit of spellwork.
“Maret isn’t dead,” Meta growled.
Tsurina’s laugh was a purr. “For certz he is, kiddun.”
Meta didn’t respond, and Zhade wasn’t certz if she for true didn’t believe Tsurina, or
if she simplish didn’t want to. Zhade had skooled there were things you believed and things you believed you believed, and they weren’t always the same.
Fishes and wishes.
Tsurina opened her mouth again, but Zhade cut her off before she could reveal too much.
“Meta, will you convo the guards that the Grande Advisor is . . . indisposed for the even.” He cleared his throat, focusing back on his spellwork. “I’ll meet you back at the guv’s suite in a few bells so we can . . . create the spell we discussed.”
Meta looked back and forth between Tsurina and Zhade. “Will you be evens?”
Zhade was surprised to see concern in her eyes. He shrugged and gave her his signature grin. “I’m always evens.”
Meta rolled her eyes and left, muttering something bout mistakes and spoons.
And she was right. This may all be a mistake. Bad magic. Zhade didn’t reck what would have been better. Nothing seemed like a good choice, and anow Zhade needed to re-create the spell that had given him his brother’s face, interrogate Tsurina bout the Crown, and find the info Andra wanted bout his mam. All while holding Eerensed safe from any more rogue angels.
Zhade sighed and went back to work.
Tsurina examined her deep red nails, the same color as the blood dried cross her face. “Soze, do you plan on feeding me, or am I to starve to death?”
Zhade blinked. He hadn’t even imagined bout the things Tsurina would need to stay alive. He was terrible at holding prisoners.
“Answer some of my questions, and then we can convo your physical needs.”
Tsurina raised an eyebrow. “All of them?”
It was something Zhade would have said in her situation, but coming from Tsurina, it made him blush. She noticed, laughing to herself.
“Zhade, you were a fool to imagine you could pass for my son.”
He took a moment to collect himself, sitting in the chair he used to inhabit when this was Andra’s room. He tossed both legs over one of the arms.
“Because I’m not a heartless brat of a boy-king who relies on a Crown to do magic?”
It was a clumsy attempt to figure more bout the Crown, but everything bout the day had been clumsy.
“Neg. You’re a heartless brat of a boy-king who refuses to use the Crown to do magic.” Tsurina held up her hand, bound with rope, not magic cuffs. “Is that your excuse? You do Low Magic because High Magic is too easy? Or are you having trouble with it? Do you want my help?”
Zhade kept his face—his brother’s face—placid. That was exactish what he wanted, but he couldn’t let her reck that.
“Why would I want to use something that was so obvi killing Maret?”
Tsurina seemed surprised. “Killing him?”
“Don’t play fraughted. The bruises were obvi. He was losing weight, his hair was thinning.” He gestured to the Crown at his temple. “When I took this from him, it was coated in dried blood.”
“So unhygienic.” Tsurina tutted. She stood and sauntered over to the wardrobe and started filtering through Andra’s clothes. “Too short, too fat,” she muttered, tossing a few to the ground. She was surprisingish graceful with bound hands. “Neg, it wasn’t killing him, you fool. He was trying to remove it.”
Zhade’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Why?”
“Sands if I reck.” Tsurina pulled out another of Andra’s dresses and held it up to her, gazing at herself in the mirror.
“Put that down,” Zhade snapped.
She shrugged, and then lowered herself onto Andra’s chaise. “Maybe he was finalish seeing things my way. That magic is evil and needs to be destroyed.”
“Why do you want to destroy magic?”
“Because it’s unnatural,” Tsurina snapped, the first bit of emotion showing through her calm exterior. “It came from the goddesses.”
Zhade sat forward. “But your fam had a full cave of angels. My father married you for your access to magic.”
Tsurina looked away. “Sometimes, the sole way to fight something is to use it.”
“Is that why you let Maret use the Crown?”
She pouted. “I didn’t let Maret do anything. As a fact, I helped him. When he first donned the Crown, he was full time fighting against it, instead of letting it do the work for him. I told him not to try so hard, to let the Crown guide him, til finalish all he had to do was wish for something, and the Crown would make it so.”
Zhade rolled his eyes. He’d been wishing for weeks, and nothing was happening. He’d wished to control the angels, to feel the stardust round him, to talk to Andra. He’d for certz wished to protect Dzeni and the kiddun from the rogue angel.
He sighed. Time for a new line of questioning. He narrowed his eyes, steepling his hands. “Tell me bout my mam.”
In truth, Zhade didn’t want to hear Tsurina convo bout his mother. But he’d promised Andra he would find more info bout her. Few people had recked the First like Tsurina had.
