“No, you can’t,” she confirms. “It only works from you to me.”
I look down at my body as though it’s betrayed me. It wasn’t enough that they took my face, my name, my entire fucking existence, now my soul, my life, isn’t mine either? She can rip it from me wheneversheneeds it? Agonizing anger crawls through me. Misery is a mire that’s slowly pulling me under, and I know if it does, I’ll never get free.
“So what the fuck is this?” I rasp hollowly as I drag a blade across my forearm, slicing it open.
Neith gasps in pain, her hand snapping to cover a wound that doesn’t exist on her arm. Her skin is intact, her blood safe in her veins, while mine drips to the floor as the moonlight works to stitch my skin together and staunch the flow.
She rubs the sting from her arm. “That, I think, was an accident. From what they told me, nothing about our bond was supposed to work both ways. No one knew I could feel your pain until after you were taken. I wondered if you could feel mine too, but I never knew. You can, can’t you?”
I don’t answer, I just glare. Inside, my mind is racing as I recall the phantom pains I’ve ignored or written off. The ludere was brutal, the training was nonstop. They regularly healed us, but it was easy to dismiss the unexplainable flashes I would get from time to time in an arm or leg. I thought it was nothing more than residual pain, maybe a deep bruise or sprain that the healers missed. But it was her.
A fist tightens around my heart until I feel like it will stop beating at any moment. I want to empty everything out of me, including the tether that’s robbed me of so much and promises to keep taking more. My eyes sting as rancor and desolation fight their way out of me.
“They thought I was sick or that maybe someone had tried to poison me. No one knew why I was suddenly having these unexplainable agonizing episodes. They whipped you a lot in the beginning, didn’t they? Beat you constantly until you couldn’t move, couldn’t even cough up the blood drowning your lungs?” she asks, a knowing ache in her voice, in her tormented stare.
Her words come back to me in an avalanche of comprehension. Her comment about what I’ve gone through and that I can trust her. It didn’t register when she’d said it, that it could be more than some soothing platitude that people offer so your pain doesn’t make them too uncomfortable. Something that allows them to collect all the fucked-up things that happened to you in a neat little box that looks less horrific and intimidating.
Auset,I knowyou’ve been through a lot…
Tears well in my eyes. “You could feel it?” I ask hoarsely. “What they were doing to me all this time…you knew?”
Neith nods once, and the wretched heartache that’s been pooling in her gaze finally spills out with a sob.
A tear slips down my face. I let it fall. Let it spill down my cheek and plummet off my chin to crash to the ground, cast off and alone, just like I’ve been since the moment I woke up in a cage.
The Scorpions and I were all so wrong. Therewasa princess, only I’m not her. I’m just the decoy. A sacrifice my people were willing to make. I’m the forfeit, the offering needed so she could live because the blood in her veins was more important than the blood in mine.
All the questions I had before tonight about family, the Igeeyin, about whether anyone looked for me or held out hope that someday I might find my way back…all of it turns to bitter acid on my tongue. I shake my head, devastated, as loss swarms me like buzzing insects I try to bat away but can’t escape.
None of it matters.
All this time searching and wondering just to find out that Inevermattered. They threw me away. Whoever my parents or my people are, they handed over their baby and decided my worth would forever be tied to a princess’s survival. I was nothing. A contingency plan. Raised to die for a cause, one way or another, because all of it mattered more thanme.
The void I’ve been hoping to understand pulls what’s left of me into its depths because there’s nothing else to fill it. No hope. No roots. No kin. Nothing. My chest and throat grow tight, and I struggle to breathe through the anguish. The abrading grief of finally knowing how little I mattered and how much I’ve suffered because of it scrapes me raw.
“The Igeeyin looked for you when you disappeared,” Neith continues as she wipes trails of sorrow from her cheeks. “There wasn’t a trace. There was no sign of you. No ransom like Faline expected. No hint of who had taken you or why. The Crescents thought you were dead. I was moved here. The village was fortified. New plans were laid out, and then we realized what the bouts of pain actually were. I begged them to look for you again. When I realized that I was feeling pain because you were, I pleaded with them to find you, to rescue you.”
My vacuous gaze snaps to hers, and rage slowly trickles in. “Rescueme, or rescueyoufrom feeling what was happening to me?” I accuse, venom dripping from every word.
“To rescueyou, Auset. I never knew about you until guards were bursting into my room and yanking me out of bed, demanding that we leave because it wasn’t safe. The Crescents were so frazzled that they were discussing things like they forgot I was there. I trusted the Igeeyin. When they said they couldn’t find you, I believed them. When they figured out a way to numb the link, to keep me from suffering the way you were, I was grateful.”
She shakes her head, disappointment and frustration etched in her face.
“I was stupid. It took me time to start seeing things for what they were, to really pay attention to what was going on here. They didn’t want to find you, Auset. You were alive. It didn’t matter that you were suffering; all that mattered was that theirbackup planwas still in place. The Crescents started getting more aggressive with their intentions and actions. They annihilated a whole clan who’d been loyal because Lord Daeral questioned Faline one time. I didn’t know until Lutyn and I overheard two guards bragging about it. My eyes are open now, and I’m trying to figure out how to fix everything that Faline and the Crescents are destroying. She has a stranglehold on the Igeeyin, and I’m trying to peel her fingers from their throats without getting them or me killed.”
“So you’re not planning a war?” I challenge, as I finally place all of the clues together.
“They are,” she confesses. “I’m not.”
“And exactly how does that wor—”
I’m interrupted when the door to her room flies open. I spin as alarm kickstarts my heart.
“Princess, you sneak!” a strong blond male accuses as he walks in. “Tayim just told me you went into town without me. I’m hurt.”
The male looks up from the bottle of spirits he’s holding in one hand and the two glasses clutched in the other. His bright green eyes level me with an admonishing look, one that loses its chastising bite because of the cheeky smile that accompanies it.
“I heard you were found drinking with three devastatingly handsome fae. Tell me everything…”
