by Leigh Kelsey
Ismene’s eyebrows flicked up in agreement. “As he should be. Why do you allow Etziel to scare you so?”
Maia shook her head, goosebumps flashing down her arms. There was no controlling something as vast and monstrous as this fear.
“I won’t let him near you again,” Ismene offered, and a knot loosened in Maia’s chest until she added, “unless you give me a reason to.” Ismene smiled, as if this was a blessing and not a threat, as if Maia would ever be able to sleep again.
The smile slid off Ismene’s face when she scanned Maia again, when she noticed the fists Maia had curled in her skirts, the fabric barely hiding the handle of the Dagger of Truths. “Show me your hands.”
Maia’s heart rattled in her chest, her body resuming its violent shaking. Dead—she was dead. She was going to bleed out here on this pretty carpet. That would be better than what Etziel planned, at least. She couldn’t show her hand—and couldn’t flee for the door. Both would show her guilt.
“Show me your hands, Maia,” Ismene repeated, rising from the sofa, every inch the queen as she dominated even this informal space.
Maia took a step back, but she could find no other way out. She had to lie about why she had the dagger, had to think on her feet, spin a tale that even Ismene would believe.
Her fist shaking, Maia lifted her hand. Her breath hitched at her aunt’s confusion, and then cut out entirely at the rage that followed, twisting the queen’s face into something unattractive and pinched.
“What did he tell you?” Ismene asked calmly—that too-calm tone Maia had learned from her.
She meant to lie. Meant to tell the best story she could think of. But she was too afraid—and too angry. This woman had taken Maia in and then tried to kill her parents.
“Truths,” Maia choked out finally, sweat trickling down her spine beneath her leather bodice.
If the glade in the center of her soul had been skeletal and bare before, now it curved inward, branches locking, protecting itself.
“Which truths?” Ismene demanded, surging forward in a rustle of skirts until she was three feet from Maia, her eyes on the blade, on the gems in its hilt. She didn’t look like a beautiful queen now; she looked exactly like what she was. A monster.
“You tried to kill my parents,” Maia gasped out, regaining her voice—barely—at the cost of her safety. She should have stopped talking, should have shut up and never spoken again. It would have been safer, so much safer. But those were lies she desperately told herself, and she knew, looking her aunt in the eye, that there’d be no safety ever again. Maia would rot down in the dungeons, likely in Kheir’s vacated cell. Or would she be put to the chopping block instantly?
No, Maia knew her aunt. She wouldn’t make it quick; she’d give Maia to Etziel again, and only kill her when she finally broke.
Ismene rolled her eyes at the accusation, and denied nothing.
Maia inhaled sharply, her head pounding, her heart throwing itself frantically against the bars of its cage. “You—you hurt your own people. You killed Liann, your own daughter. The Old Year’s Night tragedy was your doing.”
Ismene sighed this time, pursing her lips at Maia as she cast a glance around the opulent emerald room. The same room Maia had tried to snare Kheir in. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand a queen’s reasons,” she said, echoing what Naemi had said. The words struck like arrows. “Rebellion was growing, and that rebellion would have become a civil war in Vassalaer. More people than seventy-two would have died. I prevented that. And stamped out any trust in that vigilante while I was at it.”
The Sapphire Knight. It was all because of him, then—she really had killed her own people just so people would stop following him.
But the stones in the sword only half glowed, and Maia frowned at her aunt, swallowing as bile splashed up her throat. “There’s—more. Isn’t there?”
Ismene gave her a condescending look, shaking her head, her chandelier-like earrings trembling, as if even they feared the queen. “Things your little mind would struggle to comprehend. Things the saints themselves demand, Maia.”
True—the stones glowed.
“Those people needed to die,” Ismene went on, not a dip or quaver in her conviction. “And that night prevented countless deaths. You can tell yourself that to soothe your conscience. Liann should never have been there; her death was her own fault.” True, all true. Ismene sighed and shook her head again, observing Maia as she shook, gripping the dagger hard enough that her knuckles were bone white. “You had great promise, Maia, but your conscience corrupts you. If you’d been more like Yeven, with your power … I would have made you my heir. But you’re too much like my sister.” Her voice twisted on that word.
