Hallu nodded. “You and a dragon freed me? That’s whatmother says. I’m grateful. Extremely grateful for the action you took.”
I nodded slowly. This was the first conversation he and I had had about it explicitly, and I realized that since Koque had been keeping him so close, he had never gotten a chance to actually meet Naî.
“Such gratitude is appreciated,” I said. “But it could have waited until morning. Why are you here, Prince Hallu?”
“Did you do it to me? Make me sick? Make me hear voices?” Hallu’s voice was unsteady and he swallowed. “They say that in the north, you can talk to animals, that you practice strange and dangerous magic, which is why it is forbidden. Did you do it so that I will not be my brother’s heir?”
I raised my eyebrows. He might not quite have his mother’s delicacy of speech yet, but he certainly had her ability to see the politics of every interaction.
“No, Prince Hallu. I did not.” I frowned, considering what to say next.
“So you cannot lift the illness permanently from me, the way you freed me from the animalia?” Prince Hallu asked, his voice going soft and quiet.
“No.” I kept to myself we hoped to do just that in Tavornai. There was no sense in scaring the boy even more by telling him we planned to meet another animalia.
“I’m afraid.” Prince Hallu whispered the words. “I can feel myself getting worse. And when I feel sick, the voice is worse. I know it isn’t real, but it feels real.”
“He cannot hurt you.” I hadn’t felt any hint of Centipede when I’d healed Hallu earlier. “He is dead and can no more hurt you than a tale told around a campfire. In the dead of winter, we tell frightening stories in the Silver City. My mother best of all. And not a single one of her tales ever hurt me.”
“There are other ways to be hurt. Centipede spoke inside my mind. If another creature tries to control me, will you promise mesomething?” Prince Hallu looked at me, and in his soft gaze, I saw echoes of his mother. He spoke too bluntly, asked too much, but I could see how carefully he had practiced his words. He had prepared himself to meet me, the man he assumed was the orchestrator of his illness.
“What would you ask of me, Prince Hallu?” I asked. I felt as though I was talking to a young Tallu, before he had fully hardened himself, freezing himself in the role demanded of him. Tallu had wanted to save his brother and save himself in the process. What did Prince Hallu want?
“Will you kill me as my mother killed my father?”
Seven
“My mother will not say, but I hear the servants’ whispers. That my father’s desires were evil.” Prince Hallu looked at me, his gaze unflinching. “I can’t ask anyone else. My mother wouldn’t do it and my brother cannot afford to kill me. But you… you could.” He hesitated, and his pretty language failed him. “I need you to.”
“Prince Hallu,” I said, “I promise that I will take care of you as if you were my own beloved younger brother. But I will not promise to do anything that would makebothyour mother and brother murder me.”
His shoulders slumped, and he sullenly said, “You must. They said northern barbarians murder their children if they aren’t strong enough to survive the winter. I wouldnotsurvive the winter. I am too weak.”
In the corner, Iradîo covered a laugh, the air escaping as a snort.
“No,” I said. “We do notkillour children. Children are as precious in the north as they are here. And I promise to cherish you as I would any new child in the Silvereyes Clan. Now come, your mother will be looking for you.”
I stood, and Hallu did, too, grabbing hold of my arm before I could open the door. “He is truly dead? The creature that controlled me?”
“Yes.” I turned his grip so that I was holding his small hand in mine. “I killed him myself, and a fire dragon burned what was left.”
He ducked his head and shook it violently. “But the illness…”
“I will make sure you live,” I promised, feeling it heavy in my stomach, feeling it like a noose around my neck. “Come.”
The hallway was full of servants, and when they saw me walking with the prince, several rushed away, returning with Empress Koque. She gathered her son in her arms—he was so small it was barely any effort—and nodded her gratitude to me.
“Thank you, Prince Airón. You have done me another undeserved service.”
I tried not to smile at how similarly she and her son spoke. My sister Eonaî had never spoken like our mother, too far into being trained as the future empress to speak with the blunt practicality of the leader of our clan. Was she having to relearn it again now?
How much had my sister changed in my absence?
Iradîo was waiting behind me, and when I turned, her expression looked distant. She had left behind everything, the same as me. Moreover, I hadn’t ever thought about what she had been forced to give up when Eonaî returned, alive, and ready for the throne Iradîo had been promised her whole life.
“What monsters they think we are,” Iradîo said in Northern, her tone mild.
“And what stories did we tell about the Imperium when we were that age?” I asked.
