It always comes back to the seeds-forsaken bagrava.
Furious tears trickle down my cheeks, and I wipe them roughly on the back of my wrist, wishing I could go back to before I was a master gardener, before the Marauders became addicted to bagrava, before Earth Mother blessed my people with the miracle in the first place, and stop her from creating the plant altogether. It would have been better for my ancestors to perish on the Tomb Flats than for Earth Mother’s gift to be twisted and misused like this.
“How?” I snap. “How, pray tell, do you use asoil conditionerto alter people’s memories?”
Rowenna lifts one shoulder in an innocent shrug. “The idea came to me during the interminable hours I spent in Queen Tessa’s salon, watching them sip their purple tea and float away from reality. I started to wonder if their hallucinations could be molded. If, perhaps, the bagrava made their minds malleable enough to plant ideas or make suggestions. So I started experimenting and eventually discovered itispossible to alter memories if a high concentration of bagrava is injected directly into the bloodstream.”
“You’ve beeninjectingthe bagrava?” I ask, aghast. “Into whom? Do you know how dangerous that is?”
Rowenna waves a dismissive hand. “It doesn’t cause lasting damage. Just a little sickness that subsides as soon as the injections cease.”
“How could you possibly know that? How many people have you experimented on? And why? I still don’t understandwhyyou felt the need to fake your death!”
“It’s the only way I could carry out my plans,” Rowenna snaps back. “I didn’t come to Vanzador just to wear glittering dresses and prance around fancy salons. I came to dismantle it from the inside out. I tried to ingratiate myself with my new husband and the royal family, butthey wouldn’t let me in. So I attempted to weasel my way into their government, certain I’d find weaknesses to use against them. And I did. But I couldn’t take advantage of Soren’s weaknesseswithoutcompromising the security of Tashir. Eventually, I realized stealing his power and harnessing it myself was the only way forward.”
I nod because I knew my sister’s silly simpering and prancing about with the courtiers had to be an act. “Keep going.”
Rowenna’s eyes narrow with annoyance—unused to taking orders from anyone. Especially me. “I easily uncovered most of Vanzador’s secrets—like the memory sacrifices that fuel Soren and Alaric’s power and the resulting hospitals full of dying people. I was elated to learn Vanzador was slowly destroying itself, but I still needed a way to maintain the protective mountain range around TashirwithoutSoren or his son. So I started scouring the library for more information about their power and eventually came upon Callahan’s journal and the mysterious mention of blood, flesh, and bone. And thanks to our husband’s fondness for reliving the past, I discovered they were gemstones. But I couldn’t figure out where they were kept. There aren’t royal coffers or a vault of any kind on the mountain, and despite being a model wife and acting like a perfectly brainless courtier, Soren and Alaric remained as aloof and impenetrable as the Fortress walls.”
“Because we knew what you were all along,” Alaric says “A wolf isstill a wolf, even cloaked in wool.”
“Will you please hurry up and die so I don’t have to endure your insufferable company?” Rowenna snarls at him.
“I’ve suddenly recovered my will to live,” Alaric bites back, but his words slur, and the effort makes him wince.
“Good luck with that.” Rowenna looks him up and down pointedly.
Alaric does look terrible: sunken, blood-spattered, and paling by the second. If I don’t staunch the bleeding and get him to a healer soon, there will be no prayer of saving him.
Rowenna proudly continues her recollection. “When it became clear I was never going to find the gemstone triad on my own, I decided to stage my death—implicating Soren and Alaric, of course—so I could bring in someone more unassuming and earnest. Someone easily overlooked, who could worm into the royal family and Soren’s political operations without suspicion.”
“Someone like me,” I say flatly.
“Don’t say it like a bad thing!” Rowenna chides. “You’re precisely what we needed—someone naïve and idealistic who had something to offer in return. Something Soren wanted so badly, he might let down his guard and lower his defenses to attain it.”
I force myself to laugh to keep from crying.
Even Rowenna was using me to get to the bagrava. Its roots are so entangled with mine, I don’t know where the plant ends and I begin. I don’t know if anyone has ever actually cared formeor if I’ve only ever been a means to an end—a host for this parasite that’s slowly killing me.
I shake my head as another realization dawns. “Youtold Soren I was a master gardener! Not Mother or Father.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal.” Ro waves me off. “I let your secret slip to Elodie—that girl’s never been able to keep her mouth shut. I had to ensure Soren would bring you here. I couldn’t trust anyone else to follow the breadcrumbs I laid. Only someone who knew me, inside andout, would be perceptive enough to carry out my plans.”
Ro grins as if this is all a grand compliment, but I hear the opposite. She needed someone mindless and codependent. Someone she could easily use and manipulate, who would follow her orders without question.
A pawn. A soldier.
Pain spreads through my chest like a blight, devastating and all-consuming. Just when I think it can’t get any worse, Alaric casts me the most empathetic look. Like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. How deeply these revelations hurt me.
His kindness is even more unbearable than Rowenna’s confession.
“Once you were here,” Ro continues, oblivious to my devastation, “I planted clues—like the carvings in our maid’s chamber and the zinnia in Callahan’s journal. Little things that would prompt you to look for the gemstones and people who might be able to help you locate them, like Elodie Tomasko and Garitt Von Nevus.”
The sound of the councilor’s name scrapes my ears like iron dragging across rock, waking something primal and ferocious within me. “Garitt Von Nevus was the opposite of helpful! He tried to assault me because of an arrangement he supposedly had withyou. Please tell me you didn’t sell yourself like that—and knowingly endanger me.”
Rowenna blows out an exhausted breath. “He isn’tthatbad. Sometimes leaders must pay a small price in exchange for—”
“My body isn’t a small price!” I shout even louder. “Just as staging your death isn’t a small lie!”
