My gaze falls to his exposed scars. Control, I think, and release him, dragging my hands through my hair before they curl around my neck.
Alistair sighs, rubbing his mouth with his hand before shrugging helplessly. “What was I supposed to do?” he asks. “Perrote sends his councilmen after you and one of them ends up dead. He sends his shadow crows and none of them return. You were a liability and he was getting desperate. Why else do you think he’s here?” He leans closer, lowering his voice to a pointed whisper. “Because if someone was going to uncover his secret, he was going to profit from it too. Cadence was his bartering chip.”
All the anger and frustration of the last week burns through my veins, igniting the poison that begins to itch with hunger and a desire to hurt him. “You knew he wasn’t a king?”
Alistair fumbles through his coat for his cigarette case. “I’ve known since the day my father branded me with a thief’s coat of arms, injected me with a loyalty spell binding me to a stolen crown, and told me about a promise he made years ago that the daughter of the woman he loved would make it to Avinea so his son could be free. So they both would be free.” He meets my eyes, expression searching, begging me to understand.
Pay attention, Faris.
Alistair didn’t choose me to carry this magic to New Prevast out of guilt like Bryn suggested, but because that was my mother’s plan all along. He had the stolen magic and I had the spell to find Merlock. Together, we could have destroyed Brindaigel. She didn’t die because she was sloppy and got caught. She died sacrificing herself to hide what she’d done so we could be free.
I am my mother’s daughter, I realize with a chill. Even then, she must have known I had an insatiable heart that would always crave more. Only she expected Alistair would fill that hunger.
My fingers dig into the back of my neck and I watch Alistair fumble through his case before sliding a cigarette between his lips. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” I ask.
He swipes the cigarette back out of his mouth. “Would you have believed me?”
I stare at him, and Alistair looks away. “I needed an army to tear that castle down, Faris, and I needed to survive that battle. Bryn doesn’t want me but I knew she wouldn’t kill me when she came back. I’m too valuable as a pet. But if I told you he wasn’t a king and you came back with an army, alone . . .”
I swore to kill him four months ago. Would I have spared his life if he became one of Perrote’s mindless warriors defending the castle? Or would I see it as justice overdue?
We both know the answer to that.
“So now she’s a queen,” I say instead. “I’m still a slave, my sister is a hostage, but at least you’ll be free.”
“Faris—”
“No! I am not your weapon anymore!” I turn away from him, rocking my head back to the wooden arches that frame the plastered ceiling. “Did you tell him about Cadence? Did you make a deal with him!?”
“No.” Alistair hesitates. “Your father did. Perrote offered clemency to anyone with information about who could have kidnapped his daughter. Your father knew you were gone, he knew you were angry, and he knew—when he heard about the tunnels, Faris—he knew it was you. He thought he could save Cadence by turning you in.”
My heart cracks. My poor father, too drunk—too sad—to know better than to trust Perrote to show mercy. “And?”
Alistair slides his hands in his pockets and stares toward the bank of windows on the far wall. A lock of hair falls over his eye. “And I promise you he didn’t suffer,” he says, voice thick.
“Oh, but I will,” I whisper.
Folding an arm across my stomach, I sink onto the bench seat behind me. Alistair tentatively sits down beside me. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I twist away from his sympathy. “Why are you here?”
He tries to light his cigarette but the match dances out of reach and he has to chase it with his other hand. “I came for my bride,” he says with a snort of derision, finally succeeding. He tosses the match aside and takes a slow drag. “Who apparently came for a prince. Brindaigel wasn’t big enough for her anymore.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say flatly.
“Me too.” He swallows hard. “Perrote has no reason to humor me and my experiments anymore. I’ll be sent back to Brindaigel, my betrothal dissolved, and resume my court-appointed duties.” The shaking returns, and he barks out a self-deprecatory laugh, rubbing his forehead with his thumb. “Gods Above, Faris, this is not how I expected it to happen.”
“What was supposed to happen?”
He glances over, expression troubled. “I don’t know,” he says.
Another mystery gifted by my mother. She left us magic instead of directions, clues instead of answers. My only hope now is that her contact still lives in New Prevast and knows more than I do.
Shaking my head, I rub at my forearm, digging at the buried itch I can’t reach. The poison in my blood hums against my skin, smoky blue and silver, darker than usual, fed by my anger.
“So it’s true.” Alistair shifts, reaching for my arm. “You’re infected.”
I pull away. “Don’t touch me.”
Rolling his eyes, he rummages through his coat pocket and brandishes a chalk-colored rock, webbed with holes. He cradles it between his thumb and fingers. “Do you know what this is?”
“Pumice,” I say. “Hardened lava.”
“It’s a filter,” he says, rolling it into his palm. “The entire city’s water supply runs through these rocks before it reaches the cisterns. It’s cleaner than the water we drink in Brindaigel and we drink straight from the mountain itself.”
“So?”
“So ask me to stay,” he says. “Give me a reason to, Faris Locke, and maybe I can give you a reason to believe that this”—he touches my arm with the edge of the pumice—“isn’t a permanent parlor trick to show at parties.”
Hope is cruel and yet, it rises anyway: Who better than Bryn’s mad scientist to perform a miracle? “Are you saying you can clean blood? You can remove the infection? Without a transfusion?”
Alistair arches his eyebrows and reclines against the table with an arrogant smirk that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
I stare at him. “Blood is not water.”
“And magic is not science,” he says, “and yet a very handsome boy with no magical ability was able to put enough magic inside you to make a not very handsome prince take notice.”
“How can I possibly trust you after this?”
“Because Cadence likes me,” he says, smirk thinning before disappearing. “We became friends on the ride out of Brindaigel. She’s a good girl, Faris.”
And Alistair is just the type of boy Cadence would attach herself to: handsome and well read, and with the kind of power she’s too innocent to fear. A poor replacement for Thaelan and yet, I can’t discount his cleverness or his desire to survive.