“I do appreciate your company. I’m afraid I’d grow rather bored if I never did anything away from my aunt while I was here.” Jade took a sandwich and a cup of lemonade, preparing to dive in to her line of questions.That was enough for pleasantries; she wanted to cut right to the chase. “I’m surprised you’re still going about your regular activities considering what’s happened.”
Marguerite paused with a sandwich nearly to her lips, her eyebrows drawing together. “Whatever do you mean?”
Jade leaned close to the table and lowered her voice, her eyes round. “I overheard the staff at my aunt’s estate speaking about a man who just died that was connected to one of the members of the royal family. Apparently he’s the fourth or fifth person associated with the royal family who’s died suddenly in the last few months.”
“Oh, that.” Marguerite’s expression relaxed, and she took a bite of her sandwich. As she chewed, she shook her head. “That’s nothing to do with us.”
Jade sat back with her hand over her heart, giving the appearance of relief and hiding her surprise at how nonchalant Marguerite was. Even if she didn’t personally know any of the people who had died, she acted as though Jade had simply told them she was concerned it might rain later. Actually, that might have affected her more.
“Arabella’s lost two supporters.” Alanna’s brow furrowed as she spoke, her voice laden with concern. At least she appeared to have a shred of decency. “It’s intentional—it has to be. All part of this blazing conflict they have going on trying to claim the throne.” She bit out her last words, then released a heavy sigh before turning to her plate.
“But none of us appear to be the targets,” Marguerite added casually. She could have been discussing the outcome of a tennis match. “Whatever’s happening seems to be aimed at those providing some kind of support to those in the conflict, not those of us in the royal family ourselves.”
A small smile curved Jade’s lips as she mimicked Marguerite’s indifferent air, following their cues to mold her character to their liking. “Well, that’s reassuring.”
She took a bite of her tomato sandwich as she considered the difference between Marguerite’s and Alanna’s reactions. Alanna disapproved of the conflict, and Jade itched to know why. Perhaps she hated how it divided her family, or the death following in its wake unsettled her, or she felt glossed over by both her father and her sister. As much as Jade wanted to pursue that line of questions, she had other things to learn first.
“Has it hurt Arabella much?” Keeping her voice light, Jade directed the question at Alanna, whose eyes flew up to meet Jade’s. “To lose these people who have been helping her?”
Alanna nodded soberly. Jade saw in her eyes that she was preparing her words carefully. She knew more than she let on. “Yes. They had become her friends, you know. And they were a great deal of help to her.”
“This last one was one of Marchand’s people.” Marguerite cut in as if spreading gossip, eliminating any possibility for Alanna to continue or Jade to reply. A passing thought tickled Jade’s mind that Marguerite might have done so on purpose, though she continued to behave as if nothing was out of the ordinary, even rolling her eyes before she spoke again. “I can’t understand how Marchand remotely believes he has a claim. He married Elodie just to use her to pursue the throne, you know.”
Jade gasped. Though she feigned shock, her disgust was not an act. Robert Marchand had never explicitly said as much, but the circumstances surrounding his quick marriage to the twenty-three-year-old royal and his immediate pursual of the crown spoke volumes. An earl who was twice her age, Marchand had had no apparent interest in marriage until the king fell ill and the conflict began. He used Elodie’s status as the granddaughter of the firstborn daughter of previous monarchs to stake his claim. After that generation, the law of succession was changed to grant either male or female firstborns the succession. Marchand argued that Elodie’s grandmother’s line therefore should be the true line of succession.
Aside from seeking the throne of Marran, one of Lord Marchand’s interests was in the collection of plants. He had no green thumb of his own,it was said, but he had a hired a full staff of skilled gardeners to make his gardens the most spectacular of the kingdom. His greenhouse was said to be a jungle in and of itself, full of the most exquisite plants from across their continent. When the military first tied the murders together with the use of rienevoir, they did a thorough search of Marchand’s greenhouse for the two plants that combined to make the poison but came up empty.
“And these others who think they have a claim are simply lying to themselves,” Marguerite continued. “They won’t get anywhere. I’m honestly surprised they’ve kept it up for this long. It’s a waste of time and resources, if you ask me. It will come down to Arabella and my father, in the end.”
Jade took the time to finish a bite of her sandwich, then keeping up as causal an air as possible, asked, “And you both think Lady Arabella will succeed, yes?”
