“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Jessa groans. Astrid heaves herself up and grabs a box of tissues. She gives Jess a watery grin as they wipe their faces, but Jessa can’t quite reciprocate.
“I’m sorry, really,” Astrid says. “For adding to that stress. I’ve been trying to help, not cause you more problems. No more lies from nowon, okay? Though it will mean your future involvement in my dastardly plans.”
“Yay for me.” Jessa discards the tissue and leans back, propping an ankle across her knee. “Go on—you might as well tell me what you found in the king’s office.”
“So all the books in the library about the Heart are missing, but I didn’t find them in the king’s office, either.” Astrid swoops Bastet up off the bed and plonks herself on the floor at Jessa’s feet, him beside her. He harrumphs in protest, then immediately begins purring when she gives his head a scratch. She pulls out the scraps of paper she’d hidden in her pocket and lays them in front of her like a jigsaw puzzle. Bastet sniffs at them.
“But I did find something. He had a fire lit this evening, and you’ve got to ask yourself why someone would light a fire in an air-conditioned room in a city that’s as hot as the inside of a volcano.”
Jessa leans forward, forearms braced on her thighs. “You didn’t?”
“Root around the smoldering wreckage of his fireplace? The blisters on my fingers say yes, yes, I did, and look what I found.”
Arranging the pieces of paper so that they’re facing Jessa, she assembles them into an order that makes some sense despite a lot of the content being burned away. Jessa’s eyebrows draw closer and closer together as she reads.
“It’s a letter to the king from the baroness of Brithan.” Her spring green eyes are bright as they land on Astrid. “Telling him it’s time to do something about the Blight in Vatra.”
THEBLIGHT INVATRA?THE SCOUNDREL, THE CUR!
“Oh, there’s more.” Astrid points to another charred piece of paper with her mother’s name on it. “She was sitting beside Mum at the dinner. They must have spoken about it.” Astrid saves the most illuminating scraps for last. She moves the final few pieces toward Jessa and taps them. Her friend sucks in a sharp breath, then reads aloud, disbelief etched in every word.
“?‘You told us you had a plan to fix the Heart. It obviously isn’t working.’?”
30Skylar
At first light, Skylar slips outside and heads across the grounds. She doesn’t know if everyone will know by now what she is—but it won’t be long, will it? And she’s not ready for it—the fear and disgust she’ll find among the nobles. She wonders what Cam would think if he knew. She’ll get the chance to tell him, she vows.
And I won’t think any differently of you, Lar Lar. You know that.
She does. If there is one person she can trust to stand by her, no matter what, it’s him.
She passes the temple before settling at the cliff edge. It’s the farthest she can get from the castle, given she can’t scale the walls. She sits with her legs dangling over the cliff, staring down at the white froth of the waves. She can feel the low hum of the temple wards behind her, can hear the buzzing of insect life nearby. Could she pull it all into her—drain the nearby life, if she wanted to?
She thinks of the executioner. She wonders what it must be like to kill, repeatedly—to drain person after person, until they are nothing more than husks. She hates that part of her doesn’t recoil at the thought—that part of her craves the power that would come by doing it.
There’s the sound of footsteps behind her, an earthy scent carried on the wind.
“Come to pray to the dragon god?”
She glances up at Axel. “No point anymore, is there?”
To her surprise, he sits next to her, his own legs dangling into nothingness.
“I’ve been chatting to Zryan about your training from now on.”
She sighs. “Great.”
“We have a few things to prepare for, too.”
“Fabulous.”
She sees his mouth quirk at the corners, a subtle smile. “We’ve got the Masked Ball next week.”
“If you tell me I have to learn to dance…”
He laughs a little, shakes his head. “Not that kind of ball—on the whole anyway. It’s more in case you want to go through who will be there, who you want to make time to talk to.”
