“What did you all hope to do with me?” Caris asked into the heavy silence, staring at a far spot in the wall, though she wasn’t seeing the intricate wallpaper there. No, in her mind’s eye, she saw a park, with an old throne, and starfire that no wind or rain or wrongful bloodline could ever put out.
“Caris,” Meleri said after a moment.
“Don’tlie to me.”
“The Inferno burned through every royal member and cadet bloodline, eradicating whole families in an attempt to wipe out those magicians with the ability to cast starfire or the genetics to pass it on,” Blaine said.
“Enough,” Meleri said sharply.
Caris ignored her. “My parents weren’t attacked.”
Blaine’s gaze flicked to where her mother sat. “They were newly added to the nobility genealogies with no record of magic in their history. The Blades overlooked them. And you.”
She’d known as she’d grown older just how dangerous it would be if people knew what she could do. Ashion had magicians. Since the Inferno, the country had no one who could cast starfire.
No one except the Crown Princess Eimarille—and Caris.
She looked across the parlor at Meleri, seeing nothing close to guilt in the older woman’s gaze. “Why did you ask me to be your ward while I went to university? Why did you want me to stay?”
Caris wondered if the duchess would lie to her, as she must have all these years. All the moments where she’d sat at the Auclair family table, been included in countless society calls and parties, tagged along on missions for the Clockwork Brigade until she grew old enough to run a few safe ones herself. All of it done with some ulterior motive Caris was only now seeing, here where all the cogs that truly mattered were finally turning together.
“I have never questioned where the North Star guides me, and Aaralyn guided me to you,” Meleri said.
She knew what Meleri fought against. They all did, every last cog in the Clockwork Brigade. They fought against the Daijal court’s encroachment in hope of putting someone other than Eimarille on a throne that had burned every single person who had tried to sit upon it.
Caris carefully pushed herself to her feet, jerking away from Nathaniel’s efforts to aid her. She stood there, barefoot and in last night’s clothes, hair a tangled mess and nowhere near presentable, filled with a sickening sense of hurt that made the pounding in her head laughable.
“I would like to go home, Mother,” Caris said.
Lore’s mouth twisted downward, a hint of guilt in her eyes that was absent in her mother’s. “Caris, please understand—”
“I understand completely, Lady Lore. I understand you and your family think to use me for purposes you have refused to share with me for years. I won’t allow it. Iwon’t.” Caris turned toward her mother, curling her hands into fists. “I wish to leave.”
Portia rose to her feet, reaching for her, and Caris didn’t flinch away from her family. “Of course, my dear. We’ll depart.”
Caris turned her back on the people in the room and the scope of the secrets all tangled around her, holding tight to her mother’s hand. They left the parlor and were halfway down the hallway before the sound of footsteps reached her ears.
“Caris, please wait. Let me escort you home,” Nathaniel said.
“I’m perfectly capable of driving my daughter home, Mr. Clementine,” Portia told him sharply.
Nathaniel came around them in the hallway, holding up both hands in a pleading manner. Caris desperately wanted the concern in his brown eyes to be real. “I didn’t know you were a cog until today, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. I don’t know what I can say to make you believe me, and I know I don’t have the right to press you on the matter, but please. Allow me to give you my sincerest apology for any wrong you feel I may have inflicted upon you.”
Years ago, he’d promised her they would be friends above all else. They’d spent countless hours together discussing engineering and politics and business. Caris wanted to believe he’d meant it, all the attention and laughter and smiles he’d given her while she studied in Amari.
But she couldn’t, and that hurt most of all.
“Please allow us to pass, Mr. Clementine,” Caris said stiffly, falling back on the manners that her mother had drilled into her as a young girl and which the duchess had refined.
Nathaniel’s expression fell, some hint of agony flashing across his face. He hesitated before taking the heavy gold signet ring off his right ring finger. His family wasn’t nobility and had no crest, no peer granted land or title, but the Clementine Trading Company was one of the most successful and richest in the country.
The company’s symbol was etched on the flat gold face of the signet ring. He took her hand and placed the ring in her palm, folding her fingers over it to hide it from view. Nathaniel’s gaze searched hers, and she refused to blink. “All I ask is a moment of your time, however long you will grant me, when you are ready to receive me.”
She stared at him, promising nothing, but she never let the ring go when Portia guided her past Nathaniel and down the hall. They went back to the bedroom that no longer felt like hers despite the years she’d lived in it. Portia found a pair of her shoes and slipped them onto Caris’ feet like she was a little girl and not a twenty-year-old woman whose life was just upended.
Portia touched her fingers to Caris’ cheek, offering up a tight, sad smile. “Let’s go home.”
Caris nodded, because she couldn’t stay here. She was a Dhemlan, not an Auclair, and certainly not anything the duchess and everyone else wanted to believe she could be.