“Oh, of course,” Marguerite replied as Alanna nodded. “Not that my father won’t make a good show of it. He already has. But Arabella isn’t the type to bow to someone’s wishes. Plus, she’s in the true line of succession.”
Jade brought her cup of lemonade to her lips, considering her next words and gauging the conversation. Alanna and Marguerite appeared to not mind the subject, though Alanna gave off a slight impression of being on the defensive. Why she would have to be on the defensive when they both agreed her sister would ultimately be the victor, Jade couldn’t say. It might have something to do with her father.
“But your father should take the throne first?” It might have been risky, posing the question to Alanna so pointedly, but Jade wouldn’t get anywhere if she wasn’t willing to take a little risk.
Alanna’s fingers danced on the cup in her hands. “Yes, he is next. And he still may.” She paused for a moment, her chest rising with an inhale. “But Arabella is doing something no one else is: she’s appealing more to the people of the kingdom. Part of the work of her supporters, including the men who were killed, is to get within their communities and share what Arabella’s rule would be like compared to our father.
“As I’m sure you determined at the dinner, Arabella doesn’t believe in upholding the execution law for magic-wielders. She’s been met with some controversy on that front, so she’s suggested an alternative means of ensuring they pose no threat. It puts her in a stark contrast to both our father and Lord Grannam, who both insist on continuing with the law.”
Alanna took a sip of her drink, effectively ending her speech, but Jade could fill in the blanks with the letter she had found in Grannam’s war room. Arabella had condemned the kingdom’s practice of killing magic-wielders. If not for seeing Arabella’s reaction at dinner, in front of primarily the royal family, Jade might have believed Arabella was pandering to the people. None of the royals had ever truly cared for the lives of commoners before. At least, they’d never shown it. The practice of capturing and killing magic-wielders had all but proven that.
What did Arabella plan to do with sorcerers and sorceresses otherwise? The people of Marran had been told for over fifty years they were too dangerous to be left alive, and their fear of magic-wielders had driven them into hiding for longer than that. It was one’s “civic duty” to report any magic-wielders one came across. Jade’s stomach twinged as she remembered the day she had failed to do so—chosennotto do so.
The king had recently fallen ill, and the contenders for the throne had begun to make themselves known. She was on simple espionage missions to determine the various contenders’ motivations and goals. That day, Jade surveilled outside of an office in Tourrine where the estate manager for one of the lesser royals seeking the throne was meeting with a counselor to discuss the estate’s assets. Jade had come across a girl in the street struggling under the weight of a basket of food. She didn’t need to deviate from her mission, but Jade told herself that coming to the aid of the girl would help her blend in more. She approached the girl and asked if she could carry the basket for her.
The girl accepted Jade’s help, and when Jade asked where she was trying to get to, she pointed toward the end of the street. A subtle glow emanatedaround the girl’s hand, almost like the haze of heat on a brutal midsummer day. The girl whipped her hand down to hide her aura, the uncontrolled manifestation of her magic, but it was too late. Jade had seen it.
They shared a look that told Jade they both knew exactly what had happened. This girl, no more than eight or nine years old, had likely recently come into her magic and hadn’t mastered control of it, the strain of the basket’s weight drawing it to the surface. It was believed that the older and more experienced a magic-wielder became with their magic, the less the aura would slip or even show when magic was being used. But children, new to the magic between the ages of eight and eleven, often struggled to suppress their auras.
The girl’s eyes widened like those of a trapped animal searching for an escape, but she said nothing. In that moment, Jade had been forced to decide. Since she was undercover and couldn’t apprehend the girl herself, she had to alert a city guard, who would take the girl straight to the holding center where children with magic were essentially raised for slaughter.
Jade couldn’t condemn this girl to that fate, to wait in a cell for years until she was old enough to die. She was her parents’ daughter, after all. She would make the same decision they had.
So Jade followed in the direction the girl had pointed, carrying her basket of food to a pastry shop at the end of the street. The girl kept in step with Jade, as silent as death the whole time, the wrinkle in her brow curious.
Two guards stood on the other side of the street, chatting casually. Outside the pastry shop, Jade handed the basket back to the girl and wished her well. The girl craned her neck to look at the guards behind her before turning back to Jade and swallowing hard. “Thank you,” she had said, barely even a whisper. Jade had smiled at the girl before turning back toward the office that was the focus of her mission.
