“Thank you for that update, Commander. Your queen regent is safe, too, thanks toour captain,” Maryn ground out. A bite coated her words, directed at Felaf and me from the way she glared at us.
“Just doing my job, Queen Regent,” Vesperah said. She stood beside Alekko, the two of them having not strayed far from the other since our return to the palace.
“And you shall be heavily rewarded for your loyalty,” Maryn promised, her black nails tapping the oak surface.
Vesperah’s brown eyes cut to mine, then Felaf’s, not deigning to respond.
“He is our seer,” I said calmly, breaking the silence. “We are bound to protect our Chosens.”
“I am still the queen regent. Without me, this queendom would crumble.”
“You have advisors, don’t you?” I asked, reminding her that she was, in fact, replaceable.
I knew I should have stopped testing her, but it seemed no one would ever put her in place. And a twisted part of me always found a way to anger her just enough to elicit a punishment.
My fists tightened at my sides as I shoved my parents’ faces from my mind. I was free of them, I reminded myself. I had been for twenty-two years. And yet somehow, they always found a way to suck me back into the past.
“Perhaps we should get back to the more important topic at hand?” Felaf offered to ease the tension. “Like… oh, I don’t know, how a fuckingnoblewas an apostate?”
“How many times must I tell you to mind your tongue, Guardian?” Maryn scolded Felaf. “Any more inappropriate outbursts from either of you guardians, and that’ll be anotherdozen lashes each. I swear, I never had to deal with such insubordination from Hector.”
My chest tightened. Felaf stiffened.
“Baron Ionis Condor has also been brought in for questioning,” Alekko interjected, no doubt trying to quell the rising tensions of the room. “When you’re able, Gregorios, he’ll be ready for you to use Blood Sight.”
Maryn rubbed her temples. “Prepare to question all the nobles, Commander. Every baron along with their families.”
“Respectfully, Queen Regent,” Gregorios implored warily, “doing so will only sow further friction. In dire times like these, we need them on our side. You must show unity. I’ve received messages from Scorpio warning me of discord and uncontrollable chaos should the wrong path be taken.”
Now that I knew the truth for myself, that Scorpio wasnotin fact in communication with Gregorios anymore, I was able to detect the lie that the rest of the room could not.
“What other path is there to take?” Maryn snapped. She slammed her palm against the surface of the table. “The apostai have infiltrated closer to our court than ever. We must treat everyone as a threat.”
Alekko eyed me across the table before steering the conversation away from Maryn’s conspiratorial digress. “Helene bore the exact same mark on her foot that Raithe identified with the previous apostate we captured from the latest attack,” he explained. “This blast killed Cyrene’s relatives. Their bodies were completely burned from the green fire. There was nothing left but their bones to offer the Astrals.”
I recalled the moment Helene first threw the device in the direction of the basin. She hadn’t been targeting Gregorios. “Helene was aiming for Cyrene’s family,” I said aloud. “Not Cyrene, who had already gone under. Not Gregorios, nor our queen regent.”
Felaf nodded. “We all know the things that feed the Astrals’ power. Our collective belief in them, devotion and prayers to them, wearing their sacred colors and plants and flowers, but especially?—”
“Especially blood sacrifices from a Chosen’s kin,” Alekko finished for her. “It seems that Helene, and whoever else she was working with, meant to prevent that from happening.”
“Cyrene’s failure to complete her trial may have resulted in her death, but she was still a Chosen,” I said. “Whether she succeeded or failed, her family was still to be offered to Scorpio—drowned alongside her.”
“So we’re saying that Helene wanted to prevent the offerings to Scorpio by killing Cyrene’s family first before they could be sacrificed to Scorpio?” Felaf asked the group, looking at me. “Have the apostai found another way to disrupt the Astrals’ power?”
“It makes sense,” Alekko said. “From what little our people have been able to gather over the years in our fight against the apostai, there are some who simply don’t believe in the Astrals, which is a form of weakening them. Those folks are less likely to be involved in attacks, because as we know, to actively try to weaken an Astral is a form of believing that they exist in the first place. Lately the apostai have targeted places of worship to disrupt prayers and kill those who are deemed the most devout. They’ve even gone after dyers’ guilds to prevent distribution of the Zodiac’s sacred colors.”
Such acts were the primary reason Maryn hadn’t enforced laws forbidding clothes that weren’t black, since such apparel was less accessible now.
It was her only gracious deed as regent I could think of.
“All attacks are forms of weakening the Astrals,” Alekko continued, reminding us all what we knew too well. He glanced at me. “And this… if true, means the apostai are targeting yetanothermeans to weaken an Astral. A far more dangerously powerful one…”
“Because sacrifices are one of the most potent forms of power to fuel an Astral,” Felaf finished. “It would be foolish not to question the other barons. Wouldn’t it?”
“We should have seen this coming, Seer,” Maryn said.
“You know my Sight is limited when it comes to the apostai, as it is for all other seers.”
