The final plant was a creeping, dull-green cactus sprouting violent pink flowers. The baker back in Tulen had one of these in her window box, and I’d never tried to eat it. I plucked one of the flowers, spied a speck of nectar at the base of it, and sniffed. It wasn’t much—a little sweetness under the normal scents of dirt and growth. I smeared it on the inside of my arm.
“I’m not eating those.” I waved to the ones shoved aside and stared at my arm. I wasn’t itching or puffing up. I nibbled on the dandelion. “Tastes like grass.”
Emerald nodded. “And the other one?”
“Grass.” I chewed on the petal. “Flowery grass.”
They could do with sweetening, but I wasn’t dying.
“Stand here. Give nothing away.” Emerald cleared the table and laid out new pieces of the plants I’d been tested on.
I was being tested on poisons and secret keeping then.
No one died. Ten took forever but lived, and Fifteen nearly ate the hooded flowers. I nibbled on my roll the whole time, going over the layout of Seve’s life and roof in my head.
Exhaustion dragged my eyelids down. I slipped away from the group and back to my room. I needed sleep, not manners and more bandages. I fell into bed without even removing my boots.
“You need to wake up.”
I jerked up, arms flying out and knife tearing through the air.
Maud sighed across the room with my dinner in hand. “You have tutoring.”
I dropped my knife. Little silver flecks spotted my sight, and I steadied myself. Blurry, fading memories of silver and blood, eyes in the darkness, prickled over my skin. I wrapped my arms around myself.
I was finally going to get answers.
I was finally going to make Seve beg. Blood owed and blood paid.
“You look peaky.” Maud leaned in front of me, staying an arm’s length away, and narrowed her eyes. “How are your stitches?”
I reared back. “Fine. I look how I always look.”
“Malnourished and unkempt, yes,” Maud said with the air of superiority that reminded me more of an older sister scolding her sibling than a servant. Not like I’d been holding her to normal servant standards. I liked this bluntness. Kept us both mostly honest. “But you look exceptionally tired today.”
“Least I’m exceptional at something.” I shrugged. “You ever met Nicolas del Contes?”
He’d the rune-scrawled face of a hawk and the legs of a stork, easy to spot and easier to recognize, and I needed to know as much about him as he knew about me.
Maud frowned. “He’s always skulking about, knowing things he shouldn’t. He’s nice, but it makes me jittery to think he’s watching even if it’s for Our Queen. Asked me how my siblings were once. I nearly died.”
So he was a spy. And a bad one if everyone knew it, which meant he probably hired out folks to research us while he followed us around as a distraction from the real spies. I’d nothing to worry about long as I kept on as I’d been doing. He’d have stopped me if he knew what I’d truly been up to.
And if I didn’t talk to him anymore, he couldn’t drag any other secrets from me.
“He’s interesting,” I said.
“That’s one way to describe him.” She pursed her lips and smoothed out the wrinkles in my slept-in dress. “Regardless, I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“Me too.”
Getting ready was a rushed affair. Maud tossing clean clothes at me over the screen while I sucked down a bowl of soup. She sniffed as I walked out the door.
“You smell like sweat and dust.” She pulled a small vial from her pocket and unstopped it. The watered-down, clean scent of peonies washed over me. “Completely unfit for seeing your lady.”
I froze as she tapped her fingertips to either side of my neck, smearing the scent of spring against my skin. I swallowed. “She’s not my lady.”
“Of course not.” She tucked the perfume back into her pocket. It must’ve been hers—a treat she’d bought after working hard. She’d not poison me with so much on the line. “But best not suffocate her.”
I’d write “Maud did it” on my arm soon as I was out the door.
Wouldn’t hurt looking nice. Elise was always pretty, and she’d expect nothing less from me.
Maud hummed. “You could pass for Honorable Opal if you’d better clothes.”
I took off before Maud could say anything else. Honorable. Such a better title than Lady or Lord.
I didn’t bow to Elise this time. Flirting was over. I’d be equal to her as Opal, and I owed her nothing. She’d surely lose interest in me soon as I stopped flattering her.
But then I’d have to live with her glowering at me in court day in and day out.
“You’re scowling,” Elise said softly. “And you’ve not spoken a word except ‘yes.’”
I startled, guilt gnawing at my ribs. “Big scowling road agents with dual knives and masks ugly as their manners?”
“I was embellishing that night.” She set down her pen, lips set in a severe line. “I know our interactions are largely exaggeration, but it’s obvious you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset—only thinking, and I don’t want to talk about it.” I shrugged off my anxiety. I wanted to move, climb, watch Seve sip his evening tea and shake all the well-kept secrets from his bones.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.” She sighed, picking up the paper again and turning it over so she could write down a new series of words. “Read these.”
Of course I didn’t have to tell her anything. I read the words aloud, mind on Seve, and by the time tutoring was over, we’d said nothing to each other except the words I was learning.
I shook away the aching worry rising up in my chest as Elise’s hollow goodbye rang in my ears and rose from the table.
A hand on my shoulder held me back. The scent of lemons filled my nose.
“Erlend’s traditions remain. It’s unseemly for me to flirt with anyone not a nobleman, but men are not the only people I am attracted to, and I’m tired of keeping quiet about it.” Her fingers tightened, barely there but burning through my dress and searing her fingerprints into my skin. Her voice dropped. “You flirted back.”
I shuddered. “I can’t have been the first one.”
“Of course not, but my father would have less cause to complain if I were flirting with Opal,” she said. “It would be politically savvy.”
Of course her father would be so set in his ways he’d not accept Elise as she was.
“What’s his name?” So I could avoid him forever.
She sighed, half smile grim. “Nevierno—it’s old Erlenian. He’s exceptionally traditional and spectacularly furious right now because he has a cold and can’t stand to let Isidora anywhere near him.”
An Erlend named after ice and cold would hate depending on an Alonian.
“You hate politics.” I locked my knees, refusing to turn even though I knew what she meant. “And even when I’m Opal, no guarantee we’ll still like each other.”
“I like you,” she said. “And I only want you to know that.”
I opened the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Twenty-Seven
Seve was in the bath when I leapt into my perch. I whispered every Nacean name I could remember into the night. He would know why I’d come for him.
And then he had to die quietly.
A dead lord in the middle of Left Hand auditions would be suspicious. I only had to be less suspicious and they’d never know it was me.