Nikolai smiled. “You would have hit me with your shoe.”
“He and I … we had nothing in common. Our decision to side with Alina was what bound us—the choice to fight beside her when we knew the odds were in the Darkling’s favor. He had the more experienced fighters, years of understanding and planning.”
“But we won.”
“We did,” she said. “For a while.”
“So how did you do it? How did we do it?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe Alina really is a Saint.”
“Grief has made you delirious. But if we got lucky with one miracle, maybe we’ll get lucky again.”
They left the garden and walked back through the woods. On the path, they parted as they always did—she to the Grisha, and he to the Grand Palace. He wanted to call her back. He wanted to follow her through the snow. But his country didn’t need a heartsick boy chasing after a lonely girl. It needed a king.
“And a king they will have,” he said to no one at all, and strode back to the dark rooms of the palace.
24
MAYU
AFTER QUEEN MAKHI HAD CLAIMED she would think on revealing the laboratories—the laboratories she still wouldn’t admit existed—Tamar and Mayu had escorted Ehri to her chambers in the wing of the palace known as the Nest. They were the rooms that Ehri had grown up in, where all Taban children were raised. The boys were educated and trained alongside the girls before they were old enough to choose a professional path—medicine, religion, the military. The girls were all considered possible heirs, though the eldest daughters were often favored.
Tamar and Mayu alternated shifts watching over Ehri. They didn’t think Makhi would act against the princess, not with so much suspicion hanging over her, but they weren’t taking any chances. Tamar had warned Ministers Nagh and Zihun to strengthen their household security as well.
Three days after they arrived, two of Ehri’s sisters came to visit in a cloud of silk and perfume. Kheru with her coffee-colored eyes, always with a piece of needlework in her hands, and Yenye with the white streak in her hair and her sharp gaze. Jhem was missing, in mourning for her daughter Akeni, lost to the blight. Tamar had slipped into the neighboring room to eavesdrop but remained at the ready in case of trouble.
Mayu didn’t know the princesses well. She’d been assigned to Ehri’s household, and the sisters had their own Tavgharad to guard them. They were bright and loud, each striking in her own way. They looked like jewels in their dark winter silks—emerald, amethyst, sapphire. Ehri looked like a flower from a different garden, short and pale-petaled in a mint gown and a necklace of green agate, silver combs tucked into her hair.
The sisters asked Ehri for stories of Ravka, brought gifts of flowers and fruit to welcome her home, talked of their own marriage prospects and Makhi’s consorts. Both Kheru and Yenye were soon to marry, and once they did, they would no longer be possible heirs for the Taban throne.
“Kheru has delayed her wedding date,” said Yenye, working her needle through a pattern of violets.
“Only because I’m trying to find the right peach silk for my gown.”
Yenye lifted a brow and ran her hand through the white streak in her hair. “It’s because Makhi’s presumed heir died in that horrible blight.”
Princess Ehri gasped. “She was only eight years old.”
Yenye touched her hand to her hair again. “I … I didn’t mean to be callous. I only meant…”
Kheru swallowed a bite of plum. “You meant that I would take a child’s death as an opportunity for Makhi to name me her heir.”
“Don’t tell me it didn’t cross your mind,” said Yenye.
“It did,” Kheru admitted. “But Makhi won’t name any of us.”
“There are rumors, though,” Yenye said slyly. “About you, sweet Ehri.”
Ehri kept her eyes on her unfinished plums. “Oh?”
“Rumors that you’ve returned without a Ravkan husband because you wish to challenge Makhi.”
“What foolishness,” said Ehri. “You all know I’ve never wanted to rule. I would happily sit on a hilltop on the coast and watch the waves roll in and tend to my garden like Grandmother.”
“Then why try to marry the Ravkan king in the first place?”
“Because Makhi is the queen and she commanded me to.” She met their gazes, one then the other. “And we must all do as the queen commands.”
There were murmurs of agreement, and in time, the sisters finished their tea and went on their way, no doubt to dissect every word that had been exchanged.
When the door closed behind them, Ehri leaned against it with a sigh. “I can tell you don’t approve, Mayu.”
Mayu had no reason to deny it. “This was your chance to court them, to win them to your side and tell them what the queen attempted.”
“Mayu, my sisters have even less influence than I.” Ehri contemplated the vase full of orange roses that she had placed at the center of the tea table before her sisters arrived. “They would either take Makhi’s side or they would use the conflict between us to make their own bid for the throne, and that would leave Shu Han vulnerable.”
“Are they so ambitious?”
Ehri considered. She plucked a petal that had begun to lose its freshness and crumpled it in her palm. “No. None are born schemers. None were groomed for the throne. But power is compelling, and we’re better off keeping our secrets.”
Mayu watched the princess. “Are you close to your sisters?”
“The way that kebben are? No. I love them, but we’ve never fought.”
“Never?”
“Not really. Oh, we squabbled. I think all sisters do. But we’ve never had a proper fight. Because we never trusted the love we had to carry us through. We have always been very polite with one another. What are you smiling at?”
“I’m thinking of Reyem. The way we used to scream at each other. He bit me once. Hard enough to draw blood.”
“Bit you?”
“I did deserve it. I shaved one of his eyebrows off in his sleep.”
Ehri laughed. “What a monster you must have been.”
“I really was.” But thinking of Reyem was too painful. “He was never mean to me, and he had every chance to be spiteful. My parents favored him, but he always shared—his books, his sweets. He wanted to see me happy.”
“That’s kebben,” Tamar said, entering the room and helping herself to a slice of plum. “One of us cannot be happy if the other is suffering.”
“Then … you understand what I had to do? Why I took Makhi’s mission?”
Tamar popped another slice of plum in her mouth, chewing slowly. “You murdered an innocent man. Isaak was unarmed.”
“He was a liar,” said Ehri, leaping to Mayu’s defense. “A pretender.”
“He was serving his king,” said Tamar.
“Just as I was serving my queen,” Mayu retorted, though the words tasted of ash.
“And yet, only one of you is dead.”
She was right. Isaak had deserved better.
“But you’ll help me find my brother,” said Mayu. She did not phrase it as a question. She couldn’t let her grief and shame overcome her, not until Reyem was free.