She rolls her eyes. “You know you don’t have to thank me, Mira.”
“Andyoudon’t have to help me.”
“It’s my job.”
I pick up a handful of straw and throw it playfully at her. “You’re meant to be a personal maid. This is far beyond your job requirements.”
Sef’s laugh is her only acknowledgment that she knows I’m right. “I think he was faster than the others.”
I smirk. “I fear you’re getting slower. Must be your old age.”
Sef is barely twenty, but she gasps as though offended. “Just for that, Iwillgo to bed now.” She stretches her arms above her head. “Good night, Mira. See you tomorrow.”
She turns to leave—and stops. A stablehand idles in thestall doorway. He’s so shocked to see us, he hasn’t sounded an alarm yet. Now that we’ve spotted him, he finds his voice. “A-are you meant to be here?”
Seeing as it’s the middle of the night, and Sef and I are clearly not stablehands, the answer is obviously no.
I reach for the tshira pendant at my wrist. Cold.Damn. I used magic at Nox’s manor, and then again on our way back to warm the coach for Sef. My trinket is useful, but small—it can only store so much magic at once.
Fortunately, lies are rarely hard to come by.
I nudge my shoulder into Sef’s, and an unspoken understanding passes between us.
Without missing a beat, Sef smiles at the stablehand. “Yes. Of course we are.”
Heat from her lie spreads through me like ink. I don’t take the time to savor the feeling. I rush forward and press a hand to the man’s forehead.
He doesn’t speak. As my magic pierces his mind, his expression drips like melting candle wax. His eyelids droop, body slumps, and anything he might’ve been preparing to say wisps into nothingness. When I’m sure the magic has done its job, I lower my hand.
The stablehand sways on his feet, eyes half lidded and dazed, as though waking from a nap with no idea how much time has passed.
Sef and I slip away while he’s still disoriented.
He won’t remember this interaction. In a few months, echoes of recollection will likely come back to him in his sleep. Since the memory was brief, he’ll probably dismiss it as a strange dream. Longer memories are harder to erase. They require more magic, and even still, over time, stolen memories start to trickle back in.
All aikkari can manipulate heat, tshira, and their magic’s source. For me, that source is deception. In practice, that means I can alter a person’sperceptionof the truth—their memories.
When the smoke clears and the stablehand comes to, he’ll find himself alone in the stables, dizzy and muddled, unsure of what’s just happened. And Sef and I will be long gone.
CHAPTER THREE
GODS AMONG MEN
The Honorate are revered as gods. As such, they must be perfect. Their rules of conduct are practically carved into the mountain. Any missteps—a whisper that they’re not the gods the Republic demands—is a breach of decorum tantamount to treason.
I watch our supposed gods from the rafters. The chamber is only open to the Honorate and their sons, so I observe from the narrow space between the ceiling of the council chamber and the sloping roof of Widow’s Hall. Luc and I discovered this place. We pulled up the wood in the center of the floor and replaced it with a thin layer of tshira. Now, with a touch of my finger and a hint of magic, my floor (the Honorates’ ceiling) becomes translucent as frosted one-way glass.
I painted the walls deep green and the ceiling a midnight blue flecked with golden yellow stars. The floor is littered with glass jars fitted with tshira lids. Half of them are empty, ready to be filled, and the rest are already swirling with red smoke.Magic.
The chamber below my feet is a wide, echoey room with gray stone walls and a deep blue carpet. Pillars of marble line the perimeter, and the dais at the front looms above the twenty wooden benches, one for each of the Honorate. They’re seated and dressed for council in robes of emerald green wool, heavilyembroidered with glittering gold thread. Luc sits at the dais, decked in the Praeceptor’s formal golden robes, reciting the speech I wrote for him.
I wear Honorate robes of my own, spinning around the floor. It’s my favorite part of chamber: dancing on a sheet of ice, dressed in the trappings of power. Here, I can play pretend. That I’m not stewing in anxiety, that I’m untouchable, that my future doesn’t depend on this vote.
I don’t stop spinning until Luc reaches the final paragraph. The fear I’ve been pretending away creeps up my back, and my fingers pluck nervously at a loose thread dangling from my sleeve.
Two aikkari selectmen raise their arms. Trays of tshira rise and swoop, delivering parchment to the Honorate for them to mark “yes” or “no.”
My fingers pluck the thread faster, keeping pace with my heartbeat.