Physically reining herself in, she waved a hand. “Go,” she dismissed, already turning back to her sofa beside the fire. “Go to your room, or wherever else you scurry off to. I’ll find a use for you, traitor or not.”
Maia flashed cold. It started at the back of her neck, and then icy hands swept down her back, goosebumps covering her thighs. And then the chill was in her chest, squeezing her lungs until they were empty of air. She swore even her blood ran cold.
There’d be no torture, no sentencing, no execution—no end to this.
No end. Forever?
Maia couldn’t catch a breath, but her tongue didn’t feel quite so unwieldy in her mouth, and strength borne of anger, of pure white refusal, made her grip on the Dagger of Truths harder.
She looked down at the dagger, drawn to its fading glow, it’s brutal hilt, and remembered the blade was more than just a truth teller, more than the magic in its stones. It was a honed edge, and an unbending knife, and a vicious, deadly point.
Maia was already a traitor, had already helped an enemy of the crown escape. All those fantasies rose up in her mind and took hold, and Maia wrapped them around her like the thickest, warmest cloak.
She swore there was a light touch on her shoulder, as if the saints were encouraging her.
Ismene was in the middle of returning to her seat on the sofa, sweeping the cream skirts of her cloudlike dress around her. Maia just acted. Her balance tipped forward, her boots gripping the carpet as she coiled her muscles and leapt. Air slid past, the world splitting to allow her through, her fae speed a blessing and a promise as years of training condensed into that one movement, that single act.
She couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t need to as she angled her dagger and threw her whole body into the blow. The blade cut effortlessly, piercing chiffon and fur and flesh and bone, as if it had been designed to kill a queen. Maia was screaming through gritted teeth, twenty-four years of hatred bleeding out as her momentum carried her onto the sofa, landing on top of her aunt and driving the blade deeper.
Ismene groaned, a deep sound of pain that made Maia grin nastily. Finally—finally she knew what it was like, had some tiny fucking inkling of how bad Etziel had hurt her. It wasn’t enough—would never be enough—but it still felt fucking good.
With a ragged gasp of hope, Maia ripped the dagger out of her aunt’s back, watching blood stain her pretty cream dress—and camouflaged against Maia’s deep crimson skirts.
Numbness setting in, and wholly unwelcome, Maia stumbled off her aunt and away from the sofa, the dagger falling from her blood-slick hand. For a long moment she just panted, watching her aunt hiss and growl, twisting just enough on the settee to be able to glare at Maia. “I never knew,” she panted, “you had a backbone.”
Maia stepped forward, more than ready to grab the dagger from the floor and finish the job, but her wide eyes jumped to the slice in her aunt’s dress, to the skin knitting together beneath it. Her blood went from ice to the impossible cold of the south, plummeting fast.
Ismene laughed, a garbled, horrible sound. “As if a knife could kill me.”
Maia didn’t give herself even a second to contemplate that. She wiped the blood from her hand on a chair as she stumbled past towards the door, dizzyingly grateful that the
se rooms were warded for protection against eavesdroppers, that none of the guards would have heard Ismene’s cry.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Ismene demanded, already sounding stronger. “Do you think you can hide? Etziel will find you.”
Maia knew that, but unless she shut out the words, she’d never be able to function. She was already shaking, but she refused to let her blind panic show as she opened the door and quickly closed it behind herself. Her breathing shallow, she took step after step down the gilded hallway, past the Eversky’s statue, and into the warren of corridors beyond it, not daring to look at any of the guards who’d ignored her silent pleas just minutes ago. When she was sure her footsteps didn’t carry even to fae ears, Maia hitched up her skirt and ran, her shoes slapping the marble floors, her breathing a broken gasp.
