Jules’s eyes widen. She presses her lips together, falling silent.
I frown suspiciously between the two of them. “Why should that matter? Kaidren doesn’t have a tattoo.”
There’s a long, awkward pause.
“Yes, I know.” Jules breaches the tension with a breathy chuckle. “I meant for other Opherans. Not Kaidren.”
She’s an awful liar. The flare of magic in my gut only confirms what I can already see with my own eyes. She’s lying about Kaidren’s tattoo.
Jules rushes on, clearly hoping to distract me. “I’ll never understand wanting to leave Ophera. Everyone who travels up the mountain ends up a worse person.” She blinks, realizing who she’s talking to. “No offense.”
“None taken. You think life is better here?”
“I think here will never improve if everyone abandons it. It’s better to elevate where you are, rather than to look down your nose from the top. Virdei told us there were gods in the sky and built their way into the clouds, all so they could claim their kingdom on the mountain makes them godlike. I read the Shadow Queen’s columns. The Honorate are far from gods. They are liars and cheats. Why should I want to be anything like them?”
My fork idles over my next bite. I wasn’t expecting to like Kaidren’s aunt.
She’s still speaking. “If you ask me, they’re going to get what’s coming to them. They poisoned our water so we could never compete—”
“Wait.” I stop her. “What did you say?”
“They poisoned our water,” she repeats.
Kaidren sighs. “That’s just a myth, Jules.”
Jules ignores him and addresses me. “You never heard?”
“I heard that Petruvia always claimed Virdei cut off their access to drinking water,” I say.
Jules scoffs. “That’s a mild way of putting it. They poisoned it. When Virdei built their kingdom in the mountains, they had more magic than neighboring nations. There were more aikkari born in Virdei than anywhere else, but forming a military takes time, and they weren’t making theirs fast enough to stave off invaders. So, they poisoned the stream at the base of the mountain. Ophera and Petruvia’s drinking supply was sullied. It killed thousands, left Virdei with more aikkari than the rest, and gave them enough time to build up their army.”
Silence reigns around the dinner table.
In all my years of listening through walls, I’ve never heard of such an awful rumor. “What did Virdei use to poison them?”
“Something called kishori.”
The same poison that killed Arliss Vale. “I don’t know if that’s true,” I say after a pause. “But I hate Virdei too.”
Jules looks surprised. “Truly?”
“What’s to like? It’s cold and gray, and the people are cruel.”
Julissa and Kaidren have both stopped eating. Kaidren looks the most shocked by my words. “You almost sound sincere.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” I stab another potato with my fork to give my hands something to do. “Guess you’ll never know.”
There’s a few more seconds of terse silence before we resume dinner.
I don’t know if I’ll ever figure out whether Kaidren has an ulterior motive for making me eat with them. The three of us talk and laugh and tease each other for over an hour. Even though there isn’t enough for a second helping, even though I don’t trust Kaidren and he doesn’t trust me, it’s the first meal I’ve had in years I actually enjoy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
STARHEADED FOOL
Kaidren sits next to me in the sky cart as we journey back up the mountain. Neither of us speaks for so long, I think we’re going to pass the entire hour without exchanging a word.
Finally, he turns toward me. Our knees are so close, they brush. I feel the heat of him through layers of wool. It travels up my leg and spreads through me like a furnace. “Was this your first time in Ophera since your mother?”
