“I did not.”
“—But at least you were doing what you wanted.” Her lashes fluttered shut. “Not all highborn girls like your Ella had a choice. Most families claim that we can do anything like our brothers and cousins, but the truth is, the older ones, the traditionalists like my father, they only ignore the convent if it helps us secure the right match.”
Priscilla opened her eyes and her tone was morose. “My father had me take up the sword the day he realized Blayne was marrying for alliance. The irony was that, for the first time, I felt free.”
Gods, no. I clenched my jaw. You are feeling pity for Priscilla. The girl who went out of her way to torment me during our first year at the Academy, and most of the apprenticeship. She was trying to secure a role. She was cruel. Yes, at times, but so was Darren and you forgave him for that. He believed in me. So did she, or did you forget who bet on you during the Candidacy?
If Priscilla joined the regiment, she would be my enemy.
I looked the girl square in the eye. “You really want this?”
“I wasn’t at the top of my class to impress your prince.” She snorted. “My father didn’t care if I passed the first year trials. When he sent me off to that school, he was already in talks with Lucius for our engagement. I made the apprenticeship because I enjoyed it. Fighting and magic, they were the only parts of my life I enjoyed.”
And there she went, taking away the last of my defense. I couldn’t deny her now. “Darren will issue a mandate that you join the Crown’s Army, and we will escort you to the capital. From there you know your way to the base camp.”
The girl stepped back with a self-satisfied smirk and unlocked the door. “You are making the right decision.”
I nodded absently as Paige marched in with a scowl.
“We leave at noon,” I called out after the raven-haired beauty. “You have two hours to gather your things!”
Priscilla didn’t bother to look back. “My servants already readied my things in the stables.”
She knew I would say yes.
*
The day we returned to the capital, all chaos broke loose. To say the king was unreceptive to Duke Cassius’s negotiations was an understatement.
Priscilla, true to her word—and Darren’s old promise—was on her way to the Crown’s Army camp. I couldn’t help but envy her freedom. She could blissfully go about her service while I was trapped searching for a solution to the Pythian ambassador’s riddle. Somehow, the highborn had ended up with the fate I wanted, and the lowborn had ended up in a web of courtly politics and deceit. If only she knew, I suspected she’d laugh in my face.
Now, instead of searching the palace for proof, I was searching for answers. It was easier to avoid suspicion. I wasn’t snooping around in places I wasn’t supposed to be, but it might as well have been the same. I had no mind for large-scale maneuvers.
Thanks to Cassius’s demands, all waking hours were spent in negotiations, not strategy, so I had little hope of coming across an answer in the war chambers. Asking for a solution straight out, how does one hold off the Crown’s Army, would draw too many questions. And the last thing I needed was for Mira to call me a rebel. Questions like that were hard to explain, no matter how creative the answer.
One of the things I could do, however, was take a trip to the city blacksmith with a long letter tucked into the extra padding of my boot.
Paige escorted me in the streets, of course, but she’d had enough dealings with Saba to wander the front of the shop, admiring the newest armor and weapons-in-progress, rather than study the wordless communication between her charge and the rebels’ capital spy.
I knew Nyx wouldn’t be pleased with the newest developments, but it was a far better outcome than Cassius’s flat-out refusal. The commander would keep King Horrace and the rebels apprised. We had hope, and she, more than anyone else, would be the most likely candidate to find a solution the ambassador would accept. Knights were strategists, and Nyx was elite. If she couldn’t find an answer… I didn’t want to think of the outcome.
Three weeks later, I received an early summons from the blacksmith: my new blade was ready. An envoy had ridden tirelessly in light of the commander’s response.
I emptied the sheath in the solitude of my own chamber. Nyx had given me five different solutions, each more complex than the last.
Warmth surged through my lungs. This was it. After one month of wracking my brain, scanning countless scrolls on war and walking the palace in a daze, Nyx had delivered something I could use. We would have the Pythians’ vote.
“This is certainly something,” the ambassador said later that night, “but it’s not enough.”
The commander of the second-largest regiment in Jerar had failed to produce an acceptable response.
“You still have a month,” he added. “That’s better than none.”
I took another trip to the blacksmith, and then entered the indoor training court alone. My entire vision was red.