I stood with a gasp, the mad urge to run seizing me. She had seen the truth I was desperate to protect. Even beyond my gender and blindness, she knew this most important detail about me. And she spoke it aloud.
“Luna?” Fowler’s voice was whisper soft. At my silence, he turned to Mirelya. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, you don’t know who she is?” Mirelya laughed lightly. “What other secrets do you keep from each other?”
I tried for denial again, shaking my head, but this time the lies would not come. “I’ve admitted nothing.”
“You needn’t admit anything for me to see the truth, girl. You are the late king of Relhok’s daughter. The one they said was never born before the queen died the night of the eclipse, at the hands of dwellers—”
“It wasn’t dwellers,” I snapped, unable to suffer the lie that had been spread following my parents’ deaths. “It was the chancellor. Cullan. He killed them both and blamed their deaths on the rise of the dwellers. Then he declared himself king.”
My outburst was met with silence and I knew I had essentially just announced myself to be the one true heir to the throne.
“You’re the princess of Relhok?” Fowler’s gravelly deep voice was quiet but full of incredulity. His hand slipped from my shoulder. I turned as though I could see him just behind me.
“Well,” Mirelya murmured. “Would this not make her the queen?”
“Stop! I’m not a princess or a queen.” At least I didn’t feel like it. Not sitting here in boys’ clothes, travel weary and covered in grime.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“It wasn’t important—”
“You didn’t think such a detail important?”
“No!”
“Well, apparently you’re important enough for the king to wish dead,” Fowler accused.
It was sobering to hear this announced aloud. He was right. It was bad enough to know that girls my age were being killed all across the kingdom, but to know it was because of me. . . . I couldn’t run from this reality any longer.
My shoulders sagged under the weight of this knowledge. It wasn’t something I could carry. “I have to stop him.”
“What did you say?” Fowler demanded.
I pulled back my shoulders. “He has to be stopped.”
“There’s no stopping Cullan. Just get that thought out of your head.” Fowler paced an angry line across the room. “We’d need an army to do that.”
“Or just a girl,” I offered. “Once he has me, there would be no need for him to keep killing girls.” I exhaled and released an uncomfortable laugh. “It’s that simple.”
“You’re out of your mind. There’s nothing simple about that. Travel back across the entire kingdom to reach the capital? Even if you could, even if we make our way inside the city, what then? You just surrender yourself? They would kill you. You would die.”
The echo of laughter faded from my lips. “I know that. I didn’t expect to stop him and live.”
I would die, but others—so many others—they would live. Is that not what a proper queen would do for her people?
“Absolutely not.”
I propped my hands on my hips. “The choice isn’t yours.”
He stepped up close to me, his face near my own. I felt his warm breath on my cheek. “You’re not doing this.”
Tension crackled between us, looking for somewhere to go, an outlet that wasn’t going to appear. Neither one of us was backing down.
Mirelya’s voice broke in. “Why don’t you both sleep on the matter? Whatever happens, Fowler is going to have to work tomorrow. That’s the price of staying here and gathering supplies. He will need his rest for the day ahead.”
“That sounds like a fine idea,” Fowler agreed. “Maybe you’ll see logic tomorrow.”
I nodded as though I would change my mind, but I would not. I knew what I had to do.
Fowler avoided me for the rest of the night and into the next morning, leaving me alone in the house with Mirelya.
“He’s not going to come around to your way of thinking, girl,” Mirelya said as she washed our breakfast dishes. I didn’t need to ask her what she was talking about.
“Well, I’m not changing my mind either.”
“Perhaps you should. For one so young, you’re in an awful hurry to die.”
“I don’t want to die,” I snapped. “It’s the only way. Once the king has me, he’ll lift the kill order.”
“Oh, I understand your motives. They’re fine and altruistic, but that boy’s only concern is for you. You might want to think about that.”
I sighed. “It doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t let it matter, even as much as it made my stomach flutter to know that the aloof boy I first met cared about me.
Fowler didn’t return until shortly before midlight. I followed him into his room, dogging his heels. “You promised we would talk.”
“I promised once you saw logic, we would talk.”
“That’s not right!” I stomped my foot. “You’re about to go out on the lake and you’re only now returning? You’re not leaving any time for us to discuss—”