“Not alone,” Liana said. “I’ll go with you.”
Darin frowned, and she expected him to call them mad, tell them to go back to the palace and hide behind its walls. But instead, he just nodded. “I’ll send a message to Prince Amril, to let him know what happened and be on the lookout for Roderi and his servants, and remain here with my men.” His eyes lingered for a moment on Amron’s face, and then on Liana’s, and suddenly she was certain that he’d seen Amron’s hand on her back, that he knew what was going on between them. Still, all he said was, “Be careful. Guard each other’s backs.”
A sound, faint as a whisper, made Liana turn her head towards the embassy. All her senses, human and divine, flared up, honed by the years of archery, the long days spent hunting. Somewhere behind the curtain, a divine hand threw the dice.
“Watch out!” she cried and pushed Amron down, throwing herself on top of him.
A volley of arrows rained from the roof of the embassy.
Someone screamed. And when she turned and looked up, her father fell to his knees with an arrow in his chest.
Chapter 24
Melia
There was noapproaching the Seragian embassy, not from the crowded street that led to the main entrance. In the distance, a flash of red and black: her father’s guards spreading rumors and lies, inciting the mob. Ferisa was there, too, poison flowing out of her mouth. The air stank of burning resin and fear.
Melia didn’t want to see the writhing mass of bodies rolling towards the embassy, didn’t want to hear their chanting, didn’t want to feel their rage. She had her own black pit, and if she joined those wretched people, the darkness inside her would explode, swallowing everyone in her way.
No, she was sick of rage and despair.
Abia was a maze of streets, houses, gardens, and courtyards. Melia turned a corner, and then another one. The street was quiet, the windows dark under the pre-dawn sky. Fifty paces or so was probably enough: No street in Abia lay parallel to another, but Melia guessed she was somewhere near the back of the embassy. Most of the houses had nothing but sinister facades and barred gates turned towards the street, but one had a garden wall.
The wall was high, but its stones were rough, with gaps wide enough for her feet to find purchase. She prayed no one would spot her—no nosy neighbors peering from behind the curtains, no late revelers or early birds stumbling upon the improbable sight: a woman in full court dress, blue silk, silver embroidery, white veil with gold pins, climbing over a wall like a thief, her skirts rustling, rough stones snagging the fine fabric.
She hauled herself over the wall and landed on the grass, hoping there were no guards waiting for her. Nothing moved but the leaves gently fluttering in the wind. Somewhere in the distance, the crowd roared. There was a narrow staircase leading up to a terrace with a well. She climbed up: From there she could see the embassy roof. Over another wall, to the terrace of the neighboring house, down the stairs into the courtyard, onto the roof of the stable, and over yet another wall and into the garden of the embassy.
A hand grabbed her as soon as she landed, a cold blade kissing her throat. “What do you want?” a voice whispered in her ear.
She stood very, very still, until her heart stopped beating like mad. “I mean no harm,” she whispered. “Please, I’m unarmed.”
The hand pushed her hard and she fell on the gravel, scratching her palms.
A young guard in the Seragian uniform stood above her, a dagger in his hand. “Is this how you’re trying to sneak in now?” he asked. “How many of you are there?”
“I’m alone,” she said, “and I have important news for the carevna.”
The guard seemed agitated—who wouldn’t be in those circumstances?—but he was trained well enough to listen and look. He must have noticed her dress, her jewelry, her pleading tone.
“I am Princess Melia, Prince Amron’s wife, and I need to talk to the carevna urgently. She knows me. Please tell her I need to see her.”
“Come,” the guard said, his tone noticeably more polite than before. He helped her get up and steered her, holding her elbow, towards a small door in a deep nook.
When he knocked, a small spyhole slid open.
“Princess Melia is here to speak with Her Imperial Highness,” he said.
The spyhole closed.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Melia asked.
“We need to wait.”
She leaned on the wall, trying to clean the dirt from her scratched palms. They burned as she pressed them to the cool silk of her skirt. For some reason, she remembered playing with Rovin when they were very small, running after him and falling, scratching her hands and knees. She wailed then, and she felt like wailing now, not because the pain was great, but because she felt equally helpless and frustrated.
She eyed the guard in the weak light; he was younger than her, growing his first pitiful mustache. And yet, he gripped the dagger like he meant to use it, and she was certain he would have cut her throat had he believed she posed a threat. How weird it was, this readiness to kill a complete stranger for no reason other than following orders.
Would she kill him just because he was a Seragian, an enemy, a soldier bearing the collective guilt for her mother’s murder, for her brother’s death, for her miserable life? Could she hate him?
