But nothing happens.
I imagine Syla here, shackled and weakened, bound to Emperor Caius’s will. And I think about Senna, the fourth sister Syla gave up everything to protect. When I heardthat part of the story I remember thinking she was selfish, abandoning her people, sacrificing thousands of lives in exchange for only one.
Then I thought of Flint and Renly.
And it’s a terrible thing to admit, but I understood. Because it’s frightening, looking at someone and knowing that there is nothing –nothing– you wouldn’t do to keep them safe.
I’m startled by a sudden noise. Not something indeliberate like a scuffle, but something intentional like a scrape, as though someone were running a fingernail down the length of a wall. I move behind a tall block of crystal, reaching down to grasp the hilt of the dagger, unsheathing it slowly from my boot.
‘Who’s there?’ I whisper.
There is no response. My body is frozen, my breaths coming in sharp, painful gasps.
Out of the corner of my eye I see something move.
I dart behind another wedge of crystal, then another, moving back into the centre of the cell. Silence has resumed, heavy and uncertain.
Then I sense the figure standing right behind me. With a surge of terror-fuelled adrenaline, I whirl round, instinctively lunging at them and slamming them backwards, brandishing the tip of my dagger at their throat.
‘You know, if you’d wanted me up against a wall, you need only have asked.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I spit.
‘There you go again with the questions, and it seems I could ask you the very same thing,’ drawls Fox. ‘What areyoudoing here, Storm Weaver? Good little Heirs don’t go sneaking around the palace dungeons at night.’
I scowl. ‘Don’t they? How illuminating. Then I ask again, because I asked first,whatareyoudoing here?’
Green eyes flash with amusement. ‘Well, I am an Heir, like you, but I wouldn’t say I was good, necessarily. Or particularly little, for that matter.’ He smirks.
I adjust my grip on the dagger. It feels strange in my hand, like a living thing.
‘Beautiful,’ says Fox, glancing down at it. ‘Delicate. Surprisingly lethal.’
‘It was a gift.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the dagger.’
I blush in spite of myself, pressing the blade harder against the collar of his moss-green shirt. A thought hits me then, square in the chest.
‘It was you,’ I say slowly. ‘The guards. They weren’t sleeping, were they? You drugged them.’
Fox smiles in answer.
I glare at him. ‘Would you be kind enough to explain why you just happen to be here, in the exact same place, at the exact same time, as me?’
He lounges back against the wall. ‘I already told you.’
‘When?’ I ask, exasperated.
‘In the library after the first trial. You asked me what I intended to do now that I was here, and I told you.’
I remember. I remember his response, too.
I’m looking for something.
‘Perhaps you and I are more similar than you might think, Storm Weaver.’
I swallow, recalling the way he’d looked at me in Marina’s chambers after I’d frozen Cole’s tongue. He thinks we’re the same, but we’re not. He broke the realm apart and wears his notoriety like a crown. He takes pleasure in pain, revels in destruction.
