“But false hope!” I protested. “There is no such thing as atrueSun Heir. The Sun Heir is just something invented by the Sabourin dynasty to give divine right to royalty.”
“But isn’t it tempting to believe?” Sunder drawled. “When you have nothing else to believe in?”
“That nothing being me?” I snapped.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Something grotesque squeezed slimy hands around my heart. I turned away.
“The boy—Pierre LaRoche,” I said, after a seething moment. “I want to question him myself.”
I’d never been inside a dungeon, unless you counted the prison of a temple I was raised in.
I expected mold-black walls and seeping bricks and rusting shackles. Instead—behind the palais, past the courtyard with the stables and kennels, and down two flights of dark steps—Sunder led me to a severe but mostly clean series of caverns carved smooth from solid stone. Light came not from ambric glow-globes but torches, and the scent of tallow and woodsmoke dragged me back into the past so quickly I had to steady myself against a wall.
Unexpected panic pushed frigid water through my veins.
We were just out of sight of the guards when Sunder caught me by the elbow and spun me into a deep alcove. My skirts swirled heavy around our legs. A glass window to nowhere acted as a strange mirror, picking out a reflection of the jewels at my throat and the blue of my eyes. It left Sunder in shadow.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sunder stood so close that I could feel the smolder of his fever on my skin. “I already interrogated the boy.”
I fought to recapture my equilibrium. This place made my teeth ache. “I have other methods of persuasion than you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyes were raw with unease.
“I’m theDuskland Dauphine. I’m the woman he tried to kill. He hates me for what I represent—I am an idea to him. He might react more emotionally to a questioning from me. He might let something slip.”
“Perhaps.” His expression was unfathomable in the dark. “Or he will slip inside your head and show you all your doubts and fears.”
“He’s just a boy.”
“He’s a zealot. He’s been brainwashed and manipulated, demoiselle—he has lost the skill of nuance. I would protect you from that kind of misplaced certainty.”
I swallowed, pine ash and melting snow and gratitude slicking the back of my throat.
“You protect me from many things, Sunder. But you can’t protect me from everything.”
Pierre LaRoche looked awful. His hair was matted to his skull in sweat-whorled spirals. His sallow skin puffed with exhaustion-bruised bags beneath his eyes. His tunic was shredded and dirty. Manacles hung loose on his ungainly arms, and I could see where he’d tried to escape his bonds—scrapes and lacerations covered his wrists. He looked up when Sunder and I entered the cell, but it was long moments before he recognized me.
Loathing shaped his face into a livid mask.
I would have had more pity for Pierre LaRoche if he hadn’t looked at me like that.
“You,” he croaked, then coughed. He spat onto the floor by my slippers. “Scion curse you.”
“Scion curseme?” I sidestepped spittle. “I imagine he saves much of his wrath for assassins.”
“You’re one to talk.” He sneered, baring several broken teeth. “You murdered your kin for a throne. If I kill, it is because I bring righteous light to the dusk of immorality.”
His words conjured a restless familiarity within me, thrusting me back into the dank hallways of my childhood.
“Have you invited the Scion’s light,” I murmured, “to banish the dusk?”
The boy’s eyes widened, like I said the last thing he ever expected.
I glanced at Sunder, a sculpture in marble and onyx at the door, then knelt before the boy. Sunder’s boots moved closer.
“I am the sun staring at the twilight,” I recited, although the words felt as dusty in my mouth as they had at the Temple of the Scion. “I am the solace that banishes blight. I am—”
