I nodded, though I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying. My mind was swarming with guilt and fear. I sat back heavily on my rump, putting a hand to my head.
“Perhaps Merlin is a mistweaver?” Crane suggested.
“Or Merlin is the master? Perhaps she’s the one behind all of this?” Alvere offered.
“Either way, it would suggest Merlin is the person we need to watch,” Crane agreed.
Their words were fading away more and more. I didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t believe another choice I’d made had killed another potentially innocent person, though we didn’t know that. We didn’t know anything. My whole plan had hinged on information and what did we have now?
Nothing.
I got up and walked away, then ran. I was in my bed, face-down in a pillow before I knew it, hot and bitter tears wetting the softness against my face.
I felt a gentle hand on my back, moving in slow circles and knew who it was instantly. Sparrow. She asked nothing, said nothing, she simply sat there, softly rubbing my back until I’d cried myself out and was ready to do something other than weep.
My thoughts were still a mess of confusion and swirling uncertainty. My emotions were bunched into a tight ball of frustration, regret, and dismay.
I rolled onto my side and looked up at Sparrow’s perfect, kind, face. Her forest-green eyes were shaded with concern. She smiled softly, her perfect soft, cheeks rising. Her hand came to my face and swept some hair from my brow.
“What do you need?” she asked softly.
My voice was warbling and breaking as I said, “I don’t know how to be strong right now. I need to be strong for the House, but…”
She nodded. “We understand,” she whispered. “No one was expecting this. It’s a shock. We’re all trying to come to terms with it. We know it’s not your fault.”
But it was my fault. One of my first plans as leader of his House and I’d gotten a woman killed. I’d gottenthe queenkilled.
“I don’t know how to do it,” I said, sniffing as tears threatened again.
“Do what?”
“Live with all these lives, these deaths. I… I can’t. What if…” I couldn’t go on as tears flooded back. I’d been thinkingwhat if you had died, or Silence, or Alvere, or Ant?
And then it occurred to me that I was favoring certain members of my House over others. I’d feel doubly guilty if Princess or Foggy or Midnight or anyone else died, because I hadn’t been as concerned for them as I had for some others. That prompted more tears of shame.
Sparrow lay herself down gently upon me, embracing me awkwardly.
“I don’t think it gets easier,” she said softly.
Not what I wanted to hear.
“But I’ll always be here to comfort you, and if not me, one of the others. That is the point of having a House. We’re family.”
Dove! I’d completely forgotten about my sister too! That spurred another wave of heaving sobs. And Sparrow held me through all of it. Eventually we shifted and ended up with her laying on her back, taking the place of my pillow as I lay with my head upon her chest. She held me close, stroking my hair.
It was a while before my tears stopped again. Oddly, by then — I had no clue how much time had passed — I was getting quite hungry. My stomach rumbled.
Sparrow gave a few breaths of a laugh. “Hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Silence?” she called out and the young man was in my room a moment later.
“Yes?”
“Food?”
He nodded and left.
