Bellatrius shakes her head. “I’ll never leave your service, Your Majesty. My anger over that decision faded and Patiron moved on. I’m excited to be a part of this. I want to create a new dynamic within Alamecha under your direction.”
If I can even reach Hawaii alive to deal with Judica in the first place. Who can I trust? Will I ever know? I’m suddenly exhausted, but there isn’t time for me to collapse in a heap and sob. It’s my job to try and stop my sister before she can kill untold innocents in a nuclear blast.
I flog my tired brain. The facts are pretty simple. I decided to make Edam my Consort and let him fight for me, and I told Inara, Lark, Alora, and Edam. Then I left for school. Lark conveniently had plans and wasn’t accompanying me. Then on my way home, I was ambushed. I’ve ruled out Edam in betraying me to Judica, probably, but he’s clearly answering to someone, most likely his sister.
Did one of the three tell Judica my plans? Or did they tell someone else who told her? Or did someone bug my conversation with Inara? Or perhaps Judica realized how likely the scenario was without a heads up from anyone and decided to attack. The timing could have been coincidental. Occam’s Razor would indicate it was Inara, Lark, or Alora, but I trust them all.
And now I suspect them all, too.
I don’t have enough information right now, so I decide to focus on my immediate problem. Transportation. I could call Inara and ask her to send me a plane, but if she betrays me, I’ll never land alive. The plane could “crash” on the way, killing me and eliminating the threat. I might survive a plane crash depending on how it goes down, but not if the person who orchestrated it has people standing by to decapitate me while I’m vulnerable.
If I ask Alora, I’m in the same predicament. Edam doesn’t have a plane, not that I’d trust it if he did. If Lark had a plane, maybe. But she doesn’t.
My life is a mess.
I can only think of one person who might have access to a jet and who has no loyalties to my sister or anyone else. I text Noah before I can second-guess my instincts.
Any chance I could borrow a jet? Turns out Hawaii is too far to go by rowboat.
The little dots show up, but then disappear. I stare at my phone for two minutes and he still doesn’t reply. Maybe he needs to think. Or even worse, he may need to ask his dad for permission. Ugh.
The door to Edam’s room opens and I drop my phone guiltily.
“What did Marselle want?” Edam asks. “She was one of your mom’s intelligence officers, wasn’t she?”
“Clearly a well-hidden asset,” I joke.
Edam shrugs. “I was number two on your mom’s security team until Judica drafted me to run hers. I worked for Marselle for a while. Besides, the lieutenants are usually more of an open secret.”
Duh.
“Is she still here?” He looks past me toward my doorway.
“Uh, no. I sent her downstairs so I could think.”
“Can we talk, then?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Can we?”
He glances behind me at Bellatrius and Arlington. “In private?”
I incline my head and he precedes me into my room. I close the door with a click. “What’s up?” I sit on my bed.
Edam grabs the chair from my desk and sets it by the bed so he’s eye level with me.
“Whoa, this is serious,” I joke.
He doesn’t smile, and my stomach flip flops.
“What do you want to talk about, Edam? I just received some urgent news.”
“Why are you kissing Noah?”
I look around the room. “Am I? I thought I was talking to you.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do. “You mean why did I go to school today, and why do I like him when I obviously also like you, and have agreed to take you as my Consort. Right?”
He nods. I’m actually impressed with how calm and composed he is.
“Feelings are complicated,” I say. “I like you a lot, Edam, but I like Noah, too. He’s different. He represents a desire I’ve had for a long time to escape, to be free.”
“But you chose to return, and you know that I’ll take care of you.” He reaches over and takes my hand. “Do you doubt that?”
I don’t doubt his intention. He looks utterly sincere. I think back to the videos of him with Judica. He looked like a robot: stiff, disconnected, and so formal it was unreal. He’s not like that with me. But that’s not the only video of him I’ve seen lately, and the other one generated significantly different emotions from me.
