“Thank you.” Vi stepped away from the edge of the walkway.
“Wait,” he called after her, all but lunging for the other side of the bars. Vi paused, staring back at him. “If you… if you find her… tell her we’re all alive. The ones who got taken at least. Most were with her…”
“I will.” Vi gave a small nod. Her eyes stayed locked with his. They were black as well, a hallmark of Western blood. She swallowed. “And I’m sorry. Stay strong, you’ll be free soon.”
“Will I?” he shouted over the wind as she walked away. “Don’t forget, princess—you said you would put in a good word with the Chieftain. You said you would help us!”
Vi didn’t look back.
She kept her eyes forward as she stepped into the darkness of the hollowed tree trunk once more. She stayed focused and silent as she made her way back across her stepping stones of light. Not once, all the way back to her room, did she look back in the direction of the cages.
But the whole way, his words stayed with her.
You said you would help us.
Vi laid down in her bed, the plush feather mattress almost too soft underneath her. What did it feel like to sleep in a cage? Did the prisoners manage to sleep at all? This luxury was all she’d ever known and yet somehow it was swiftly becoming uncomfortable.
Did she even deserve it?
“I’m trying to help,” she vowed to the air between her and the gnarled wooden ceiling above her four-poster bed. She was helping in the only way she could—by trying to put an end to the source of the plague killing her world. But no one around her was likely to understand that.
Just like they wouldn’t understand when she finally slipped away, likely in the dead of night, leaving her crown and duty behind to make for Meru.
She would leave them all, for them all.
But first, she had to find a way to sneak into the deadliest place in Soricium: the clinic.
Chapter Three
She wasone more droning minute of Martis’s lesson away from needing to physically hold open her eyelids.
“Yes, princess?” He paused, catching Vi at the start of a yawn. “Is there something you’d like to say?” Martis’s eyes darted to the man at the back of room.
Andru sat over Vi’s shoulder. Now and then he’d glance up through his blond locks and long lashes before looking back to his paper—scribbling away. He was the one the Senate had sent to assess her, to make sure she would be a “princess for all” and not just the North, despite where she grew up. He was the son of the Head of Senate, the same Head of Senate who questioned the crown’s authority in broad strokes.
By all counts, Andru should be her enemy. Dislike for the crown should have been bred into him. With one stroke of his pen, he could write the words that she was unfit to lead and throw her birthright into question, possibly even pen fodder for the Empire to question her whole family’s rule and allow the Senate to consolidate even more power.
So she knew what Martis was doing. He was giving her an opportunity to save face for yawning and possibly being perceived as a poor student. He was trying to protect her, however misguided that was.
“I was going to say that I agree with your assessment on the grain stores in the southern capital. It sounds as though with every year, winter gets worse in the South and the harvest from the East grows thinner.”As though the land itself were going barren. Vi briefly spared a thought for whether this was yet another symptom of Raspain’s return; the end of the world had been bleak in her vision. She pushed the thought away, focusing on the task at hand for now. “It’s essential for us to prepare the populous for the worst.”
“Just so.” Martis smiled, glanced once more at Andru, and continued on.
Martis was none the wiser that Vi had transformed the person who should’ve been her enemy into a dear friend. Her tutor had no idea that the awkward man sitting behind her was an ally. Or that Andru was the secret lover of her brother.
Vi spared one more glance over her shoulder. Her eyes caught Andru’s and she saw the tiniest movement on his face—a smile shared only with her as Martis prattled on.
* * *
“That lesson lasted forever,” Vi grumbled, well after the main door to her quarters had closed behind her tutor.
“It was the normal time.” Andru slipped his paper into his folio and left it on Martis’s desk before starting out the door. Vi followed behind him, pausing at the edge of the desk.
“What is it you write?” She rested her fingertips on the folio.
“You can read it, if you’d like. If you’re worried.” He paused in the door frame, hands in his pockets, eyes on the folder.
“No, I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you’re not out to harm me.” She trusted her friend and needed him to know that. “Merely curious.”