Her face soured. “What do you want to reck bout that goddess bitch?”
Zhade took a slow breath, briefish closing his eyes. “Why did you hate her so much?”
“She stole my husband. Isn’t that full bars?”
Zhade scoffed. “You never cared bout my father. Is it because the citians loved her more as a goddess than you as the guv’s wife?”
Tsurina turned away. “Scuze. I could never be so petty.”
“Then why?”
“Because.” Tsurina clucked her tongue. “She’s a goddess.”
“Soze?”
“Soze, she came from a people who planned to escape Earth and leave the rest of us dying.”
Zhade felt as though the breath had been knocked from him. Tsurina recked the truth? Had she been aware what his mam was all along? Had she recked his mother better than he had?
“The full planet is destroyed because of them,” she continued. Her cheeks grew red and a scowl stained her charred face. “They chose who lived and who died, and our ancestors were deemed unworthy. And she! . . . She’s the worst of them.”
“You recked?” Zhade asked.
Tsurina’s gaze snapped back to him. “For certz I recked. The knowledge has been passed down in my fam from parent to kiddun for centuries. All this magic . . . it was never more than a way to hold control over those they saw as weak, those they saw as lesser. Those who scared them. They destroyed the planet and then planned to leave it and let us all die. She did this. Your mam. And she held doing it. Whatever she woke for, it wasn’t to save us. If it had been, she would have passed more time in Eerensed, instead of traipsing off to that city in the north.”
Zhade nearish fell out of his chair. He had memory of his mother’s frequent peacings, but he’d never recked where she’d gone. I have something to take care of, she’d say when he asked. He’d imagined she’d been traveling to different villages all over the Wastes, not visiting a single city each time.
“What city?”
“I don’t reck,” Tsurina said, a bit of vulnerability slipping into her voice for the firstish time. “I sent guards to look, but they never found it. Or if they did, they didn’t return. I sole reck that it was several days’ journey northhandwest of here.”
Zhade wanted to ask more questions, but Tsurina held talking, her eyes glazed over as she stared out the balcony.
“Whatever she was doing there, she never planned on saving us, seeya. It was sole bout her. And the other goddesses were the same. The Second and that little bitch you were in love with.”
Zhade tensed, poised to attack, but there was a knock at the door—three light taps and one loud one.
He nodded at Fishy to open it. Kiv stood on the other side, an arsenal of weapons strapped to him. He glared at Zhade over his hawkish nose and entered the room, before his dark eyes landed on Tsurina.
Zhade stood. “Thanks for comi
ng.”
He’d had to sorcer an angel to retrieve Kiv from belowground, something that was risky, but he needed someone to guard Tsurina, and his options were limited. He stood and crossed the room soze Kiv could read his lips.
“I have bad feelings bout this,” Kiv signed.
“All will happen evens,” Zhade said aloud, and he wasn’t certz if he believed it.
There were things you believed, and things you believed you believed.
“Are you certz it wouldn’t be better if Tsurina was dead?” Kiv asked. The sign they’d invented for Tsurina was a rude gesture no Eerensedian would use in polite company.
Zhade didn’t reck. Maybe it would be better to mereish kill her. If he could transform Meta into Tsurina, there was no reason to hold her alive. Sole, something didn’t feel right bout executing her. It wasn’t . . . morality. If Zhade had any of that he wouldn’t have tried to kill his own brother. It was something else. Every time Zhade imagined it, he got sick to his stomach.
Zhade handed Kiv a speak-easy so he could contact him if there was any trouble.
“Sorries, boyo,” he signed, but Kiv wasn’t watching. He sole stared at Tsurina.
The woman had threatened Kiv’s fam in order to hold him aline. She’d made him do terrible things, torture and murder. He was finalish free, though his fam was nowhere to be found, and now Zhade had forced him to be in her presence once again.
“Hello, Kiv.” The Grande Advisor grinned. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”
SIX
THE CI-DEVANT
Zhade’s palms sweated as he forced himself down the tunnel toward the Vaults. White lights blinded him. His footsteps tapped against the hard tile floor. He rubbed his palms against his pants. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Andra. As a fact, he should have been working on the spell to change Meta’s face and sent Kiv or Fishy with the message instead.
He spent his days round people who had no reckoning who he was, who treated him like he was Maret. And now Tsurina recked his secret and he had to change Meta into her and he needed to skool to use the Crown. He felt like he was juggling hot coals. One slip and everything would burn down round him. He mereish wanted to hear Andra’s voice. She was so smart. She’d help him focus.
Devil in the Device Page 6