“Why did you break up with my sister?” I need to know. Even more than details about his connection to the Malessa family, I need to understand what happened between them. Because if he doesn’t have a real reason for dumping her, then he really is just a puppet for someone else.
He never releases my hand. “I’m surprised this didn’t come up before. I assumed maybe you wanted to pretend it never happened.”
“What did happen?” I ask. “From the videos I saw, it didn’t look like you had much of a relationship.”
“I haven’t hidden from you my feelings about the evian royal model. It’s broken,” he says. “I decided when I was still a teenager and you and Judica weren’t even ten that my best chance of changing things was to rise to a position of leadership. I trained as hard as I could, and I did everything anyone asked of me. I worked harder, longer, and with more ferocity than anyone else.”
“I heard that,” I say. “Balthasar talked about you sometimes. He called you his young lion.”
He frowns. “I was assigned to keep you safe when you were a child. I was young too, and it seemed in keeping with my skill set. I only did that for a year before I was promoted and I moved up. Eventually I was assigned to train the other boys your mother purchased from other families. Luckily there weren’t many new ones, since you and Judica were older. Around the time you turned thirteen, they sent me into the field. I worked with Marselle for a few months, and with a few other operatives, too. I did okay, but I wasn’t nearly as good at spying as I am at hand-to-hand combat.”
Not a good spy, huh? I guess not, since his phone call got caught on video.
“When I came home, you had both just turned seventeen. I was assigned to train Judica. Balthasar wanted to be able to watch her fight instead of participating himself. I know this sounds bad, but I think he’s getting older and having trouble healing as fast. In any case, within a few months of that, Judica requested that I be assigned as captain of her personal guard.”
“I know all of that,” I say. “What I want to know is—”
“I know. You want to know when and how Judica and I started... Look, from the time I got back, I knew I wanted to take Balthasar’s position. At the time, Judica was focused on a guy named Xander, fifth family, good guy. One day, Balthasar assigned me to spar with him. I beat him in under a minute. Judica stopped talking to him the next day. She only wanted the best, and I understood and respected that. I won’t lie. I wanted to be named Consort. It seemed like the one job more powerful than Head of Security to which I could aspire. Not that it’s a job, but you know what I mean.”
“Go on.”
“When I started training with her, I wanted to like her. I wanted to, well, I wanted to want her, but I just didn’t. When she touched me, I flinched. The way she spoke to me.” His lips compress. “She was kinder to Death. Everything about her felt wrong to me. I knew what I wanted when I was alone, and I’d resolve again to make it work. I’d convince myself it couldn’t be that bad, but when she came near, I froze up. After a while, I just couldn’t do it anymore. And that day when she almost killed you? I wanted to end her. My hands shook from the effort of not cutting her throat.”
“Uh, that’s a little scary.”
Edam grabs my other hand, too. “That’s when I realized that I liked you, and I tried to project my feelings for you onto Judica, but when we were around each other, I couldn’t do it. She’s not like you, not at all. It upset me for years that
no one ever stood up for you. I watched her bully and abuse you while your mom just watched. You could have done something about it, but you never did either. Once I realized how I felt about you, I dumped her.”
He doesn’t mention the late night phone call. I don’t know why I thought he might come clean, but it bums me out way more than it should when he doesn’t. I pull my hands from his. “That was the only reason?”
Edam sits up and stares at me intently. I screwed up. He’s too smart for direct questioning, and I suck at subterfuge.
“The video camera was live, wasn’t it?”
I nod.
He sighs heavily. “I came to live in Alamecha at the age of three and a half. I wasn’t the only boy who struggled, but I was the only one who remembered something different, who had a family he knew. When Analessa approached me at one of your mother’s birthdays I was only ten. Analessa deeply regretted selling me. She said she was young and thought she had no choice. She told me she tried to buy me back, but your mother refused. Analessa asked if she could call me from time to time. She wanted to help, to make up for her mistake, and she offered to guide me, if I was interested.”
