Was that true? Did Calix wage a war on misinformation, or would we never truly know about those days?
With a heavy sigh, I rubbed my forehead. “Rian, I’m worried you are blind to the price that everyone else around you is paying. There are innocent lives being lost in your Resistance.”
His eyes were heavy as he looked at me. “No, I’m not blind to that, little sister.”
“Then stop. Give up the Resistance. Let me work for peace.”
“First, it isn’t mine to give up. Perhaps some see me as the figurehead, but I’m not the leader of the Resistance, Shy. And second, how?” he said gently. “With women working in mills? By asking him to stop torturing a few prisoners? There are hundreds being killed. There are thousands of slaves. And now his hate is spreading, and those suspected of having powers are being killed like animals.”
I shuddered, remembering how Calix refused to call the Elementae people. Remembering how quickly his heart turned from Amandana.
“You’re not talking about peace. You’re talking about ducking your head in the sand, and if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist,” Rian continued.
“I chose this,” I told him hotly. “So that others wouldn’t die in my stead. I’m not leaving.”
“Very well,” he said. “Then I should go. I can’t risk your being connected to my activities in the city.”
“But you’ll look into the people at the Summer Palace?” I asked.
He nodded, but he didn’t leave. “Kata said something about an elixir. A magical liquid to cancel out the elements. If she finds it, do you want it for yourself ?” he asked me. “To take away your gifts?”
I sighed. “I did,” I said. “Maybe I still do. But more than that, I don’t want my husband to control it. I want to decide who has that power.”
He came to me, hugging me tight. “If you ever need me, tell Kairos. Osmost can find me just about anywhere. And if you need to flee, I will find a way to get you out. Understand? You’re not alone in that palace.”
I hugged him tight. “Please be careful.”
“He won’t be,” Kata said, and I pulled back to see her. “But I’ll be cleaning up behind him, so he’ll be fine.”
I laughed, and Rian let me go, going deeper into the hedge, leaving me and Kata alone.
“So you believe the elixir’s real,” she told me, replacing Rian and hugging me tight.
“It is real,” I told her. “Sit down.”
She pulled back from me. “What?”
“It is real, because Calix used it before,” I told her softly. “When he attacked the islands. It wasn’t on his father’s orders; it was on his.”
She drifted to the bench, ashen. She looked past me for a long time, her gaze not seeing me, as if she was replaying all that she knew about that day. “Why would he do that?” she asked. She looked up at me. “He hated us so much?”
I sat beside her, twining our fingers together. “No,” I said. “He was in love with your sister. Amandana.”
She looked stricken at her name.
“He thought they were going to marry. For peace. And when he came to the islands, he found out she was with someone else. He thought she tricked him. He said she was with Rian.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Kata,” I said, tugging her hand.
“She told me,” Kata breathed. “She told me she was going to marry. She told me he’d come for her any day now. And everything would be different when he did. He’s the one she loved?”
I felt a tremble run through her, and I turned. Droplets of water were rising from the ground slowly, drawing the moisture away from the soil like the earth was crying into the air. “Kata,” I said again.
She pulled away from me. “That sick, cowardly bastard. And he used this elixir to do it? To kill her?” Her eyes whipped to me. “He’s going to do it again. She trusted him, and he killed her for it. It won’t be any different with you.”
My hands scrabbled to hold on to hers. “Kata, no. Kata, Kata, he won’t.”
“If he knows what you are? He’ll kill you.”
I caught her hands tight. “He won’t get the chance. I will never trust him.”
This seemed to calm her a little, and she breathed, nodding.
“But there was a trivatis who had visions,” I told her urgently. “He wrote them in a book. The book said there was more of the elixir in the desert, in a sacred place. Calix destroyed the book, but it’s the only clue he has to go on. He’s sending Danae to find it, but you know the lake, at least better than she does. I think it’s submerged somewhere in there. You’ll be able to find it where she can’t. And you have to do it before her.”
She nodded, and then stopped. “A book?” she repeated. “It was meant to be burned, right?”
“I don’t know, but that sounds like a good way to destroy a book.”
“We have it,” she said. “I think the Resistance has it.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“Because. The Resistance has all sorts of things the king wishes didn’t exist, and one of those is a large cache of books that were supposed to be burned. One of our faithful saved them.”
“But this was years ago,” I said. “Before the islands.”
She nodded. “And this girl held on to them. I can’t be sure, but I suspect we have that book.” She met my eyes. “Maybe we have a clue he doesn’t.”
I clutched her hands. “Then find it. And get the elixir before Danae does.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You almost died.”
“But I didn’t,” I told her. “Because of my power. I won’t deny it again, I swear it. I’ll practice as often as I’m able.”
“Good,” she said. “When I come back, I’ll bring news of your family.”
The breath rushed out of my lungs as I thought of her hugging my mother, joking with my brothers, playing tricks with water to delight Catryn. “Skies,” I said, nodding and fighting back the swell of emotion I felt at the thought. “I’ll look forward to that.”
She hugged me fiercely. “You should go,” she told me. “I don’t want your guard suspicious.”
I nodded, burying my face against her neck, and it struck me how lucky I was. Rian told me I wasn’t alone in the castle, and though often it felt like it, he was right. There were people in the world who I trusted beyond every shadow of doubt, and Kata was one of them. “I love you,” I breathed into her hair.
“I love you too,” she said.
Hero
My husband returned later that day, but true to his promise, Galen did not. Then word came that the Resistance had attacked the Summer Palace, and Calix demanded Galen not return until they figured out how the Resistance had discovered their operations there. Smugly, in private, he told me it would be months before I saw Galen again, and I didn’t like the ache that created in my chest.
I took a walk one morning, and Kairos was waiting in the courtyard. “Morning, sister,” Kairos called, and Osmost clacked out some version of the same.
Zeph sighed beside me.
“Morning,” I called, smiling.
“Well, if you insist, I will join you on your walk,” he told me. “Where are we headed?”
“I was heading to the Royal Garden.”