She didn’t stop to get her things from her room, not to find Naemi and beg her for help, not even as Lenka spotted her and called her name in concern. Maia didn’t stop even as she reached the external side door and threw herself through it, onto a dark, tangled path that had been neglected by the Delakore gardeners for years. A path Maia had used as a kid, but most people forgot about. It was the tiniest glimmer of a chance, but she’d take even a mirage of hope right now.
Thorns scratched her arms as she shoved herself along the path, but they were nothing to the maelstrom of pain in Maia’s chest, embedded in her soul. She didn’t have a second to sort through the emotional wounds she’d been dealt, didn’t have time for anything but dragging air into her lungs, pushing on through the thorns, and choking her sobs off before they crawled up her throat.
The path went on too long, her arms and the strip of midriff exposed by her dress savaged by the green spikes when she finally stumbled off the path at the end of it. It took her three attempts to unlatch the gate, the metal rattling in her quaking hands. They’d find her. She knew they would. Knew it was only a matter of time before these scratches were like feathers brushing skin compared to what Etziel would do.
But it didn’t stop her sprinting down the tree-lined path, flinching at every rustling branch, every barge engine on the river at the bottom. She swore guards were following her, but the urgent footsteps crunching the layer of snow turned out to be her own, their laboured breaths her own, too.
The shaded path spat her out into the southside of Vassalaer, and Maia staggered across the street and into a busy intersection, praying she could disappear.
She couldn’t go to the library, couldn’t go anywhere Ismene would know to search. She'd send Etziel there first. But without the library, what options did Maia have? None. She had nowhere—and nobody who’d hide her, who’d keep her safe.
Maia choked on a sob, but she pushed on, racing past a florist peddling Eversky roses that flickered with magic bolts. No one clamoured around the woman, the palace quarter quiet as the sun spilled deep orange light on the cobbles. Maia was horrified to find the crowds were thin everywhere, even the markets mostly closed up at this time on a Sunday.
“Saints protect me,” she rasped, a mad plea as she raced past the Eversky’s Basilica, the lights in the terracotta spires turned low and candles snuffing out as night closed in. Maia ran until she spotted the sturdy crimson roof of the Vassal Theatre coming up ahead and her breath punched out of her lungs, the familiar sight making her shaky with relief. She couldn’t go to the library, but the arts quarter was more a home to her than the palace had ever been, and a weight fell off her just to be here.
She wished suddenly that she’d made more friends here, introduced herself as Maia, just Maia, spoken more to the curators of the museums she’d visited monthly, made an effort to be more friendly to the sisters who guarded the vast stone archway rumoured to have been carved by the Hunchback Saint in memory of his fallen wife. If Maia had made friends, maybe she’d have had somewhere to go now, someone to turn to. The only person she’d ever spoken to was Dita and she had no idea where to find the woman other than at the Library of Vennh.
She’d thought she’d been safer that way, but all she’d done was isolate herself.
Her heart ached as she glimpsed the library’s lapis towers and golden domes punching into the dark sapphire sky ahead of her, and the fragile organ broke clean in two as she veered right and away from it, skimming the riverside market where craftsmen and -women sold their wares during the day. Where it was a ghost town now.
The street lamps came on as she panted for air, her legs heavy and wobbly despite her training. Her dress was ragged where the thorns and thicket had torn at it, the tang of copper on her tongue from the blood running down her arms, and she fought a wince as cold bit at every exposed slice of skin as if in warning.
She didn’t realise where she was running, didn’t know the library had put the thought in her head, until she glimpsed the statues of Sorvauw Bridge, luminous against the deep red sky.
Yes, she agreed with whatever instinctive part of her had been running towards that little house on the river, towards the Sapphire Knight’s home. He was the crown’s enemy, her enemy, but his home might be the only place Maia would be safe. As long as he never realised she was anything more than Maia, the librarian.
She’d just made it to the covered stage beside the bridge when sharp metal bit into her arm, and a deep cry ripped up her throat, sending her stumbling into the side of a covered food stall.
