But no. If I hadn’t killed her, she would inevitably have killed me. Because in the end, the Relics were simply an excuse for the Sabourin dynasty to be where they’d always been—at one another’s throats.
The door hissed open behind me. Dowser’s pervasive scent of tabak smoke and fresh-brewed kachua was its own introduction.
“I thought I’d find you here.” He loomed behind my shoulder. “You do know you’re late for yet another Congrès?”
“I do. And I’m sorry. But I’m trying to sort through a mess of secrets my family’s been keeping for a thousand tides.”
His voice held anticipation. “Did you find what you were looking for? Did you find another Relic?”
“I’m not sure it’s what I was looking for.” I quickly filled Dowser in on everything we’d discovered underground. He whistled, took off his glasses, and began polishing them on the edge of his robe.
“Scion, I never knew,” he admitted. “You must understand—Sylvain brought me on as a chevalier barely a tide after I graduated Unitas. And he only took me into his confidence a few months before his death—he’d grown concerned about Severine in the wake of her brother’s untimely passing, and wanted my advice on her state of mind.”
“Because you were her lover,” I supplied, remembering Sunder’s long-ago explanation of their relationship.
“Is that what you were told?” Dowser barked a laugh, and turned to sit on the edge of Severine’s bed. The mattress sank beneath his weight, and Severine’s hand shifted against the bedspread, opening like a flower. “I suppose that’s what most people thought. It’s always tempting to believe the most sordid explanation. But the truth is, I was Severine’s friend. Perhaps her only friend. Although I’d joined the court in my capacity as spymaster, I was an outsider at Coeur d’Or. I was Zvar-born, Lirian-raised, and Amber-educated. I had traveled farther than Severine had dared to dream. And I didn’t know enough of court politics to be anything but kind to her. Kindness without an agenda wasn’t something Rina had ever experienced before.”
Rina.Shards of mirror glass reflected the darkest corners of my heart back at me.
“What was she like, back then?” I choked out.
“She was a study in contrasts.” Dowser’s gaze grew wings, and flew where I could not follow. “She was stunning, like a portrait painted from someone’s gilded imagination. And yet she was hard to look at, her face an exquisite nightmare because of all the things it hid. She could be soft, and unbelievably hard. Half the people who knew her admired her for her beauty, her fierceness, her inability to keep her mouth shut, her sheer determination. The other half loathed her for the same things. And those who admired her did so from a distance, because to get too close was to glimpse a shadow of the monster living inside us all.”
I shuddered, and tried to look away from the empty shell breathing shallowly on the bed.
“She found her mask, after Seneca died,” Dowser continued quietly. “I thought it was because murdering her greatest love tore away what goodness was left in her, leaving only that deceitful beauty behind. But now you tell me it wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been her—not if she was doing everything in her power to win the Ordeals of the Sun Heir before they even began. To prevent them from happening in order to protect her brother.”
“What if the two aren’t mutually exclusive?” I whispered. I opened Severine’s diary to the last entry—My last sister is free. And I am finally alone with my burden.“She was willing to kill countless half siblings to ensure there would be no one else to compete in the Ordeals. What if she thought the best way to save Seneca from this cruel world was to—to ease his way out of it?”
“No.” Dowser frowned at the words, as though they triggered a memory. “Severine was intense before Seneca’s death, but she only became mad after. Sylvain grew afraid for himself, and for his other children—foryou. He commanded me to spirit you away to the Dusklandswithhis ambric Relic. No—someone found out what she was doing. Someone warned the emperor. Someone else killed Seneca.”
My hand clenched around the sunburst Relic. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” Dowser looked up at me. “Scion, I wish she had taken me into her confidence. Then—or anytime in the seventeen tides I served her. I wish she had told me what she was trying to do, and why she was trying to do it.”
“Would that have made her actions redeemable?”
“No,” Dowser said. “But perhaps, instead of condemning her to death, I could have found a way to forgive her.”
I looked away to hide the tears springing suddenly to my eyes. I had dreamed a thousand different ways Severine’s and my story might have ended. I dreamed of both of us flying far above a bloody plain toward Dominion, and dying among the stars. I dreamed of two swords dissolving into diamond dust as we embraced like sisters in the bosom of dusk. I dreamed of killing her, again and again and again.
But I had never dreamed of forgiving her.
The next day, I waylaid Gavin just past the palais gate leading out into Jardinier.
The Nocturne before, I hadn’t been able to think of anything besides the Oubliettes, the Relics, and the Ordeals of the Sun Heir. And when obsessing over Sun Heirs past and present inevitably led me to thinking about Gavin, I realized that despite our handful of encounters, I didn’t really know my cousin. He’d given me little reason to doubt his demeanor of bright humor and cheerful grace. But when I considered Oleander’s damning narrative about the duplicitous boy who schemed to marry her only to steal her fortune, it was hard not to wonder whether Gavin might be hiding a side of himself he didn’t want anyone to see. Least of all me.
I had a mind to discover his secrets.
His face betrayed surprise when he saw me waiting for him on horseback, Calvet and Karine astride their own steeds behind me. I sat a little straighter in my new split-skirt riding habit—midnight-blue velvet trimmed in violet satin ribbons, with smart suede boots and a jaunty hat to match.
It seemed boring Oleander half to death had its advantages.
“I see my lesson stuck!” He laughed, recovering himself. “Ready for another session?”
“As long as this one doesn’t include a ruined dress.”
He had the grace to look abashed. “I am sorry about that.”
