Viviane was tangled in it all, so deeply snarled that Josie would never be able to separate her from the pain again.
“So what now?” Josie breathed as she wiped the tears from her face.
Viviane’s eyes dipped to the table again, and she scratched a finger against a groove in the worn wood. “I’ve been trainingwith Natali. It’s helped. Using the power…clears my head.” She dragged her gaze back to Josie, her eyes flitting across her features. “That’s…all I have in me for now.”
Viviane had always been intentional with her words. Josie had learned to read beneath them, to search the places where Vi kept her meanings cloaked beneath subtext that sometimes only Josie could parse through.
Her admission was vulnerable, and honest, and also…a line drawn.
I will not help you.
Wouldn’t, couldn’t—perhaps both. It didn’t really matter, in the end. Either way…Viviane may have created the mess, but she would not be helping to clean it up.
Josie was, as ever, alone.
A knock sounded on the door. Aleissande ducked her head in, pausing as she saw Viviane at the table. Her gaze cut to Josie’s face, lingering on the tear tracks there. The corner of her mouth pinched.
“I need you,” Aleissande said, stilling Josie’s thoughts of loneliness in their tracks.
On the surface, it sounded like an order, a general speaking to their soldier. But there was surety to the words, a weight that did not hold a command, but something else.
A fact, perhaps.
It was reflected in the light in Aleissande’s eyes, a cool, soothing anchor that tugged Josiein. Josie let it.
She pushed herself up from the table, sparing Viviane one last look. “Thank you for meeting with me,” she said. She knew Vi could read her own subtext beneath the words. The dismissal.
There’s nothing left for us to say.
It hurt. The ache followed her with every step toward the door, and it did not disappear as she closed it behind her, even as Aleissande peered down at her, her face close enough that Josie could feel the tips of her boots touching her own.
“Are you okay?” Aleissande asked.
Josie touched a hand to her chest, where that ache still throbbed. It was different from the searing pain it had once been.
“I will be,” Josie answered. She rolled her neck, as if she could shake off the lingering hurt. “What did you need?”
Aleissande hesitated for a moment, her gaze shrewd. But she must have found whatever confirmation she was looking for in Josie’s face, because suddenly she was straightening, her eyes narrowing into that look she always got when she was strategizing.
“There were more protests today—this time outside the palace.” Aleissande grinned. “It seems the Bellare fell directly into the trap you laid. They claimed Trahir should be independent of trade with Tala, that Visya within the kingdom should take up the weapons-making in service to their kingdom. Servants, just as the Conoscenza prescribed.”
Despite her pain, Josie smiled. It wasworking.
“And the troops?” she pressed.
That pinch returned to Aleissande’s mouth. “Most of the City Guard has been bought by the Bellare.”
“What of the Royal Army?” Josie asked.
Aleissande took another long pause. “The humans are…not unsympathetic to our plight, but…”
“But they’re angry about the division in the force,” Josie filled in. A division created when Aidon formed the elite Visya unit.
Aleissande gave a grim nod.
“But,” the general hedged, “I think you can help with that.”
“Oh?”
