“I managed well enough today. Forced her to make a fool out of herself.” She laughs harder than her own joke merits.
I pour her another glass. “Why haven’t you married?”
“You want to know something fucked up? The only good thing about Mother and Father being gone is I don’t have to get married. They would have made me if they were alive, but theyaren’t, so they can’t. You and Seth can carry on the family name. I don’t give a fuck about any of that. Although I guess you won’t be getting married anytime soon with Ronan there blocking anyone decent from having a chance.”
I shush her; she’s being loud, and the servants could still be nearby.
I don’t know how long I have until she’s incoherent or passed out, so I decide to try my luck with some of the things I want to know.
“I have some good news,” I tell her. “Ronan is increasing the grain shipments. I told him about our shortages, and he’s promised to send as much as we need to make up for the losses.”
“Oh,” she says. She sways on the edge of the bed. “That’s good. Good news.”
Her delivery is entirely unconvincing. I decide to press on.
“I thought you would want to know. So you can do something about it.”
“What do you mean?” She sits upright, suddenly alert. Is she faking being drunk, or is she just having a moment of lucidity?
It’s such a risk to say what I’m about to say, but I have to know the truth. “I mean that whatever you’ve been doing, you’re going to need to do more of it. To the grain. Whatever scheme you have going, it’s about to get harder.”
I clench my jaw and take a tiny sip of wine through thin-pressed lips, grateful she can’t feel what I’m feeling.
She starts to laugh. Then she stops, and she starts again, pointing her finger at me from around her wineglass. “Well, well, well. Look who’s finally living up to the family name. Even Larus hasn’t worked that one out yet.”
I do my best to appear nonchalant, unbothered by this sudden confirmation. “I figured he didn’t know. Or Typhon. That mustn’t have been easy.”
“You have no idea,” she says. “I’ve had to ride Seth’s ass about it for more than a year. We hire bandits, they send more guards. We let water into the storage, they send more grain. It’s a fucking arms race. But they handed us the opportunity with those rotten shipments, and we couldn’t let it go to waste.”
“It’s a delicate balance,” I say, trying not to let her see my disgust. My horror. “Keeping the people fed enough to fight but hungry enough to want to.” It’s exactly the thought I had when Ronan told me, but deep down, I didn’t believe it.
But it’s true. They did this, my own siblings. They let our people sit on the brink of starvation—let some of them starve—on purpose.
For what?
Revenge?
“Those bandits on the road,” I ask her, piecing something together. The people who attacked us when we were on our way here—she had ordered me to kill one of them when she started talking. “Were they some of yours?”
“Probably. I don’t even know. Seth has one of his men hire them. Fuck, Sylvie, we underestimated you.Iunderestimated you. I thought Larus had made you soft. I hated that you grew up with him. You needed Mother’s grit and Father’s firm hand to guide you. I thought you were a lost cause. But you figured it out, and all on your own. You’re clever. Cleverer than Seth by far. Maybe cleverer than me.”
“Maybe I will be someday,” I say. She takes it as a compliment, but it’s not.
It’s a promise.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ifind Ronan in the dining hall in the morning.
He’s dressed for the hunt: a long tan tunic, sturdy trousers for riding, and heavy boots that almost look Nithyrian. I’m wearing nearly exactly the same thing down to the colors. We make quite a pair, and I’m sure he notices as well because his eyes light up when he sees me approaching his table at the head of the room.
“Your majesty,” I say, remembering to bow this time.
Quinn, who’s seated a few chairs down to his right, coughs a little. My ears heat at the memory of what she walked in on.
“Did you need something?” he asks.
“A word in private before we head to the temple.” We’ll be stopping at the Temple of Sai for a blessing before the hunt begins, but I’m not sure if I’ll be accompanying Ronan, and even if I am, I doubt I’ll be alone with him to give him the news about Hermes.
