“Well, the bread you make is like a gift from the Goddess,” Thyra says, and I picture her inhaling deeply as she breaks the crust. “It’s sustained me ever since I got here.”
“My special recipe.” Juniper’s reply is bright. “The flour we make from tubers doesn’t rise easily, but I found a way.”
There’s a pause, and Thyra asks, “May I thank you? Or would that be insulting?”
Juniper sighs. “I’m not sure when expressing gratitude became dangerous in this kingdom, but it was well before Lord Stellen’s time. He inherited a throne riddled with corruption and brutality. As long as fae have the capacity for hatred, I fear cruelty will persist.”
Thyra’s silence is pensive. “Stellen said your family worked in the palace for generations.”
“I was born into this work, but I was lucky to serve his mother, Sineria. She was a kind soul. Far too gentle for a man like Stellen’s father.”
There’s no hint of a question in Thyra’s voice when she says, “Stellen’s father was cruel.”
Juniper’s response is now strained. “Cruelis a generous description for that twisted man.”
There’s a soft scuffle, as if one of them were moving suddenly forward—Juniper, judging by the way her tone becomes urgent. “Oracle, you have no reason to listen to me.I’m an old lady with scars of my own, sorrows I still carry, but it’s important that you know?—”
I’ve made it to the sink and now my hands wrap around the edge of the basin.
I’m fully prepared for Juniper to tell Thyra what I have not spoken aloud.
A truth that, for some reason, Lilis hasn’t mentioned in any of Thyra’s training sessions.
My greatest silence.
The one that matters.
The silence that is most dangerous to Thyra.
But Juniper says, “Lord Stellen will tell you he is heartless. He will tell you he is callous and unfeeling. But he is, at the soul of him, the opposite of what he says.”
My eyes fly wide.
I should be grateful, but a weight settles around my shoulders.
Before today, I didn’t worry about the things Thyra might hear about me. I barely cared how or when she discovered the horrors I perpetrated in the past. But today, Thyra peeled back her shields—and mine.
And now, it matters.
The blood I shed… The reason my people fear me… It fucking matters.
I wrench myself toward the bathing room door, ready to reassert the icy barriers between Thyra and me.
Thyra’s already responding. Impossibly, she whispers, “I think you could be right.”
No.
Juniper can’t be right. Neither of them can be right.
Thyra doesn’t understand what it would mean if she were right…
I lift my fist toward the back of the door,wanting to pummel it, to break this door and mend it with tears, because now I’m asking myself…
Despite everything I did, why can’t I have this one fucking thing?
At the end of this day, after I survived Thyra’s pain and didn’t succumb to my own, why can’t I have this one night?
Even a few hours when I could convince myself of a falsehood amidst all of my brutal truths: that it is safe for me tofeel?