“And you agreed?” I ask.
Edam hangs his head. “I knew love and then it was gone. I missed my mother, still, and I wanted someone to care about me. None of which excuses what I did.” He clenches his fists and looks me in the eye. “Yes, I’ve been talking to her regularly since then.”
“When did she start telling you what to do instead of guiding you?”
He closes his eyes and exhales. “It was easier to let someone else call the shots, someone older who I thought wanted me. I was twenty when I told her no the first time, but she threatened to send evidence of our discussions to Enora if I refused her. I’ve wanted to tell you ever since we left Ni’ihau. It’s such a relief that you know.”
“You didn’t seem too happy about coming along. Maybe once my mom died, your orders changed and my taking you got in the way.”
Edam stands up. “Nothing like that. I was upset that you forced my hand because everyone has forced my hand my entire life. It didn’t take long for me to realize that what you did wasn’t the same. You thought you were helping, and once I told you I was mad, your reaction was to apologize. I swear to you, I haven’t talked to my sister since I left Hawaii, nor do I ever care to again.”
“Did Analessa tell you to stay there and beg Judica’s forgiveness? Or did she tell you to come with me?”
“I don’t know what she would have said,” Edam says. “Because I haven’t spoken to her since that night when she ordered me to do what I already wanted to do and dump your sister. And for the record, she heard news that your mom was changing her Heirship. I have no idea who her other contacts were, but her order wasn’t why I did it. I’d been wanting to break up with her since we started dating.”
“So you did do as she directed.”
He laughs. “I’m sure she’s furious now, as I haven’t called or checked in with her since that night.”
“Does that bother you?” I ask.
“With a little perspective, I realized she was using me all along. She never once in sixteen years asked how I felt or what I wanted. And she only called when she needed something.”
Edam has been committing treason for sixteen years.
I should be angry, I should feel outraged, but I don’t. My heart just hurts. How can I trust anything he says to me now? Where’s the line between a sister contacting her brother and a spy? Edam’s right. Our system is broken. Daughters killing mothers and sisters, siblings using one another. Buying and selling babies. It’s all so wrong that we don’t even realize how wrong anymore. The only reason we don’t see it is that we’re all born into it.
A single tear trails hotly down my cheek.
“I know your mom’s gone Chancery, but you’re not alone. You don’t trust me now, and I don’t blame you. It may take me a long time to convince you of this truth, but I’m on your side until the day I die. For years I thought I needed to change evian society alone. My success or failure would be limited to what I could accomplish myself. But now I believe in someone else, someone who is uniquely poised to repair everything that’s broken. Think what we could do together. And if you united the families behind these changes, we could redirect the course of the entire world.”
A chill runs down my arms. His words echo my mom’s eerily. I don’t know whether to believe in his loyalty to me, but heaven help me, I want to so badly.
“What if I’ve changed my mind?” I ask. “What if I can’t choose you as my Consort anymore? Will you support me then?”
Edam’s eyes widen, but he nods. “I will. Whatever you decide, but I’ll never forgive myself for putting you in danger this way.”
“You didn’t even confess. I caught you.”
His nostrils flare. “True.”
“You’re not going to tell me I’m making a mistake if I don’t choose you?”
“I’m not,” he says. “And if that’s your decision, we’ll hit it hard over the next two days to give you your best chance.”
I smirk. “No more terminal cancer patient analogies?”
“I’m sorry for that. I really don’t want to lose you.”
“You know, for someone who may be the best fighter alive right now, you sure seem to be afraid a lot.”
“Not really,” he says. “Losing you through my own stupidity, or losing you through your sister’s. Those are basically the only things that concern me. Well, that and sharks. I mean, have you ever tuned in during Shark Week? They never stop growing teeth. Rows and rows of teeth. And they never sleep.” He shudders.
I can’t quite help a tiny smile. My phone bings and I glance at it. Noah finally replied.
