I nodded, feeling only minor relief. Was my disguise that transparent? Had anyone else guessed the truth and simply held silent, waiting for a moment to catch me unaware? Tonight, sleeping alone in a bed, would a blade come down on my throat?
A feeling of aloneness swept over me. I hugged myself, wrapping my arms around my middle. There wasn’t a bounty on Fowler. It was on me. He could go. Perhaps he should. There was nothing but the promise Sivo had coerced from him, and the king’s decree made things more complicated and more dangerous in an already dangerous world. It wasn’t fair to him.
A finger brushed over the back of my hand. Startled, I lowered my arms. Fowler’s touch followed. He hooked a single finger around mine, linking us.
“Luna,” he murmured near my ear. “It’s going to be fine.”
My chest tightened and before I could stop myself I turned my hand around to squeeze his and hold tightly.
His palm turned over, fingers lacing with mine. It didn’t matter what Mirelya saw. She knew the truth about me.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” Mirelya added. “I don’t share the things I can see if it’s going to hurt anyone. There’s enough pain in this life already. I won’t add to it.”
“Thank you,” Fowler said.
“I’ll also keep the fact that she’s blind to myself.”
At this added declaration, my legs felt suddenly weak. I released Fowler’s hand and inched toward the table, following the faint bite of oak.
I sank down into a chair. “How did you know?”
Somehow this woman had seen straight to the truth. Fowler hadn’t even realized I couldn’t see until hours after we first met.
“I can see things. I’ve always been able to see things.” The floor creaked softly beneath her weight. The air stirred as she sank down in a chair beside me.
I moistened my lips, turning my face toward her. “How? What do you mean?”
I started a little as she took my hand, closing it in both of hers. Her hands were large and thick with bone, her palms padded with rough calluses. Her fingers stroked my palms, her touch feather light, following the lines and dips and contours of my palm.
I tried to calm my shaking hand, hating the telltale shiver that coursed through me.
“You’re saying you possess the sight?” Fowler asked sharply, moving directly behind me, his boots thudding a few steps. I felt his shadow over me like a physical thing, a cloak floating above me, ready to drop and shield me at the first sign of threat.
I shouldn’t have liked the sensation. I shouldn’t have needed it. I pulled my shoulders back, thrusting my hand into hers, welcoming her to say whatever it was she saw carved on my skin.
“I did not say that,” Mirelya hedged, her voice evasive.
“But you see her fate? There on her hand?” There was a sharp edge in his voice. His hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing ever so slightly like he wanted to pull me away from her.
“I’m no oracle if that’s what you’re after, but I have strong intuition.”
“The possibility that you’re even a little like the king’s Oracle, who might be even more mad than the king, offers little relief.” Fowler practically snarled the words at her.
She tapped at the center of my palm, indifferent to him. “You should be grateful. What I see here can help you both.”
“No,” Fowler growled. “We don’t want to hear anything that you—”
“Help me how?” I asked, cutting him off.
“Knowledge is power,” she responded.
“Luna,” Fowler warned. “You don’t want to hear—”
“Now. I’m no oracle, but I see enough to know you’re the one they are after.”
My head lifted. “Me?”
“Yes, you. You are the one the king is looking for . . . the reason he’s killing half the females left in Relhok.”
Her words sank like rocks through silt, chugging through me slowly, difficult to hear aloud even though I had already concluded as much. Now I had to face it. Now Fowler knew.
“How d-do you know that,” I stammered.
“Oh, my, yes. It’s you,” she asserted.
For a moment not a sound could be heard. No one moved. It was as though I had stepped in a sudden vacuum of silence. I felt like I had been dropped into a very deep and endless well occupied by no one save me. It was only me and my beating heart. The blood a dull rush in my ears. The king wanted me dead. Either I let him hunt me or I figured out a plan that did not amount to me running for the rest of my life while countless innocents died because of me.
Fowler finally broke the silence. “What do you mean the king is after her? He doesn’t know anything about her. She’s just a girl . . .” His voice faded, but I heard what he was saying: I was just some girl he found. Not anyone who mattered. Not anyone who could be important to a king.
I shook off my silent stupor.
“It can’t be because of me,” I finally said, deciding to play ignorant. The less they knew about me, about the truth, the safer they were. “Why would the king be after me?”
“You’re the one,” Mirelya was quick to reply. “The one true heir to the throne.”