My guard swears under his breath, sheaths the dagger, and moves to beat me to the door. “Your Majesty,please.”
I ignore him, grab the door handle, and swing it wide.
Quint’s frame blocks the doorway. His back is to me, and he’s facing more than twenty men in the darkness. Four have drawn close, stepping up onto the tiny porch that sits along the front of the house we share. Some have torches, the firelight flickering eerily across their faces.
Some have axes. Some have hammers.
Well then.
I put a hand on Quint’s arm. “Step aside,” I say quietly. “I’ll talk to them.”
At my side, Thorin is practically seething.
I glance at him and murmur, “Are you going to fight off two dozen men by yourself?”
Without waiting for an answer, I step onto the porch myself and look at the people gathered there. “I’m here. Tell me what you mean to tell me.”
There’s a slight ripple of shock, as if they didn’t expect me to come out. Maybe they thought I would run. Maybe they thought they’d have to drag me out.
One of the men on the porch recovers first. I think his name isFrancis. He jabs his ax at me. “Lochlan would’ve attacked the palace already. It’s been over a week. We told Karri that we’re all risking ourselves to protect you, while it seems like you’re just hiding here, eating all our food.”
“Lochlanwouldhave attacked the palace already,” I say. I remember Karri assuring me that Lochlan had a rebel army ready to fight back, but I didn’t realize that it was only anarmyin the loosest sense of the word. There are few real weapons here. Very little real training. “He’d be dead for trying.”
“We did all right the first time,” shouts another man. “We should have killedallthe consuls.”
“You ‘did all right’ because I didn’t want to kill my people,” I say. “I was willing to listen to your demands, as I am right now. I promise that Consul Sallister and the others do not care. If you march on the Royal Sector now, the army will shoot to kill.”
Some of the men glance at one another. Thorin steps out onto the porch and stands behind me.
“How much longer is this going to take?” Francis demands. “Quint said you were sendingletters.” He jabs the ax at me again.
Thorin reaches out and snatches it right out of his hand.
Francis surges forward, and Thorin moves to block me. It’s more aggressive than it needs to be, and I suspect he’s going to shove him right off the porch. Some of the others shift and jostle, but I put up a hand before it turns into a fight.
“Enough,” I say evenly. “Stay civil. You asked to talk to me. Talk.”
“We’redonetalking,” Francis snaps. “We’re here and we’re ready and we’re done waiting.” His hands have formed fists, and he glances between me and Thorin.
And then I realize that the raised voices and torches havedrawn more of a crowd. We suddenly have more than thirty people surrounding the porch. More than forty. There are women and children.
Then I see young Violet near the edge of the crowd. She’s only thirteen. She shouldn’t be here.
I take a slow breath. This was always the problem: the rebels wanted action, they wanted medicine, they wanted things to happenimmediately.
The problem is that anything that happens fast generally doesn’tlast.
“I sent letters,” I say carefully, “because it’s important to know if any of the consuls will still support me. They rule the sectors. If they areallstanding against me, we will have a larger fight on our hands. Before, you had funds and explosives from the Benefactors. Now, you have none of that. We need more people on our side. It does us no good to capture the Royal Sector if Jasper Gold sends more soldiers to take it right back.”
“They’ve stopped giving us the medicine you promised,” Francis says. “You said you were going to help. You said you were going to lead us. This isn’t leading. This ishiding. How do we know they aren’t telling the truth? That you weren’t really poisoning us all?” He leans in. “Maybe we should just take the reward and be done with it.”
“He’s not poisoning us!” Violet calls. She runs forward like she’s going to confront these men herself. “He’s trying! He’s trying to help.”
“Violet,” I begin—but that’s as far as I get before I start coughing again.
When this happens in the palace, I can usually control it, and when I can’t, Quint is rather skilled at distracting whoever isnearby, drawing them to another room or engaging them in conversation. But in the palace I was receiving medicine—alotof medicine—and the coughing was never this strong or this frequent. It never happened when I was quite literally on display in front of this many people.
I want to turn away, but there’s nowhere to go. Every time I inhale, my lungs don’t want to work. Every time I cough, it hurts—and it feels like it goes onforever. When I get to the point where I feel like I’m drowning, my eyes begin to water, and I wonder ifthiswill be the time I don’t recover.
