unForgiven (The Birthright Series Book 2)

by Bridget E. Baker

  “Why would you be conducting the search?” I ask. “You’re my captain of the guard.”

  “Not me, then,” he says. “Someone else. Who else do we trust?”

  “Balthasar, you, Chancery. That’s my list of people I know wouldn’t have killed Mother, absolutely.”

  “What about Angel?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I let her go because she’s too obvious. It doesn’t mean I believe she’s innocent. I just don’t know.” I growl.

  “Let’s think this through,” Roman says. “I’m not very clever, so I always take things one step at a time. We want to make up a notebook so that whoever was Nihils’ leader thinks he took notes. And, honestly, maybe he did. We don’t know. But let’s assume there’s nothing to find. We need to make someone think there is something to find. And we can assume that the person who was directing him isn’t sure whether we were on to him.”

  “I’m with you so far,” I say. “We have a typical pack and clean for his room that someone will be assigned to do. Did my mother ever direct that? Or is it a simple Larena task?”

  Roman shrugs. “Probably Larena. But what if you stepped in because you felt guilty? You can tell Larena you’re remorseful and you want someone important to gather his belongings and extend an apology to his family.”

  I lift one eyebrow.

  “Maybe ‘apology’ is taking things too far. But to provide the news to his family.”

  I shrug. “But then you go to collect things and, what? You find the notebook. There’s no way that you can broadcast what you find.”

  “We ask for volunteers to clean the room,” Roman says. “I promise you that his boss will either volunteer or send someone to monitor it. If I were him, I would. I mean, you know your agent died in a freak way. You know there’s an ongoing investigation. So if I show up in the middle of the cleanup and find something, then I don’t put it in the box, they’ll send someone after me. They would have to.”

  “It’s the best chance we have,” I say. “But that’s a lot of risk for you.”

  “It can’t be something you find. It’s getting the information to you that gives them a window to strike.”

  But it makes Roman the target. For people who recently killed my mother, and effectively, Nihils, too. I don’t like it. In fact, I hate it all the way down to my toenails. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Roman’s face blanks, a lack of expression in his eyes I’ve never seen.

  “You don’t trust me to do it,” Roman says. “But would you trust Balthasar?”

  “He’s too high profile,” I say.

  “What about Edam?” he asks. “Would you have allowed him to do it?”

  He’s hurt. He thinks I doubt his ability and that’s why I don’t like the plan. “The worm gets eaten, Roman, every time. That’s what happens when you go fishing. Whether you catch the fish or not, the worm is a goner.”

  “I’m not a worm.” His eyes flash.

  “No, I mean, I know that,” I say. “Obviously.”

  “If you want to catch your mother’s killer, this is your play.” He crosses his arms, the muscle in his forearms rippling.

  My mouth turns to sand. “Of course I want to catch her killer.” But she’s already dead. I don’t want to catch her if it means losing one of the only people I care about. My only friend. I open my mouth to tell him that he matters too much.

  But it’s too late. He’s walking toward the door. “Great, then I’ll set things in motion. The boss will have from the time I find the fake notebook until I meet you at five to contact me. I will be ready,” he says.

  If I tell him no, he’ll take it as a lack of faith in his ability. If I go through with it, he’ll probably die. I reach for him, and stop. I clench my fists and stumble backward, bumping up against Death. His furry head rubs against the back of my leg, then he starts to lick the blood from the area behind my knee.

  Roman grabs the handle of the door, and I open my mouth. I don’t know what to say, but I need to stop him. I can’t lose him too. Before I can think of anything, he releases the doorknob and spins on his heel.

  “What?” I ask, my eyes wide, my heart hammering.

  He glances at my heart and back to my face, clearly wondering why I’m upset. “I had a thought. I don’t want to upset you, but I felt I ought to share it. Pardon me if this is the wrong thing to say.”

  “Go ahead.” I won’t fault him for anything right now, truly.

