“So,” I prompted gently. “After the night you stole the sword…”
“Almoststole the sword,” Varian corrected with a bitter smile.
“After the night youalmoststole the sword and my sister was captured, I had a visitor. We were fighting in the flatlands, just north of Lake Moor. We had the whole eastern flank of the Caladrius army on the run. We thought we might actually win the war.”
“You got news…while you were fighting on the front lines?” Varian’s eyes narrowed. “Foot soldiers don’t getnews, Lyrae; even I know that.”
“This soldier did.” My stomach was churning, threatening to reject the dinner I’d just wolfed down. “The Oracle showed up in my tent that night. A grunt’s tent. A nobody’s tent. I figured I was as good as dead the second I saw her, but she came to tell me my sister was scheduled to die the next morning in the Tempeste main square. Hung as a thief forstealing from the king himself. But I could save her, if only I agreed to her terms.”
She’d crept out of the darkness like a spider, every movement jerky and unnatural, with her blackened teeth and her whispered lies. In her hand was the ring on my finger and a lock of my sister’s pale hair, and that was all it took to bend me to her will.
So little, I thought.
So little it took to convince me of a lie. So little to turn me into her puppet.But then again, I was too broken to know what the truth even looked like any more, too full of hate to care.
“She blackmailed you into becoming her spy.” Varian quickly pieced the clues together, his face hardening into a mask of fury. “I knew none of what happened with that sword was right. Someone wanted to get their hands on Ariel the whole time.”
“That’s how I’m figuring it went down, too.” I sagged against the pillows. “But weeks after the Oracle bound me with her mark, after she trapped me…she informed me Ariel had been taken to the gallows and hung. Claimed she tried to get Ariel released, but…my sister had stolen from the Fae King and even an Oracle couldn’t change his mind.”
“Ariel’s alive, Lyrae,” Varian said quietly. “Shehasto be.”
“How can you be so sure?” I didn’t know what kind of twisted hope made me ask that, but I had to know why Varian had never given up hope, when I had.
“Because…” He stretched his neck, lined with rings of dirt, and that was when I realized he was still in his filthy coat, still soaked to the skin from where he dragged me from the icy water. Not only that, but the fire brought out the shadows under his eyes, the way exhaustion clung to him.
“Because someone saw her in that carriage. And becauseI refuse to believe she’s dead, Lyrae. And until I see Ariel’s body, I’ll keep refusing.”
“As much as I wish you were right, you can’t will someone alive, Varian,” I said gently. But this was so like Var, this unshakeable faith in an idea, and somehow, it made me feel better, knowing like me, he had a hard time accepting the truth.
Because if Ariel was alive, if the Oracle’s scheme was nothing but smoke and mirrors, my sister would have found me by now. And the fact that she hadn’t…well, I suppose the fact I hadn’t seen Ariel for a hundred years answered that question.
I reached out and rubbed my thumb from the corner of his mouth across his hollowed cheek, wiping off the smear of blood from Rooke’s fist, a fresh swell of anger rattling around in my chest.
“Take that soaking wet coat off and warm up.” I patted the bed, feeling weird, but not as weird as knowing my oldest friend was cold and wet and miserable.
“I hate being dirty,” he grumbled. “And wet.”
“Oh, I remember.” I grinned. “You were the cleanest street rat I ever knew.”
“No sense in wallowing in the very filth you’re trying to rise above.”
“And you always came up with the best sayings, too,” I teased, watching him drop the jacket, peeling off an equally filthy shirt before sitting down on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots. Then he stretched himself out beside me with a grateful sigh, long and lean and muscled, jaw darkened by a few days of stubble.
“Fuck, that feels good.” Var slid me a sideways look. “I’m not meant for living rough anymore, either, just so youknow. I still have a crick in my neck from that lumpy chair at the tavern.”
“Try sleeping on the hard-as-nails floor. What a nightmare.” I fluffed up a pillow and jammed it behind his head. “Be glad you didn’t end up with bedbugs.”
“I should have made that bastard get up, but I pretty much passed out the second you blew out the candle.” Varian’s gaze sharpened. “I should take a look at your shoulders, make sure you’re healing. Fuck knows what’s in that water.”
“You really are a worrywart, aren’t you?” I griped, but this was nice, having him fuss over me. Even Anaria and Torin treated me like I was just another soldier, when it would be nice if they remembered I wasfemale, every once in a while.
“What about you? I didn’t just get punched in the face downstairs by my supposedally.”And Kaden Rooke would get some payback for that, I swore, as I reached out and brushed my fingers over the dried blood on Varian’s face, framed by blond, still-wet hair.
“I’m fine.” The smile that twisted his lips took me back to a time when I would have believed him unquestioningly. “Just let me look at those wounds, make sure you didn’t cut yourself going through the ice, then you can sleep for the next two days straight.”
Still, he didn’t move a muscle, waiting for me to give him the go-ahead.
“Fine. See for yourself.” I swept my hair over my shoulder and pulled down the neckline of the shirt. “All healed up, thanks to you. That salve made all the difference, and I never even thanked you.”
