Tiyung is still alive in Idle Prison. That’s a relief, especially given Euyn’s latest moral failing. Ty increasingly looks like the only viable option we have for the throne. He was the one who wanted to spare the barmaid and her father in Oosant, reasoning that they were not directly involved with Sora’s kidnapping. That is far better than a man who is willing to condone genocide so that we don’t have to pay tribute. A man willing to let Sora believe her parents sold her for coin.
But I forget my thoughts of Euyn when I notice the second envelope is red, meaning it’s also from the palace. Zahara must have sent an eagle after the first one. I wonder what was so urgent. I brace myself to read that Tiyung has died and that yet again I’ll need to formulate a new plan.
I decode the letter.
She is ashes
I lean on the counter, the wind knocked out of me. My hands dig into the wood, and the horizon tilts. I open my jacket for air, but it doesn’t help. It still feels like I’m suffocating. Like invisible hands are pressing on my throat and chest.
“Are you all right?” the woman asks in Khitanese.
I nod. But I am not. I have to gasp through jagged breaths. I struggle not to cry for a girl I’ve never met.
She is ashes.
Daysum is dead.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tiyung
Idle Prison, Yusan
I survive my first sleep with a cellmate. Ailor didn’t try to kill me, which, frankly, I find a little strange. I suppose he is actually a prisoner like me. Or he’s lulling me into a false sense of security, into complacency.
But there’s no need for that. I’m mostly a useless nobleman, even though Iama murderer. I’ve thought about the men I killed every day since Oosant. The ones I cut down without hesitation in the warehouse. I’m not a dangerous man like Mikail, though—that’s a person you’d have to catch unaware.
As soon as I think it, I realize that’s who Ailor reminds me of.
“Something up?” he asks.
I was staring. I lit the lantern as soon as I woke, and he can see me from his spot across the cell.
“I’m sorry. You just remind me of…someone.”
He arches his scarred eyebrow. “Someone this witty and handsome? Impossible. There can’t be two of us.”
I laugh. He doesn’t look anything like Mikail. He’s shorter than Royo, maybe five foot seven and built stockier like him, but it’s strange—his mannerisms are similar to Mikail’s.
“You know, son,” Ailor begins, “you don’t seem like the type who’d wind up in this place.”
“It was a surprise to me, too, I assure you.”
His eyes are brown, I think, and they search me.
“You’re a hostage, then?” he asks.
I nod. “Something like that.”
I can’t figure out if he’s trying to get a read on me or if he’s a spy hoping I’ll say something incriminating. Then again, I’ve been talking to another spy this whole time.
Hana still hasn’t reappeared, though. I hope nothing happened to her. It’s only recently dawned on me that she might be in trouble herself. Spies are rarely safe, and neither are assassins, but I can’t imagine a survivor like her or Sora could succumb to anything as ordinary as danger.
“I’ve been thinking about it. I figured you were noble, but I’ve only seen that type of big necklace on one guy—the Count of Tamneki,” Ailor says.
“All counts wear collars as part of their formal dress,” I say. I shift the gems that sit on my shoulders and string across my chest. “It goes back to ruling the four old kingdoms.”
I touch the sapphires. The west wears diamonds, the north opals, and the east emeralds. The king wears blood rubies. The stones are all from over a thousand years ago, but they’ve been reset for each family.