  “Your sister.”

  “Chancery.” I can’t help the scowl.

  “She left with Edam.”

  “Mm.”

  “I know he was your—ahem—boyfriend for a while, and that you aren’t on good terms now.”

  “What’s your point, Roman?”

  “Has it occurred to you that she might take him as a Consort?”

  It should have occurred to me. How hasn’t it? “Yes. Of course it has.” My mind isn’t racing a million miles a minute right now. I’m totally not terrified at the idea of dying by my ex-boyfriend’s sword.

  “Right,” he says. “Of course.” He turns around again, but he pauses. His voice is small and his eyes are still facing the door when he asks, “Are you at all worried about that?”

  I shake my head a little too vehemently, not that he can see me. “No, not at all.”

  Roman knows the same thing I do. Edam can defeat me. Edam could kill me. Which means Chancery could defeat me when she returns.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  He shrugs. “Nothing, Your Majesty. I wanted to make sure you were prepared, that’s all.”

  I wasn’t prepared. The idea hits me like a delivery truck, but I won’t send a hit team. I can’t do that, not to Chancery. “I won’t assassinate her,” I say. “It’s beneath me. If Chancery won’t face me herself, then so be it. I’ll take what comes.”

  He bobs his head, turns, and leaves.

  I sink onto my bed, dropping my face into my hands. Would my sister use my ex-boyfriend to kill me? I close my eyes and imagine her face, her doe eyes, and her care for everything. She spent the past seventeen years protecting one weak thing after another. A bird with a broken wing pooping all over the patio. Half-humans, full humans, dogs, horses, political opponents, traitors. Can the person who champions everyone in the world really kill her sister?

  If someone like her can bring herself to kill something, I must really deserve to die.

  I think about Nihils. Killing him was the first time I’ve killed anything myself. I didn’t think I would care. After all, he deserved it. He killed my mother, or at least had a hand in it. He was dying anyway. And yet, I still see his eyes, full of fear, his hands, shaking. I can still see his shock when my sword connected with his throat. I relive that second over and over, the utter revulsion I felt when my sword cleaved his head from his body.

  I suddenly feel awful, a hot wash of liquid flooding my mouth. I rush into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Have I been poisoned? My cheeks are flushed, my stomach aches. Just in time, I turn to the side and retch in the toilet, expelling the tail end of my breakfast into the pristine white porcelain bowl. I’ve never thrown up in my life, but I’ve heard of it. The mostly digested food tastes awful, acidic and bitter. I look at the orangey liquid and half a grape in the toilet bowl and turn away to wipe my mouth on a bloody sleeve.

  For the first time since Mother died, I wonder whether I can really kill Chancery. She makes my blood boil on the regular. She disagrees with everything. She’s always demanding things. She never fully comprehends the darkness in the world or the duty we have to maintain the strength of our family. She’s a clueless, pampered, spoiled, entitled brat.

  I have thought about strangling her often. I would enjoy following through on that, but she’d heal when I was done, and hey, she’d understand a little more of what I’ve endured for the last sixteen years. But the thought of doing to her what I did to Nihils leaves me hugging the toilet bowl again. This time there’s nothing left in my s
tomach to regurgitate.

  Eventually I force myself into the shower, banishing thoughts of Nihils, Edam, and Chancery. I’ll face things as they come and not a minute sooner. It’s too much otherwise. Which makes me think of Roman, who even this very moment might be attacked. Or killed. I close my eyes.

  I face things as they come, and there’s nothing I can do to stop Roman now. I finish my shower and dress myself. I toss my destroyed clothing into the incinerator and press the button to burn. Mother had it installed in my room a few years back. I go through a lot of clothing, which is why it’s easier to wear mostly black. Blood stains don’t show on black, and I only have to trash things when they’re sliced up.