I got the go ahead. When are we leaving? Tell me we aren’t bringing the old man along.
I tap back a reply. How many seats in your jet?
22.
I smile.
“Good news?” Edam asks.
“You said we could hit it hard for two days.”
He nods.
“What could you do in a few hours?”
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“Judica’s planning on nuking China to show the Five she’s tough and keep them from encroaching on her territory. Before I’m scheduled to return.”
Edam groans. “And you don’t want me as your Consort anymore, so you’ll be fighting her yourself.”
When he says it, I realize it’s true. It’s not that I don’t want him. I do. I actually believe him. I came into this discussion not knowing whether I could trust him at all. After talking, I believe his concern for me is sincere. He really does want to protect me. I even agree that our system is broken. I may choose him one day, but not today. Besides, if I make him my Consort now, I’ll never know whether I’d have chosen him without the pressure of Judica hanging over me. If I do survive, I don’t want that kind of desperation and doubt hanging over my marriage for a thousand years.
“My mom died, leaving a huge power vacuum in her wake. Judica has been spawning stories of her ferocity and competency for years, and yet Judica feels like she needs to bomb China to grab the attention of the Five and shore up her rule. There may very well be empresses who use their Consort to fight every single battle. They may even be well respected, but I don’t have that luxury because I don’t have the stomach to bomb another country, or win a big war, and I already have a reputation for being weak. If I want to protect Alamecha and keep our family safe from encroachment, I need to do something big, something that shows the world I’m different than my reputation. Taking a tough Consort might keep me alive, but if I want to have any chance of changing things, I can’t just survive.”
Edam may never understand. I may be ruining any hope of ever being with him.
“I need to thrive. That’s why I’ve got to take Judica down or die trying.”
Edam compresses his lips and closes his eyes. But when he opens them, he says,
“I’ll do whatever you need.”
In that moment, I may be breaking off our engagement, but I’ve never wanted to kiss him more.
30
I replace the missing stones in my necklace the second Edam leaves my room to pack. The use of my last resort ballistae makes me think. My list of powerful allies is short: Alora and Inara. Of course, Edam, the guards who followed me, Noah, and Lark are also on my side, and power and prestige aren’t everything. Unfortunately, I can’t really trust any of them either.
I need to figure out who betrayed me to Judica, because next time I may not survive it.
I almost call Lark up to my room, but I hesitate. She’s the one person other than my mom who I’d have trusted to support me blindly without a scintilla of doubt on any point. Until my mom executed hers, and I did nothing to stop it. Until my mom ordered her execution and only allowed her to survive in secret. I don’t think Lark blames me, but I’m not entirely positive.
Which leaves me puzzling out the politics and loyalties of my wannabe allies alone.
Even if I’m wrong about Edam and he is still in contact with his sister, I don’t think I’m in imminent danger from her. I doubt she sees me as a threat. In fact, maybe the only universal thing in my favor right now is that, to the rest of the world, I’m the weaker ruler. That means the other empresses would likely pick me over Judica to ascend the throne, because in their minds I’ll be easier to control, intimidate and ultimately defeat.
Of course, there’s always a chance that my affection for and attraction to Edam has clouded my judgment.
I shake my head and move on to Inara. She’s been Mom’s right hand as long as I can recall. She has also been like a second mother to me. And when Mom died, I saw the pain it caused her. She wanted to leave with me, but she stayed back to defend me from afar, at no small risk to herself. I also can’t think of a single reason Inara would want to harm me. She knows I’d keep her in the same position, managing many of the Alamecha affairs. I doubt Judica would do the same. And I’d rely more on her advice than my twin, too. Plus, I think Inara likes me more. And it’s not as if eliminating Judica or me would land her the throne. Our older sister Melina would snatch that crown so fast our heads would spin, from what I’ve heard.
Displaced (The Birthright Series Book 1) Page 35
