The Arvens push me forward. Not back the way I came, but behind the throne, through a doorway, to rooms I’ve never seen.
The first is clearly another council chamber, with a long table topped in marble, surrounded by more than a dozen plush chairs. One seat is stonework, a cold construction of gray. For Maven. The room is brightly lit, flooded by the setting sun on one side. The windows face west, away from the river, looking over the palace walls and the gently sloping hills covered in snowy forest.
Last year Kilorn and I cut river ice for spare coins, risking frostbite in favor of honest work. That lasted about a week, until I realized coppers for breaking up ice that would only refreeze was a poor use of our time. How strange, to know that was only a year ago, and a lifetime away.
“Your pardon,” a soft voice says, sounding from the only seat in shadow. I turn to it and watch Jon unfold himself from his chair, a book in one hand.
The seer. His red eyes glow with some inner light I can’t name. I thought he was an ally, a newblood with an ability as strange as mine. He is more powerful than an eye, able to see farther into the future than any Silver can. Now he stands before me as an enemy, having betrayed us to Maven. His stare feels like hot needles pricking skin.
He is the reason I led my friends to Corros Prison, and the reason my brother is dead. The sight of him chases the icy numbness away, replacing all that emptiness with livid, electric heat. I want nothing more than to beat him across the face with whatever I can. I settle for snarling at him.
“Good to see Maven doesn’t keep all his pets on a leash.”
Jon just blinks at me. “Good to see you are not so blind as you once were,” he replies as I pass him.
When we first met him, Cal warned us that people go mad puzzling out riddles of the future. He was absolutely right, and I won’t fall into that trap again. I turn away, resisting the urge to dissect his carefully chosen words.
“Ignore me all you want, Miss Barrow. I’m not your concern,” he adds. “Only one person here is.”
I glance over my shoulder, my muscles moving before my brain can react. Of course Jon speaks before I do, stealing the words from my throat.
“No, Mare, I don’t mean yourself.”
We leave him behind, continuing on to wherever I am being led. The silence is a torture as much as Jon, giving me nothing to focus on except his words. He means Maven, I realize. And it’s not difficult to guess the implication. And the warning.
There are pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction. A ghost inside a living boy I cannot begin to fathom. The ghost who sat by my bed while I dreamed in pain. The ghost who kept Samson from my mind as long as he could, I know, delaying an inevitable torture.
The ghost who loves me, in what poisoned way he can.
And I feel that poison working in me.
As I suspect, the Arvens don’t take me back to my prison of a bedroom. I try to memorize our path, noting doors and passages branching off the many council chambers and salons in this wing of the palace. The royal apartments, every inch more decorated than the last. But I’m more interested in the colors dominating the rooms rather than the furniture itself. Red, black, and royal silver—that’s easy to understand. The colors of reigning House Calore. There’s navy as well. The shade gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. It stands for Elara. Dead, but still here.
We finally stop in a small but well-stocked library. Sunset angles through the heavy curtains, drawn against the light. Dust motes dance in the red beams, ash above a dying fire. I feel like I am inside a heart, surrounded by bloody red. This is Maven’s study, I realize. I fight the urge to take the leather seat behind a lacquered desk. To claim something of his as my own. It might make me feel better, but only for a moment.
Instead, I observe what I can, looking around with wide, absorbing eyes. Scarlet tapestries worked with black and glinting silver thread hang between portraits and photographs of Calore ancestors. House Merandus is not so evident here, represented only by a flag of blue and white hanging from the vaulted ceiling. The colors of other queens are there too, some bright, some faded, some forgotten. Except for the golden yellow of House Jacos. It isn’t there at all.
Coriane, Cal’s mother, has been erased from this place.
I search the pictures quickly, though I don’t really know what I’m searching for. None of the faces look familiar, except for Maven’s father. His painting, larger than the rest, glowering over the empty fireplace, is difficult to ignore. Still draped in black, a sign of mourning. He’s been dead only a few months.
I see Cal in his face, and Maven too. The same straight nose, high cheekbones, and thick, glossy black hair. Family traits, judging by the other pictures of Calore kings. The one labeled Tiberias the Fifth is particularly good-looking, almost startlingly so. But then, painters are not paid to make their subjects look ugly.
I’m not surprised to see Cal isn’t represented. Like his mother, he has been removed. A few spaces are conspicuously empty, and I suppose he used to occupy them. Why wouldn’t he? Cal was his father’s firstborn, his favorite son. It’s no wonder Maven took down his brother’s pictures. No doubt he burned them.
“How’s the head?” I ask Egg, offering a sly, empty smile.
He responds with a glare, and my smile spreads. I’ll treasure the memory of him flat on his back, electrocuted into unconsciousness.
“No more shakes?” I press on, fluttering a hand the way his body flopped. Again no response, but his neck colors blue-gray in an angry flush. That’s entertainment enough for me. “Damn, those skin healers are good.”
“Having fun?”
Maven enters alone, his presence oddly small in comparison to the figure he cuts on the throne. His Sentinels must be close, though, just outside the study. He’s not foolish enough to go anywhere without them. With one hand he gestures, sweeping the Arvens from the room. They go swiftly, quiet as mice.
“I don’t have much else for amusement,” I say when they disappear. For the thousandth time today, I curse the presence of the manacles. Without them, Maven would be as dead as his mother. Instead, they force me to tolerate him in all his disgusting glory.
He grins at me, enjoying the dark joke. “Good to see not even I can change you.”
To that I have no response at all. I can’t count the ways Maven has changed me, and destroyed the girl I used to be.
As I suspected, he flounces to the desk and sits with a cool, practiced grace. “I must apologize for my rudeness, Mare.” I think my eyes bug out of my head, because he laughs. “Your birthday was more than a month ago, and I didn’t get you anything.” As with the Arvens, he gestures, motioning for me to take a seat in front of him.
Surprised, shaken, still numb from my little performance, I do as he commands. “Trust me,” I mutter, “I’m fine without whatever new horror you plan to gift to me.”
His smile widens. “You’ll like this, I promise.”
“Somehow I don’t believe that.”
Grinning, he reaches into a drawer of his desk. Without ceremony, he tosses me a scrap of silk. Black, one half of it embroidered with red and gold flowers. I snatch it up greedily. Gisa’s handiwork. I run it between my fingers. It still feels smooth and cool, though I expect something slimy, corrupted, poisoned by Maven’s possession. But every twist of thread is a piece of her. Perfect in its fierce beauty, flawless, a reminder of my sister and our family.
He watches me turn the silk over and over. “We took it off you when we first apprehended you. While you were unconscious.”
Unconscious. Imprisoned in my own body, tortured by the weight of the sounder.
“Thank you,” I force out stiffly. As if I have any reason to thank him for anything.
“And—”
“And?”
“I offer you one question.”
I blink at him, confused.
“You may ask one question, and I will answer it truthfully.”