I will be where you met Thalia. A
Those words instantly fill me with both excitement and trepidation as I read them. Alaric finally wants to meet after allthis time spent mistrusting me. The hope that brings with it is almost enough to make me forget about the danger I'm in. I've already rejected Selene’s offer to work with her. I have no doubt that if she gains control of the city, she’ll take steps to eliminate me and those I care about before we can become threats to her.
It's one more reason I need to talk to Alaric. I need to tell him just how much danger he's in. I hurry back to my rooms, dressing in a simple, dark blue dress and wrapping a cloak around my shoulders. I head out into the city, using the eyes of the birds to watch for danger. It's just as well I do because I can see a couple of guards following me.
I hurry down an alleyway, borrowing some of the climbing ability of a gecko clinging to a wall so that I can make my way up onto the roofs. I keep my head down and scurry along for the length of several buildings before dropping down into the streets again, and now it seems I've lost my tail.
Who sent the guards? Rowan? Could his insistence that I talk to Alaric be a trick to expose him so the guards can grab him? No, I think Rowan understands the seriousness of the situation too well for that. Which means that someone else sent them, maybe someone influenced by Selene.
I make my way to the tower quickly now, knocking on the door and waiting. One of Alaric’s artists opens the door, looking me up and down. Once he realizes it's me, he nods to the stairs.
“He's waiting for you in the top room.”
I hurry up through the tower, making my way up to the same room where I met Thalia before. Alaric is waiting for me, one leg on a table as he leans back in a chair. He’s artfully posed and, with Alaric, it probablyisa pose, designed to catch my attention.
He would have anyway. Alaric is so painfully handsome it verges on the beautiful, his features sharp and fine boned, his dark hair hanging to his shoulders, so that his dark eyes peer out from beneath it. He's wearing simple, dark clothing that seemsto be carefully neutral, designed to allow him to pretend to be anyone he wants. With his mastery of illusion magic, Alaric is skilled at making himself seem to be other people. It's one of the reasons he hasn't been caught yet.
He's always been good at hiding his expressions, but I think I catch a hint of relief and longing as he sees me, before he hides it behind his usual arrogant mask.
“Lyra, I'm not used to people simply demanding meetings with me.”
“Am I just ‘people’ to you?” I ask, a little hurt by the idea that I'm the same as everyone else to him when we lived together back in Seatide. When we meant so much to each other. There was a time when I assumed we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
“You know you're not,” Alaric says, standing and moving to me. For a moment, he reaches out as if he might touch my face, but he pulls back at the last second, as if not wanting that contact after all, or perhaps remembering that we're not here for personal reasons. “You wanted to see me?”
It's difficult focusing just on the reason I'm here, rather than on the fact that Alaric and I are close to one another for the first time in a long time. The last time I saw him was during the raid on the death match Marcus was running, and everything was chaos then. I was angry with him too, because it felt as though Alaric was betraying me almost as much as Marcus, sending his people in to do violence and disrupt the fight, placing me in danger in the process.
“Nobody believes me but I think Selene Ravenscroft is gaining influence within the senate using psychomancy.”
Alaric’s eyes widen in surprise. “You're sure she has that power?”
I spread my hands. “It's impossible to be sure. It isn't an easy discipline to detect; it doesn't exactly leave spectacular traces.But people are acting in ways they normally wouldn't and there are small signs. Hesitations where there wouldn't be, people repeating the same phrases.”
“The kind of thing that would happen when Ravenna controlled someone,” Alaric says, his eyes narrowing now. “If this is happening it's very dangerous. I hate the corruption within the city but someone like Selene gaining control would be even worse. And it fits with what I've heard. Do you know who she's been meeting with city officials in secret?”
“She's getting out of Ironhold to do it?” I say.
Alaric nods. “It clearly doesn't hold her. And some of them go to her as well, or meet her during the games.”
The fact that Alaric already knows this makes me wonder just how extensive his intelligence network is. Does his resistance movement have people everywhere?
“I want to stop her,” I say. “But I'm not sure what I can do.”
“And you want my help?” Alaric says.
I nod. “You're one of the only people I can trust. If she hasn't found you, there's no way she can have influenced you. And if she's controlling people in positions of authority, I need the help of people who are willing to fightagainstthat authority.”
“I'm always willing to do that,” Alaric says. He reaches out for me more confidently now, his touch something laden with the weight of memories, filled with hints of all the times we've held one another before. “And you can trust me.”
I can trust him with this, at least. I just wish I could trust him with everything else. I wish I could trust him with my heart, the way I used to. It's so tempting to close the distance between us and simply kiss him. So tempting to just fall back into old patterns with him. I can feel my heart beating faster with the thought of it.
I have to force myself to pull back.
“Do you have any idea how we can stop her?” I ask.
“Short of just assassinating her in her cell?” Alaric says. He's always been much more pragmatic about violence than I am. He was much quicker to kill his opponents in the arena, and hasn’t held back since. In a lot of ways, Alaric is like the knives he wears at his belt: beautiful but deadly.
“Definitely short of that,” I say. I want to stop Selene, but I'm not just going to murder her. “I'm not sure we could do it, even if it weren't wrong.”
