AS THEY WALKED TO the Blue Phoenix, Mia found herself thinking of Angelyne. They’d had their fair share of sisterly squabbles, but they always ended the same way: with apologies and small gifts. Mia would bring Angie pleasant-smelling salves and striped hair ribbons from the market, and Angie brought her maps and knives. They each knew what the other liked. When the fight subsided, neither of them truly wanted to hurt the other.
But the way Junay harangued her sister, or how coolly Sach’a had sliced into Jun? Mia had never taken a bite out of Angelyne, not like that. What was it Zaga said? Learn to harness it, and rage can prove a clean and silent blade.
Something about that made Mia uncomfortable.
“Are you all right?” Quin asked.
“I was just thinking about my sister.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose it’s true what they say: girls will be girls.”
She glared at him. “I hope you don’t truly believe something so asinine.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Point taken. I’m beginning to think no one girl is like any other.”
When he spoke again, his voice was tinged with sadness. “I wonder if my sister is even looking for me anymore, or if my father has poisoned her against me.”
“You speak as if your father hates you.”
“What gave you the impression he didn’t? He can hardly bear to look at me. He finds me repulsive.” His voice wavered, but only for a moment. “Considering his fetish for severed hands, I find him repulsive, too.”
The fragment of a memory dashed through her mind: the night she hid in the drawing room, Quin had accused his father of punishing him for some unspoken crime. I have been far more munificent, the king had said, than you deserve.
“Why does your father hate you, Quin?”
Was it her imagination, or did his jaw tighten?
“No particular reason,” he said. “You’ve met my father. That’s just who he is.”
She heard liquid dripping, then rushing, then slowing to a drip again. Her ears were fine-tuned to the sound of lying, but this wasn’t quite the surge of pressure she’d heard before; it was more nuanced. Not quite a lie, perhaps, but not quite a truth, either.
Quin seemed eager to change the subject. “I don’t imagine my cousin was lying, at least not about everyone thinking and hoping I’m dead. My father would be thrilled to get rid of me. Tristan was the son he always wanted.”
Dread curled into Mia’s stomach. How could she keep forgetting? Tristan was one day closer to the castle, which meant one day closer to Angelyne.
She had to get out of Refúj.
“I have to go, Quin. I can’t let Tristan make it back to the Kaer.”
“We’ll go together. But how comfortable do you feel using magic as a weapon? Because if we’re going up against my father and a legion of trained guards, it would be reassuring to know we had more than our four fists.”
She knew he was right. If only the book would reveal more. So far a single magic lesson from her mother had proven far more useful than Zaga’s meandering sessions on nothing.
“Let’s have a drink first, at least,” Quin said. “Before we go charging into a battle we are unlikely to win. Then we can make a plan.”
She assessed him. A week ago, she would never have thought it possible that the prince would be her ally, her friend. But was that all he was? He seems to be in love with you. Was it true? Did love mean standing by someone even when they were making what probably amounted to a terrible decision?
The sadness gripped her again. Her father had seemed to be in love with her mother. Her mother seemed to be in love with him. If love only came attached to seeming, safe to say it wasn’t love.
Besides. The prince had lied to her before, and judging by the clever way he’d shifted the conversation only moments before, he was still lying. Mia felt the familiar walls rise inside her.
They’d made it to the Blue Phoenix. Mia heard music plucked on a cacophony of sheep-gut strings, jovial laughter pouring out onto the sandy avenues of the merqad.
“Hear that?” Quin smiled. “That’s the sound of people enjoying themselves.”
She hesitated. She saw Dom and Pilar in the tavern—they had clearly been sidetracked on their way to breakfast, not that breakfast happened anyway. They were carousing and having a fine time, but something about their happiness made Mia lonely.
“Actually,” she said. “I think I’ll sit out here for a little while.”
He appraised her. “You’re not going to run off to Glas Ddir without me, are you?”
“I just want to collect my thoughts. It’s been a strange morning.”
He nodded. “Is there anything I can do?”
It struck her that the only time people asked “Is there anything I can do?” was when there was nothing anyone could do.
“I know where to find you.” She wanted—needed—him to leave. She didn’t want to trust him, not if he was only going to lie to her. Sometimes when she looked at Quin, she could feel her reason cracking, her heart swelling between her ribs. She didn’t want to feel anything. It wasn’t safe to feel anything: not gratitude, not vulnerability, and certainly not love.
But if she didn’t feel anything, how could she read her mother’s words inscribed in sangflur ink?
Once Quin ducked inside the tavern, she searched for a secluded spot in the merqad. Merchants were setting out their wares for the day, food and cloth and trinkets, and as the avenues began to buzz with activity, she hid herself away in an abandoned stall. There she pulled out her mother’s journal from where it had been hiding in her jacket and cracked it open.
Clearly Mia had not been able to quell all her emotions, and she was grateful for it. Dark ink stretched across the page.
Duj katt. Griffin knows. I feel it in my blood, the clatter of his heart. In the way he looks at me.
Or does he? It is not always easy to distinguish the feelings of love from the feelings of anger. They are both forms of passion, though we tend to qualify love as good, a lofty pursuit we should all aspire to, and anger as bad, a twisted malformation of the heart.
Sometimes, when I am with your father, I have trouble reading the sensations of his body. The heightened pulse, the ripples of warmth when he touches me, our hearts twining in a symphony of sound—these could be the symptoms of love, but they could just as easily be the symptoms of rage.
Does he know I’ve betrayed him? Or does he love me?
I wonder: Is it possible for a human heart to hold both?
The truth is, I do not know which I deserve. I have crept inside your father’s heart and made it mine. I have enchanted him and styled this enchantment as love. I have done it for the good of Dujia everywhere, but that does not make it right.
I feel his heart beat most strongly when he rocks you to sleep, or teaches you to climb a tree, or feeds your intellect with books acquired on his travels. Is it possible the murmurings of his heart are not rage at all, but love for you, his little girl?
Mia.
I must warn you against enthrallment. A Dujia is not immune to the pull of magic. Griffin makes victims out of all of us, but he has been my victim, too—and now I have fallen victim to my own crimes.
I have fallen in love with your father. I love him for how well he loves you.
Mia swiped at the heat behind her eyes. So her mother had loved her father after all, in a twisted sort of way. She was ashamed how fervently she wanted to believe her parents had loved each other—or found a way to love each other, carved a path through the deception and the lies. Why did she want this? Love only led to pain. The people you love are the ones who hurt you most.
The remaining pages in the book were blank; Mia snapped it shut and tucked it back into her jacket. She had promised Quin she would join him, and she would be true to her word. She forced one foot in front of the other until she was standing outside the Blue Phoenix. Hoots and cheers erupted from inside.