“Late shipment for Melaena. I insisted he go. The dock master has been skittish lately. I paid a stable boy to keep watch. He’ll whistle if he sees anything.”
She nodded, her blue eyes troubled as they darted from my face to the barred door.
I tensed again. “Problem?”
It’d been several months since we’d last met, but that wasn’t unusual since we could only meet on the Four’s feast days.
Brielle shook her head quickly, almost as if to shake off whatever thought nagged her rather than assure me.
“A position opened up, at last,” she said, limping a little as she moved toward me.
I scowled, sweeping my gaze from her covered head to her simple white dress—a nod to Viridana—and her dainty silk slippers. She was favoring her left ankle.
“What happened?” I demanded. “Did he hurt you again?”
Her pale cheeks flushed. “No. When I climbed out the Temple window, I landed badly.” She gestured to her slippers. “I couldn’t find my boots. Weylin had already started dinner, and I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”
My conscience twitched for the thousandth time. The risks she was taking. My mother probably wouldn’t approve of what I was asking her best friend to do. I hated it, too... but it was the only way.
“Did you hear what I said about the position?” She slid a bag out from under her cloak. “A gardener. I managed to get the uniform as well.”
Hope rekindled in my chest as I reached for the violet uniform she handed me. I rubbed my thumb over the Rellmiran crest stitched over the chest—a half sun rising over a shadowed moon.
“It’s not too late, Aiden,” she whispered.
I jerked my gaze up.
“After Weylin’s gone, you could still be king,” she continued in a rush. “It’s what your mother would’ve wanted. Your father, too.”
My fingers curled into the stiff uniform. “I doubt my parents—or anyone else in Rellmira—would want an assassin for their king.”
Her mouth formed a grim line. “It’s no worse than what Weylin did to them.”
“Perhaps not. But then I would be no better than him, stabbing my way to the throne. I’m here to right a wrong and put the crown on your head. That’s what we decided, Brielle.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, the dirt under her fingernails at odds with her status.
“I feel as though nothing I do can atone for what happened to Rhea and Tristan,” she said. “And to you.”
I squeezed one of her small shoulders. “It’s not your crime to pay for.”
She closed her eyes. “I wish things had been different. I wish you had grown up alongside my son as Rhea and I always dreamed our children would.” Her shoulders trembled. “I miss her.”
My heart grew cold. I couldn’t miss someone I’d never known. That life had been stolen from me by Renwell’s arrow and the knife that Brielle always carried in her belt.
“Courage, Brielle,” I murmured. “It’s almost over. Remember the plan.”
She nodded, stiffening her spine. My hand fell away. When she looked at me, I glimpsed the queen I’d first met at the Temple.
She’d agreed wholeheartedly with my plan to kill her husband. She knew, better than most, what sort of monster saton the throne. What he had done to get it and what he had done to keep it.
My parents’ murders and the subsequent lies of succession. The massacre in Pravara and the executions in Aquinon during the rebellion. The mistreated—and often innocent—prisoners in the sunstone mine.
All for a throne he’d stolen.
It needed to end. And Brielle and I had come up with the perfect way to smuggle me into the heart of the palace. I was going to kill him and escape, leaving Brielle to take up the crown and piece Rellmira back together.
“The head housekeeper, Gilda, is expecting you,” Brielle said. “She knows how particular I am about the gardens, so she didn’t question me too much when I told her I’d found someone to replace the old gardener.”
