“Yes, yes.” I held up my hands to stop her angry tirade. I sighed. “I was born on a ship on the Niviath Sea.”
“Yes, in a storm, you said. I remember. But where did you livebeforeyou lived here?”
“Many places. You’ve already figured out a few.”
She nodded. “Twaryn. Dagriel, with Maz, I assume. Is that all?”
“I’ve answered your question enough,” I said through gritted teeth.
“With things I already knew!”
“Then ask me something else.”
She hesitated, thinking for a moment. “How did you meet Maz?”
I shook my head. “Try again.”
She growled in frustration. “You’re impossible! I could ask you a thousand questions and get no answers.”
“There are lots of things you could ask me. My favorite... color.”
“I’m not wasting my win on something so trivial.”
And I was glad she didn’t, or I would’ve had to tell her that my favorite color was rapidly becoming the unique shade of golden brown in her eyes.
I glared into my empty mug. What kind of truth-telling, flirtation-inducing drug did Tercel put in the Sunshine tonight?
“Have you ever been to the sunstone mine?” she asked.
I froze. “Why would you ask me that?”
Her brow furrowed at my demand. “I don’t know much about it. You seemed to have traveled a lot, so I simply wondered...”
The scar on my back burned with memory. “It’s not a place you want to know. The closest a person can get to the Abyss in this world. Prisoners mine the sunstone. Soldiers guard the mine. No one gets out. It’s a place of death.” I flicked the Death tile away from me. “So I’ve heard.”
“Prisoners? From where?” she whispered, her eyes full of horror.
Bitterness snaked into my voice. “You’ve lived in the palace all your life, and no one ever mentioned the mine?”
“They did. But never . . . never many details.”
“Did you never wonder how Weylin carted in wagon after wagon of his precious sunstone? Did you think the miners were paid or even voluntary for a job that killed most people within a year of work?”
Kiera shook her head continuously as if to dislodge my words buzzing around her like flies.
I should stop. But I couldn’t. Years of unsatisfied rage cast words like sparks from my throat. “It wasn’t that way when the Falcryns ruled Rellmira. King Tristan and his father before him offered wages and the safe, clean town of Calimber to live in. But Weylin’s greed is too great for such fairness.”
My lips curled into a snarl as I drove my point home. “Where do you think we were headed once Renwell was done with us in the Den? Where Jerell is probably headed right now if there are enough working pieces of him left?”
“No. That can’t be true,” she said fiercely. But doubt clouded her eyes and crumpled her chin. “I would’ve heard about it. More people would know. People would?—”
“Would what? Stand up to Weylin? Fight? Look what happened last time they did that. No one wants that to happen again. No one wants to be the woman we burned last night.Ican’t let—” My throat caught, snagged on guilt and secrets. I swallowed. “It’s the way things are.”
Silence sat between us like a cage, trapping all the things I’d said and couldn’t take back.
“What if the People’s Council came back?” Kiera whispered so quietly I almost missed it.
My gaze clenched hers as if I could pull her closer just by looking at her. “Who speaks treason now?” I rasped.
