After a long prickling pause, I hear her familiar voice. One whispered word that rips through me like an arrow.
“Yes.”
Forty-Six
I don’t realize I’m sobbing until Alaric’s fingertips graze my cheek, wiping my tears. But even that small movement is too much. His face contorts, and his body.
“Shh,” I murmur, trying to hold him steady. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
But he has to know it’s a lie.
“I’m so sorry, Indira,” Delphine babbles as she steps up beside me, still wearing my cloak. It’s charred at the hem, so is the tail of her golden braid, and several angry pink burns dot her forearms. But she’s alive.
Because I saved her.
Because I thought she was my friend.
“I didn’t want to betray you—not after meeting you—but I didn’t have a choice.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice? Of course you had a choice!” I explode, even though, deep down, I know she didn’t. I would have done the same thing in her shoes—whatever it took to protect my sister.
I round on Rowenna. “Why did you target an innocent girl like Cloudia? How did you do it? If you can plant false memories into anyone’s mind, why not attack Soren or Alaric directly? Wouldn’t it make more sense to take control of Vanzador and their power to move the earth that way?”
“Because Soren and Alaric wouldn’t let me get close enough to stick them with a needle. And in order for the hallucinations to linger like a memory, the person must bekeptin a drug-induced state. It would have been rather suspicious if the rulers of Vanzador suddenly couldn’t get out of bed. I needed to come at this from an unexpected angle, and I knew you’d befriend our sniveling maid and feel compelledto help her ailing sister. I also knew you were more likely to believe the worst about your lover”—her upper lip curls as she looks down at Alaric—“if proof of his crime came from a ‘credible’ source—like a friend’s beloved sister. Especially if her ‘memories’ had proven truthful before.”
“Listen to yourself!” I say with disgust. “All these lies and manipulations! This isn’t who you are.”
“This isexactlywho I am, who I’vealwaysbeen! I’m not the one who’s changed, Indira. I’m not the one who wants an alliance with our oppressors over freedom for our people outright. Cloudia will be perfectly fine once I stop the injections.”
Delphine staggers back, as if slapped. “You said she’d need an antidote! One you’d only provide if I upheld my end of the bargain.”
Rowenna smirks. “I couldn’t have you running off with your sister before our work was finished.”
“Well, now it is.” Delphine dumps a heavy satchel at my sister’s feet. “Supplies for your journey back to Tashir. Von Nevus is waiting at the base of the mountain with horses. I pray to the gods of rock and stone I never see you again.”
“Von Nevus is in on this too?” I sputter. “You’re bringing him back to Tashir?”
Rowenna shrugs. “I told him he could be my king regent in exchangefor his assistance.”
“You’d lethimrule alongside you?”
Ro shrugs again. “Anyone will do, becauseno onewill be ruling alongside me.”
She picks up the satchel, which looks identical to the ones Alaric and I filled with bagrava. That’s the real reason Delphine helped us carry them up the mountain, so she could hide Rowenna’s provisions in among the others.
I have to be here.That’s what she said, and fool that I am, I assumed she meant shewantedto be here to support me. Not that she physically had to be present because she was being blackmailed.
“I wanted to tell you so many times.” Delphine blinks at me through watery eyes. “I wanted to stand up to Rowenna and refuse to cooperate. But Icouldn’t. I had to think of Cloudia. It’s like I told you from the very beginning—there’snothingI wouldn’t do for my sister.”
I don’t tell Delphine it’s okay or that I forgive her, because I don’t. But I do nod once in understanding because I said the same things—came here under the same pretenses.
“You can go,” I tell her. “Return to the Fortress and Cloudia. My sister won’t bother you anymore.”
She studies me, tears streaming down her face, and for a minute, I think she might choose to stay—choose to help me, to atone for her betrayal and prove our friendship wasn’t a complete lie. But then Delphine lowers her head and sprints back toward the caves without looking back.
Pain carves through me like a red-hot poker, almost as unbearable as the moment I learned of Rowenna’s “death.” At least she was ripped away from me unwillingly.
Delphine ischoosingto abandon me.
