“You did that,” he whispered.
“Did what?”
“You killed them.”
She swallowed, knocked back a gulp of water, wiped her mouth. “As I’ve said before, my cowardice keeps us warm and fed and alive. So, dearest brother, unless you’d prefer to starve…”
Remy shoved his plate away. “I hate you.”
Rozen sat rigid in her chair. “You don’t. Don’t say that.”
“Let him hate me.” Eliana glanced at Remy and then quickly away. He was looking right at the soft hole in her middle, the hollow place she let no one but him see. It ached from the bruise of his words. “If it helps him sleep at night, he can hate me until the end of his days.”
Remy’s eyes flicked to her neck, where the chain of her necklace was visible. His expression darkened.
“You wear King Audric the Lightbringer around your neck, but you don’t deserve to.” His gaze traveled back to her face. “He’d be ashamed of you if the Blood Queen hadn’t killed him. He’d be ashamed of anyone who helps the Empire.”
“If the Blood Queen hadn’t killed him,” Eliana said evenly, “then it wouldn’t matter, would it? Maybe the Empire would never have risen. Maybe we’d all be living in a world full of magic and flying horses and beautiful castles built by the saints themselves.”
She clasped her hands, regarded him with exaggerated patience. “But Queen Rielle did kill him. And so here we are. And I wear his image around my neck to remind myself that we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where good kings die and those foolish enough to hope for something better are killed where they stand.”
She ignored them both after that and devoured her stew in silence.
? ? ?
Her mother found her later that night, when Eliana was cleaning her blades in her room.
“Eliana,” said Rozen, panting slightly, “you should rest.” Even with her prosthetic leg, it took her some effort to get upstairs unassisted. She leaned hard on her cane.
“Mother, what are you doing?” Eliana rose, helped her to sit. Her daggers and smoke grenades lay across the floor, a tapestry of death. “You should be the one resting.”
Rozen stared at the floor for a long moment. Then her face crumpled, and she turned into Eliana’s shoulder.
“I hate seeing you like this,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for this. I’m sorry I taught you… I’m sorry for everything.”
Eliana held on to her, stroking her messy knot of dark hair. She listened to Rozen whisper too many apologies to count.
“Sorry about what?” Eliana said at last. “That Grandfather taught you how to kill? That you taught me?”
Rozen cupped Eliana’s cheek in one weathered hand, searched her face with wet eyes that reminded Eliana of Remy’s—inquisitive, tireless. “You’d tell me if you needed a rest? We can ask Lord Arkelion for time—”
“Time for what? To bake cookies and paint the walls a fresh color?” Eliana smiled, squeezed her mother’s hand. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
Rozen’s mouth thinned. “Eliana, don’t play coy with me. I can see right through that smile of yours. I taught you that smile.”
“Then don’t apologize for teaching me how to keep us alive, all right? I’m fine.”
Eliana rose, stretched, then helped Rozen to her own bed. She made her a cup of tea, kissed her cheek, helped unstrap her leg for the night—a finely crafted, wooden apparatus that had cost Eliana the wages from two jobs.
Two executions. Two slaughtered souls.
When Eliana returned to her room, she found Remy waiting for her, hugging his knees to his chest.
She crawled into bed beside him, struggling to breathe through a sudden tightness in her chest. Grief crashed upon her in waves. Dry-eyed, she let them pull her under.
Remy said quietly, “I don’t hate you,” and allowed her to hold on to him. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on only him—the twin scents of flour on his clothes and ink on his hands. The sound of his voice singing her “A Song for the Golden King.” It had been Eliana’s favorite lullaby as a child—a lament for Audric the Lightbringer.
Remy’s small hands stroked her hair. She could crush him if she wanted to. And yet, given the chance, her bony bird of a brother would face off against the Emperor. Even if it killed him.
And I have a warrior’s strength, she thought, but the heart of a coward.