“Jana was always too gentle. Too meek.” Serafin motioned for Vivia to sit beside him. “Not like us.”
Vivia sat, though she couldn’t keep her hands from shaking. She had to ball them into fists atop her thighs. Sitting still is a quick path to madness, she reminded herself—as if this might explain the trembling.
However, the more her father criticized and nitpicked at Jana, the more Vivia wondered if perhaps it was something else that sent heat slicing down her shoulders.
Oh, Vivia was used to the insults against others by now. Normally, she could even revel in the fact that although Serafin hated everyone, he still seemed to love her. Today, though, she was finding it harder to smile and laugh.
“Idiots,” he said, and it took Vivia a moment to sort out whom he currently railed against. The healers, she realized soon enough.
“They do tell me I am doing better, though.” Serafin smiled. “It is the Nihar blood, you know. You are lucky to have such strength running in your veins.”
“I know,” she replied, yet her gaze lingered on his skin, fragile as a snake’s shed scales.
“The royal line sorely needed the Nihars in it,” Serafin continued, warming to the subject. “Until I came along, Jana had no respect. Not from the civilians, not from the Forces, and especially not from the Council. I earned that for her, you know.”
“I know,” Vivia repeated.
“And I will earn it for you too.” He smiled tenderly, his watery eyes disappearing in the folds of his skin. “Once I am well again, I will march into that Council and tell them to put that crown upon your head.”
“Thank you.” She smiled tenderly back—and it was real, for Noden only knew what Vivia would do without her father by her side. Or without that Nihar blood in her veins.
Join her mother, she supposed.
“I only want what’s best for you, Vivia.” The breeze kicked at his wispy hair. “And I know you only want what’s best for me.”
Vivia stiffened, the shame roiling hotter. Her father was so frail. No matter what the healers might say, he was on the verge of death.
So of course she would try to heal him. Of course she would tell him about the underground lake. Yes, something spidered down her spine at the thought of it—and yes, her mother had said to keep it secret, but that was before Jana had leaped to her death and left Vivia all alone. It was before she’d decided her own melancholy meant more than her daughter.
Serafin had stuck by Vivia through everything. He was a good father, even if Vivia was not worthy of it.
She sucked in a breath, ready to point out the blueberries and the trapdoor, when a bell began to clang.
The palace alarm.
Instantly Vivia was on her feet—and instantly she was hollering for the guards to gather around the king. Then, with nothing more than a breathy warning for her father to remain calm, Vivia sprinted out of the queen’s garden. Halfway down the row of zucchini vines, she encountered Stix.
“What is it?” Vivia shouted over the alarm, trying not to notice how disheveled and puffy-faced Stix was. As if the girl had spent the entire night out.
“The storerooms,” Stix hollered back, waving for Vivia to follow her. “Someone’s gotten in there—and, sir, I think it might be the Fury.”
*
After the deafening churn of the floods, the silence of the rising tunnel was unsettling. How so little rock could muffle the thunder below, Merik didn’t know. Especially when he still felt the quake in his feet, in his lungs.
The smell here was only marginally better, for though Merik and Cam had abandoned Shite Street, they carried the shite with them.
Forty-four steps passed, with Cam counting softly the entire way, before Merik and the girl reached a brick wall with a jagged crack slicing down. The rift looked accidental.
It also looked recent, the edges sharp. The rubble fresh.
But clearly this was what Merik and Cam had come for, so they slipped through the crack. Merik went first, only to end up behind a shelf of damp cedar. A shuffle sideways and he found himself in a cellar.
The royal storerooms. They looked exactly as Merik remembered: uneven shelves filled with boxes and sacks and blankets and bottles—any supply that might be needed for running the palace.
For several long breaths, Merik waited, listening. Feeling for breaths in the stale air, squinting for figures in the weak light that flickered from magicked lamps.
Merik heard no one; Merik saw no one. The only sound was water dripping into a puddle nearby. Condensation off the weeping granite walls, and perhaps a leak in the foundation too.
“We’re on the lowest level of the royal storerooms,” Merik murmured to Cam at last.
Her breath kicked out with surprise. “Well, that was easy to get in.”