“No, them being true makes them true.” I cocked my brow at her, making her scoff.
“If you get rid of the king, the danger may be gone.” She suggested softly despite the hard look in her eyes. “You’ve had to spend your life hiding, but think of the good you could do if you could take back what rightfully belongs to you.”
I nearly laughed at the thought.
“You think the new High King Carnelian will give one single shit about my sob story?” I shook my head at her. She wasn’t usually so naive. She’d taughtmebetter, for fuck’s sake.
“I think you can use this opportunity,” She stressed, grabbing my chin forcefully and pulling my face toward hers so I was incapable of looking away. “Be smart, like I taught you. These nobles aren’t the only ones who can be devious. Don’t let this fancy Ruby lord walk all over you. He needs you. Find the power within that.”
Find the power, she says. Like I hadn’t had all power ripped away from me, along with everything else.
“But you can’t live for only vengeance, Jacinth.” She added tiredly, eyes beginning to slip closed once more. “Just as diamond is ground into dust to become something new, vengeance will break you just the same.”
Chapter Five
Jacinth
Nightmares always found me when I slept. It was an inevitable part of my life, making me dread every night when I closed my eyes and went to sleep. Outside the typical danger that came with lying your head down on a street in some dodgy neighborhood, the nightmares were what I always feared most.
It was always the same thing. Always the same guard shaking me awake and shushing my questions before pulling me up and into his arms. A dead little girl with a head of hair only a shade lighter than mine dropped by his hand into my bed. A little girl I instantly recognized as my cousin, Peony.
The horrified cry that left my mouth was insanely smothered by his hand, as he raced out of the door and through the halls, passing into the main room where my family usually gathered. By the light of the moon, I could tell it was only an hour or so since I’d gone to bed, and my parents, along with my aunt and uncle, should still have been there.
And they were, in a fashion. I’d twisted my head and thrown up when I realized what I was seeing. The blood splattered over the walls. The dead eyes of everyone who loved me looking back. I felt like I’d been ripped in half. I had never known pain before, not really. A stubbed toe, a hairbrush pulled too harshly through my hair.But this?
This was pain that ripped through you and incinerated the person you once were in its wake.
I’d fought my way out of the guard’s arms and raced to my father, his usually vibrant pink eyes lifeless and staring at where my mother’s body was slumped against the wall. I ran a shaking hand over his hair as I struggled tocatch a breath, afraid to touch him and make all of it real. Like the nightmare might end and let me wake if I didn’t prove it true.
I’d tried to crawl to my mother then, reaching my hand to her with tears streaming down my face in torrents I didn’t even know my body was capable of producing—that it hadn’t before or since that day. My mother’s usually shining eyes were so blank, her expression so slack, and her curly hair was matted with blood where her head must have been bashed with something.
I ached to grasp her hand, her own still extending out toward my father even in death. I could almost pretend she was reaching for me, ready to pull me into her arms one last time.
But then voices echoed from the hall, and the guard grabbed me back up, despite all of my kicking and flailing as he tore me away. I tried to scream for my family, grief and pain like I’d never known making a home in my heart, but a hand over my mouth stopped any noise before it could escape. The guard raced with me in his arms to a nearby closet door, sticking me inside and telling me to hide—and then once the opportunity came, to run as fast and as far as I could.
I only realized then that I knew this guard. In my shock, I hadn’t registered who it was, but now I recognized it was Cor, the guard who usually watched over me and who had been for as long as I could remember. He’d play with me when I demanded a tea party, and help me sneak around the castle to steal sweets or play outside when I was supposed to be at lessons.
He’d shut the closet door, and I wanted nothing more than to pull him back in with me, to keep someone familiar by my side. But I knew Cor was a loyal guard, and his actions only proved that tenfold. He would never hide when he could defend.
I’d watched through a small hole in the wall while a man wearing a black mask entered the room. Cor drew his sword, and the ensuing fight was hard to follow. All I could remember was watching in horror as his body was cut down and added to the piles around the room. Yet not before he took the man down with him.
He’d given his life to save mine. And noweveryonewas truly gone.
I’d smothered my own screams, forcibly keeping my lips pressed together and holding both hands over my mouth. When more masked men came, I’d made myself listen, even while shaking in the small, dark space. Somehow knowing, despite being all of ten years old, that it would be important.
Their words stuck with me even fifteen years later.
“The girl’s dead, looks like Aron got her before he got cut down.” One of them chuckled, and I realized with a cold pit in my stomach that he was talking about me.
“Good, we can’t have any of Marit blood left to claim Pearl.” Another spoke in a gravelly voice. “He’ll be pleased, at least. The first step to getting lords he can truly trust in place.”
One of the others chuckled, “All hail the High King.”
Later, I heard the gossip about what had happened. A robbery gone wrong, they all said. Only I knew the truth. That High King Azurill had killed my entire family, all to clear the way for another lord he could trust in their place. I didn’t know why he thought my family couldn’t be trusted, but I knew that they weregood. And the king had proven with this act of cold-blooded murder that he was decidedlynot.
Waking up, the nightmare felt especially vivid. The knowledge that today was the day was clearly affecting me. I would finally come face to face with the monster responsible for the destruction of my entire family, of my entirelife, today.
I reached for my wrist, lightly touching the silver bracelet dotted with pink pearls and accented by diamonds. My parents had given it to me for my birthday only a few weeks before they’d been killed. It had been passed down in my family for generations, and they thought I was now old enough to respect its history and take care of it.
