“You’re lying,” I say weakly. Was that how Alistair recognized me? Not because Thaelan described a girl with pale eyes, but because that girl looked like her mother?
“What can I say, Faris?” Alistair exhales a plume of smoke over his shoulder. His tone is caustic but his expression is troubled. Haunted. “There’s just something about broken Lockes in our dungeon that makes our Pembrough blood run faster. He paid for it, if it makes you feel any better.” He inhales deeply. “We all did. Perrote guessed your mother had help getting into the castle, and it fueled his paranoia. It was the start of mandatory loyalty spells.”
“Brindaigel can’t survive another twenty years hidden behind our borders like this,” says Bryn, scowling at him for straying off topic. She begins tapping the vial against the table. “We have no land, limited resources, and a swelling population that will need to be culled. My father plans to start in the Brim. Criminals and undesirables first, your sister included, followed by regulated births: only one child per couple. Any more will be thrown in the gorge or drowned in the shallows, parents’ choice. No exceptions.”
I step back, horrified by how casually she speaks of her father’s intentions, as though it were no different than rotating the crops or raising taxes. “He can’t do that. He can’t just kill people to make room—”
“Who’s going to stop him?” Bryn asks, eyes flashing. “He’s the king, and anyone with any real combat skill has a loyalty spell burnt above his heart. You think the Brim rats will fight back? Or women and children?” She scoffs. “Your mother was the first to run.”
“Shut up.”
“The Brim stagnated years ago,” Bryn continues. “Fewer mouths to feed would be a blessing to them. More jobs, more space, more—”
“Shut up!” I slam my hand against the table. My voice carries to the rafters overhead and lingers as Bryn and Alistair both stare at me. We are not worthless, I want to scream; we are not expendable. No matter what my mother may have thought.
Embarrassed by my outburst, I lower my eyes and temper my anger, tucking my stinging hand under my arm: This is not a fight I have any chance of winning; better to save my strength.
The silence stretches into agony before Bryn finally speaks. “You’re going to finish what your mother started,” she says. “You’re going to be my vessel, Faris. You’ll carry that stolen magic to New Prevast as an incentive, a gift to Prince Corbin to ensure an alliance. Avinea needs magic, Brindaigel needs a new king, and you need fifty silver kronets to save your sister’s life. Everyone wins.”
I stare her down. “I can’t carry magic. I’m not a transferent—”
“Not a requirement.”
I snap. “Then why do you need me?”
“Because you have something to lose if you don’t come back,” she says.
I shake my head, backing away from the table, hitting the wall and setting the chains rustling. “There are six heirs ahead of you for the throne—”
“And nothing but good manners prevents a seventh heir from acting before the first one does,” she counters with an irritated sigh. “My brother Rowan is as isolationist as my father. I can’t risk Brindaigel’s future while I wait my turn.”
“If you start a war, you’re fighting all of Brindaigel. You’ll have to kill your entire family to get to that crown.”
“Which is why I need an army with no ties to my father,” she says. “War requires sacrifice, Faris, but it also brings rewards. If I am crowned queen, I will have the power to sever your sister’s enchantment. And I will have the means to offer you a comfortable future. Gold enough for both of you. Real gold,” she adds with a smirk.
“If,” I repeat. “And if we fail, it’s my family that suffers. My sister will be sold, my father thrown into prison—”
“And you’ll be tortured and killed,” she finishes, waving away my concerns with one hand. “Lucky for you, you know the executioner.”
“The boy who calls himself a monster,” I say darkly.
Alistair’s expression hardens as he crushes his cigarette out against the edge of the table. “It’s only the truth, Faris,” he says. “If you want lies, I can take you down to the shallows and kiss you beneath the stars and tell you everything will be perfect because the world is never cruel.”
How dare he mock Thaelan. I lunge toward Alistair but the drugs are too thick in my blood, making me sluggish, unsteady. I crash into the table instead, and pain blooms across my hip. “I won’t do it.”
Bryn snorts. “At what point were you ever offered a choice? This”—she gestures to the torture chamber—“is all formality. As far as I’m concerned, you agreed to help me the moment Pem told me your name.” Straightening, she looks to Alistair, who looks away, guilty. “Which is why the magic’s already inside you.”
Six
THIS IS HOW THE KING’S executioner kills. With homemade sedatives and stolen magic and a princess as twisted as him.
A lifetime of warnings roll through my head with frightening percussion: infection, plague, the king’s speech every year on the Day of Excision. Magic was never meant for mortals, and it’ll start to clog in my veins until my blood stagnates, turns brackish. Until I die, or worse. Already I feel my blood shuddering, slowing; already I feel the phantom itch of poison spreading through my body.
Ignoring the pain in my hip, I reach a side table lined with instruments, seizing a hook with a sharpened talon at its end. Grabbing Alistair around the neck, I yank him against me, the hook pressed above his heart. “Get it out of me,” I demand. “Right now!”
“I can’t.”
“Liar!”
“He can’t,” Bryn says, arms folded, expression inscrutable. “He’s not a transferent.”
“If you put it in me, you can take it out!”
“I used a needle,” Alistair says, palms still out. He nods toward the scattered tools across the tabletop, where a silver and glass syringe sits adjacent to an empty vial. “It’s not in your blood; it’s just under the skin. But only dead magic can poison you, Faris, and this is clean, no spells attached. There’s no chance of it fraying or rotting apart inside you. I promise.”
“Like I would believe anything you say.”
“You don’t have to,” he says. “It’s fact.”
Frustrated, I release Alistair, casting a disgusted glance to the hook before I throw it aside. Pressing my hands to my forehead, I back away until I hit the wall. Cold stone bleeds through my dress and I slide down, knees drawn to my chest. It’s too much; I can’t do this. My palms settle flat on the floor. Defeated.