  A tap at the door is probably my lunch, but my stupidly nervous stomach executes a backflip anyway. What if it’s someone else, coming to tell me that Roman is dead. What if it’s Roman, with enemies giving chase? I might need my sword. I grab it on the way to the door and swing it open.

  “Oh, hello.” Inara’s eyes widen and she backs up a step. “Everything alright?”

  “Yes, absolutely.” I poke my head around the corner of the door and check. Both my door guards seem calm. Their heart rates are steady. No word from Roman, then. Not yet.

  “Umm, okay. Well, Angel asked me to bring you this.” Inara’s holding a tray full of several of my favorite things: quiche, stew, and steamed broccoli doused in cheese. There’s even a strawberry malt in a tall, frosted glass.

  “Thanks.” I sit down at the small table in front of the window in my room. Inara drops the tray in front of me and sits across from me. I pinch pieces off to feed to Death. He snaps them up one at a time. I dump a little of the malt into his food bowl at my feet and he laps it up.

  “You released Angel,” Inara says.

  I nod. “Do you think it was a mistake?” I bob my head at my tray. “Should I be nervous?”

  Inara shrugs. “I haven’t talked to her. You’re the one who has to decide that. She certainly had the means, but I’ve never thought she had any kind of motive. By all evidence, she loved Mother.”

  “Still, someone who loved her might have killed her. It happens.”

  Inara sinks into a chair in the corner. “Our world is a twisted place. The ones we love have the greatest capacity to injure us, in more ways than one.”

  “Do you think I’m safe?” I ask.

  “None of us are really ever safe.” Inara looks out the window. “Sometimes I wish I was born human, so I could have lived without worrying about everything incessantly.”

  “But you’d already be dead,” I say. “And I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Are you?” Inara meets my eye.

  “I am,” I say. “I’m surprised you stayed, honestly. I thought you’d go with Chancery.” It hurts to be so honest, but thinking of killing Chancery and losing Mother has made me acutely conscious of our lack of control, of the finite nature of time, even for us.

  “I was going with her,” she admits, “but she told me to stay.”

  I don’t blink or cry or frown. I’m proud of that. “So you’re here to spy on me?”

  “I hope not, or I’d be a pretty terrible spy, wouldn’t I?”

  “I suppose so.” Death is still fine, so I think I’m okay to eat. I pick up a spoon. “Then why did you stay?”

  “Because I love you too, Judica.”

  But she supports Chancery.

  “You think because I love her, I’m on her side.” Inara’s voice is flat.

  “Are you?”

  “There’s a reason twins are usually not both allowed to live.” Inara stands up and begins to walk back and forth in front of the window. “The family struggles in these cases. I think you’d make a better ruler, but I respect Mother. I wanted to support her, and I tried to do that immediately after her death. That doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind, and you’ve been doing an admirable job holding things down in her absence, whereas your sister fled at the first chance.”

  She’s telling me that she’s shifting. Or that she might. “But she wasn’t prepared for this like I was.”

  Inara’s brow furrows. “Are you making excuses for her?”

  I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”

  “Look,” she says. “I want you to know that Chancery is asking for video footage of you fighting.”

  I lift my chin. “She’s training?”

  Inara nods.

  Which means she’s not relying on Edam to do her dirty work, at least, she hasn’t decided to yet. “Send them.”

  “Yes?”

  “She should be doing her due diligence. It’s prudent. She’s almost eighteen years late on that, but better late than never.”

  “You think she might defeat you?”

  I might not be the heartless killer everyone sees. I might not be able to do what needs to be done, especially when it involves mowing down one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, one of the most selfless. “Not even I know what the future holds.”

  Inara walks toward the door. “If you ever want counsel or just someone to talk to, I’m here.”

  “Thank you.”

  She reaches for the door handle and stops. “For what it’s worth, I think Chancery knows where the ring is. She may not realize it yet, but if Mother made the switch, she would have signaled her plans to Chancery somehow.”

  “Duly noted, but we’re going to search every nook and cranny for it anyway.”