A dart was embedded in her arm, blood and greenish fluid leaking from its tip. She’d … been shot. She’d been shot.
“Shit,” Maia hissed, her throat closing up as Hope started to die a rapid death. Her hand shaking fiercely, she ripped the dart out and kept running, ignoring the sting. Poison—she’d been poisoned. He was close.
“Please,” she begged the saints, as if they’d listen. “Please.”
“Where are you running to, Maia?” Etziel called from behind her, his voice gloating.
She’d been an idiot to stay on this side of the river; she should have crossed the Luvasa immediately, and lost him among the parliamentary buildings on the other side of the city.
“No,” she whispered, not an answer to his question, but an answer for herself. No, she would not be taken, dragged back to the palace, and tortured. No, she would not live the rest of her life as a thing to be used by her aunt whenever she wanted someone controlled or killed.
No.
That was not who Maia was, not who she wanted to be. Not anymore.
She refused to go back. She’d rather throw herself into the river. But instead she sprinted onto the smooth stones of the bridge, and prayed to the saints that she reached that house by the river, even as she knew it was hopeless and she was already caught.
Chapter Eighteen
The statues and columns of Sorvauw Bridge wavered and tilted in Maia’s vision, the tall stone buildings on the riverside curving in around her like malevolent figures. She didn’t dare look at the faces of the stone saints as she ran, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead even as the world tipped and twisted around her.
“You can’t run, Maia,” Etziel taunted, his voice chillingly calm as she wavered and bumped into the column where the Wolven Lord’s face should have been, long chipped away to anonymity. “The fevreweed in your system is already at work, shutting down your senses.”
Maia shook her head, frantically trying to clear it and only making the dizziness worse. Amber lights from windows formed streaks like shooting stars as she staggered, thick viscous poison dripping down her shoulder. Blood trailed down her arms too, slicking her hands; she left a smear on the forsaken saint’s column as she dragged in a tight, rasping breath and pushed on, swaying three more steps down the bridge.
She had to keep going. Etziel wanted her dizzy and unconscious for a reason, and every possibility made her bones shake, her teeth rattling in her ears. She’d been a child when he last made her scream in agony. How much worse would it be now she was fully grown?
Get across the bridge, she told herself desperately. You just have to
get across the bridge.
But the bridge was an insurmountable distance to cross, especially as numbness started to spread down her legs and her knees buckled as a gust of wind hit like a battering ram. She caught herself on the column of the Graceless Swan, cold stone biting into her palms, and she left another smear on the pale column, like a trail of crumbs. The saint of mistakes and redemption watched impassively as Maia used the smooth, weatherworn marble of her column to launch herself a few more steps down the bridge.
Wind from the river tore at her hair, her skirts, and Maia’s next breath was horribly laboured. She wasn’t going to make it. Etziel was going to get bored; he was going to grab a fistful of her hair and haul her back up to the palace again.
“But by all means,” he went on, a laugh twining through his pleasant voice a few meters behind, “try to run, princess. It makes my night more interesting.”
Maia gritted her teeth and fought against the cold slush that moved through her bloodstream, fear making her shake all over. How long did she have before her legs failed completely? How long until Etziel was upon her? Her breath sawed out of her lungs, her boots scuffing the stone as clumsy legs carried her towards the Hunchback Saint’s statue. Each saint was a goal, a desperate marker on her path to safety. She didn’t care that they were stone, that they couldn’t really encourage her or witness what was about to happen. They were her stoic companions, and the thought of having the saints on side gave her strength.
She wasn’t going to make it to the end of the bridge, but that didn’t stop her trying.
She managed seven more faltering steps, clinging to the wall, only able to make that little progress because Etziel was playing with her, taunting her with the barest hope that she’d escape. When she’d plunged the Dagger of Truths into her aunt’s back, she’d thought that was it, the nightmare finally ended, one way or another. Either she’d be free or she’d be dead. But no, Ismene would keep her alive, the nightmare never ending. For the rest of her pitiful existence. Forever.
