“Perhaps. But in the meantime, we could have a few years of peace. You, me, your mother, Remy.” He squeezed her hand. “A proper family.”
Just like the one Eliana had destroyed mere hours ago. Suddenly she found it difficult to swallow. Suddenly her eyes felt hot and full.
Damn it. This was what came of trying to be a good friend.
“I don’t know that I could ever be proper,” she teased. It sounded unconvincing even to her.
“Think of it, El.” Harkan’s thumb smoothed circles against the crook of her arm. “The sea isn’t large. We could be in Astavar in an hour, maybe two. We could find a small place, maybe by a lake. I could farm. Remy could bake. Your mother could continue with her mending. And you—”
“And me?” Eliana sat up. She couldn’t play this game any longer. “If we could get past the Empire troops at our border, and if we could find a smuggler who wouldn’t betray us to the Empire, and if we could convince the Astavaris to let us cross their border…if we managed to do all that, with money we don’t have, what would I do, then, in this fantasy of yours?”
Harkan ignored the harsh edge to her voice. He kissed her wrist. “Anything. You can hunt game. I’ll teach you how to grow tomatoes. You can wear a straw hat.” He pressed his lips to her shoulder. “I suppose you don’t have to wear a hat. Although I’m not ashamed to say I’ve been daydreaming about it for so long that my heart might break if you didn’t.”
“It won’t work,” she said at last.
“The hat?” Harkan’s gaze was soft. “On the contrary, I think it would flatter you nicely.”
In that moment, she hated him almost as much as she hated herself.
She moved out of his arms, drew her tunic over her head, and gently pinned his wrists to his pillow.
“There’s no place for a girl like me in your dream world, love,” she explained with a coy smile. “All I know how to do is kill, remember?”
“And this,” Harkan said, his eyes dark and his voice low.
“And this,” she agreed and then kissed him deeply enough that he had nothing else to say.
? ? ?
That evening, she returned home at dusk to prepare dinner.
“Darling Mother!” She dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek.
“What happened today?” asked Rozen Ferracora. She sat at the table, parts from her latest tinkering job scattered across the worn wood. Nuts and bolts. Nails and knives. “I heard about the boy—and Quill.”
“Oh, did you?” Eliana shrugged, started chopping carrots. She felt her mother’s eyes upon her and chopped faster. “Well. What do you expect? Another banner day in the glorious kingdom of Ventera.”
Later, Remy came in and sat at the table, watching Eliana lay out their dinner—a loaf of fresh bread, vegetable stew, a block of hard cheese—all of it high quality, freshly bought in the Garden Quarter.
Eliana had never been more aware of their lovely little home, their stock of food, the relative safety of their neighborhood.
All of it bought with the blood on her hands.
She filled her mother’s bowl and set it before her with a flourish.
Remy broke the silence, his voice shaking. His blue eyes were brilliant with unshed tears. “You’re a coward.”
Eliana had expected that. Still, the vitriol in his voice was a gut punch. She almost dropped her plate.
Rozen hissed at him, “Stop it, Remy.”
“I heard a child was executed today, and that rebel, Quill. The one who smuggles people out of the city.”
Eliana’s throat tightened painfully. She had never seen such an expression on Remy’s face. Like he didn’t recognize her—and didn’t want to.
With relish, she bit off a chunk of bread. “All true!”
“You did that,” he whispered.
“Did what?”
“You killed them.”
She swallowed, knocked back a gulp of water, wiped her mouth. “As I’ve said before, my cowardice keeps us warm and fed and alive. So, dearest brother, unless you’d prefer to starve…”
Remy shoved his plate away. “I hate you.”
Rozen sat rigid in her chair. “You don’t. Don’t say that.”
“Let him hate me.” Eliana glanced at Remy and then quickly away. He was looking right at the soft hole in her middle, the hollow place she let no one but him see. It ached from the bruise of his words. “If it helps him sleep at night, he can hate me until the end of his days.”
Remy’s eyes flicked to her neck, where the chain of her necklace was visible. His expression darkened.
“You wear King Audric the Lightbringer around your neck, but you don’t deserve to.” His gaze traveled back to her face. “He’d be ashamed of you if the Blood Queen hadn’t killed him. He’d be ashamed of anyone who helps the Empire.”
“If the Blood Queen hadn’t killed him,” Eliana said evenly, “then it wouldn’t matter, would it? Maybe the Empire would never have risen. Maybe we’d all be living in a world full of magic and flying horses and beautiful castles built by the saints themselves.”
She clasped her hands, regarded him with exaggerated patience. “But Queen Rielle did kill him. And so here we are. And I wear his image around my neck to remind myself that we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where good kings die and those foolish enough to hope for something better are killed where they stand.”
She ignored them both after that and devoured her stew in silence.
? ? ?
Her mother found her later that night, when Eliana was cleaning her blades in her room.
“Eliana,” said Rozen, panting slightly, “you should rest.” Even with her prosthetic leg, it took her some effort to get upstairs unassisted. She leaned hard on her cane.
“Mother, what are you doing?” Eliana rose, helped her to sit. Her daggers and smoke grenades lay across the floor, a tapestry of death. “You should be the one resting.”
Rozen stared at the floor for a long moment. Then her face crumpled, and she turned into Eliana’s shoulder.
“I hate seeing you like this,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for this. I’m sorry I taught you… I’m sorry for everything.”
Eliana held on to her, stroking her messy knot of dark hair. She listened to Rozen whisper too many apologies to count.
“Sorry about what?” Eliana said at last. “That Grandfather taught you how to kill? That you taught me?”
Rozen cupped Eliana’s cheek in one weathered hand, searched her face with wet eyes that reminded Eliana of Remy’s—inquisitive, tireless. “You’d tell me if you needed a rest? We can ask Lord Arkelion for time—”
“Time for what? To bake cookies and paint the walls a fresh color?” Eliana smiled, squeezed her mother’s hand. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
Rozen’s mouth thinned. “Eliana, don’t play coy with me. I can see right through that smile of yours. I taught you that smile.”
“Then don’t apologize for teaching me how to keep us alive, all right? I’m fine.”
Eliana rose, stretched, then helped Rozen to her own bed. She made her a cup of tea, kissed her cheek, helped unstrap her leg for the night—a finely crafted, wooden apparatus that had cost Eliana the wages from two jobs.
Two executions. Two slaughtered souls.
When Eliana returned to her room, she found Remy waiting for her, hugging his knees to his chest.
She crawled into bed beside him, struggling to breathe through a sudden tightness in her chest. Grief crashed upon her in waves. Dry-eyed, she let them pull her under.
Remy said quietly, “I don’t hate you,” and allowed her to hold on to him. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on only him—the twin scents of flour on his clothes and ink on his hands. The sound of his voice singing her “A Song for the Golden King.” It had been Eliana’s favorite lullaby as a child—a lament for Audric the Lightbringer.
Remy’s small hands stroked her hair. She could crush him if she wanted to. And yet, given the chance, her bony bird of a brother would face off against the Emperor. Even if it killed him.
And I have a warrior’s strength, she thought, but the heart of a coward.
A cruel joke. The world was full of them.
“I can’t bear it,” she whispered, her voice muffled against Remy’s shirt.
“Can’t bear what?” Remy asked quietly.
“You know what.”