  “Understood.”

  Half an hour of delays and still no word from Roman.

  I decide to proceed with my afternoon as though nothing is wrong, but it’s hard. Horribly hard. I meet with Larena, and then I hear petitions. I have no patience for the minor disputes, squabbles, accounting issues, posting requests, and on and on. I handle a call with the Prime Minister, and then with several key US senators after that, and at no point do I ask about Roman. But it’s on the tip of my tongue the entire time.

  I leave the throne room and stride for my room, my long steps eating up the distance between me and my destination. If Roman’s not there, I am carving my way to his side. Every time I blink, I see him lying on the ground, surrounded in a pool of red. Roman should have returned to me by now. Something is wrong.

  When I reach my room, he’s not one of the guards at the door. My heart contracts painfully and I pull my sword from its sheath. My guards, Dante and Rochefort, blanch. “Where is Roman?” I ask.

  Before they can answer, my door opens. Roman’s head pokes out and something inside of me gives out. My knees wobble, but I force them to hold steady. I practically rush through the doorway and toss my sword on the bed.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  My mouth drops open.

  “I know you’re hoping I have news. I know you were wishing I’d been contacted, or attacked, or anything.”

  He’s such an idiot. After losing my mother, the one thing I want more than finding her killer is not to lose anyone else.

  “But the worst happened.”

  He’s alive, so that’s not true.

  “No one took the bait.” He pulls a notebook from his pocket and tosses it onto the bed.

  “Oh, right.” I scratch my chin. “That’s terrible news. Really awful.”

  Roman beams at me. He must know that I was in agony. He knows how I feel, how I’ve always felt. He pulls a scrap of paper from his pocket. “But I do have a consolation prize.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He lifts his other hand and I realize he’s holding a book. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.

  “Uh, I’m sorry. What?”

  I take the paper when he offers it and realize it’s toilet paper. A handful of symbols are scrawled on it hastily.

  “This was stuck in the bottom of his trash bin. You don’t want to know what it was under.” Roman shudders.

  “Why do you have Lolita?” I ask calmly, holding the toilet paper gingerly away from my body. I don’t recognize the smell, but it’s nothing good.

  “It took m
e a few minutes, but I cracked his cipher.”

  “He had the book in his room?” That’s just sloppy.

  “He was fifteenth gen. Maybe he didn’t have a photographic memory. Who knows?”

  “What does this say, then?”

  “Bluff,” Roman says, “at midnight. Extraction.”

  “He was leaving,” I say. “He knew I would figure him out.”

  “Or he feared it enough to demand that they come and get him.”

  “It had to be for tonight,” I say. “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll still come?”

  “Everyone knows he’s dead, but what if he wasn’t the only one who wanted out. If he was working with anyone else, they might want out, too. They might not have taken my bait, but we might have a second bite at the apple.”

  I swear, and then I feel guilty about it. The crutch of the uneducated, I know, Mother. But sometimes swear words are the only thing that fit how I feel.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Roman says. “Since it’s our only lead.”

  “Are you suggesting we head up to the bluff tonight at midnight?”

  Heat rushes to his cheeks. “Only if you want me to accompany you.”

  “Who else would I take?”

  Roman ducks his head a little, and walks toward the door. “I’ll meet you here at half past eleven. We can sneak out your window.”

  I’m more excited to see him tonight than I should be. My rendezvous later comes to mind when I’m reviewing placements with Larena, and staff lists with Inara, and menus with Angel. Roman’s face pops into my head when I’m talking to the President of the United States about the new tax plan. I’m sure it’s just excitement or hope that I’ll find Nihils’ conspirator, but it’s insistent, this unsettling feeling of nervous shakiness.

  I ought to sleep for an hour or so before we head for the bluff, but instead I change my clothes. Four times. What is my problem? It’s not like the various shades of black will make any difference in whether we’re able to hide from anyone who actually comes for the extraction.