I don’t hear the rest of it. Blood pulses in my ears, loud as nearing thunder. The king didn’t even blink before turning on me. He must have known all his promises were lies even as they left his lips, and I am the guileless idiot who believed them. I had felt giddy with power after bargaining for my life, not realizing that as I preened and gloated, the king was fitting me with chains.
While I am marveling at my own miserable stupidity, Lajos grabs Katalin by the arm. In my meanest, most secret imaginings, I sometimes dreamed that she would be taken by the Woodsmen and torn apart by monsters on her way through Ezer Szem, or even better, falling under the king’s sword. Now my head whirls as I watch Lajos drag her away, sick with horror. I imagine the king tearing off her fingernails, one by one, like plucking the white feathers from a swan.
“évike.” Gáspár’s voice knifes through the haze. “Don’t do anything reckless.”
I meet his eye, hands shaking. “I want to speak with the king.”
I have no plan as I march to the king’s chambers; it’s only anger buoying me. Gáspár is a pace behind, and his words chase after me like loosed arrows.
“Consider what you want to achieve before you walk into the room,” he says, an edge of pleading to his voice. “There’s no use confronting him with venom and fury—you’ll only get yourself thrown into the dungeons again.”
I whirl on him. “And should I just be like you, instead? Swallowing every cruel word, bowing to the same man who tore your eye out? Letting your bastard brother stomp all over your birthright?”
I’m so enraged that I don’t care how much I hurt him. But Gáspár only looks at me steadily, black eye unflinching.
“You swore an oath to my father too,” he says.
“Yes, and it’s my greatest shame,” I snap, cheeks flushing.
“And don’t you think it shames me equally?” I see his chest swell; for a moment I think he will close the space between us. “But you understood, as I do, that survival is not a battle that you win only once. You must fight it again every day. And so you take your small losses so that you can live to fight tomorrow. You know that my father is a slower, gentler poison.”
His words bite at me like a splinter under my nail. I slow my pace, fury ebbing, despair rising up in its place. “But what should I do, then? Should I keep letting your father slip through my fingers again and again, reassuring myself that at least he is better than his bastard, until one day, without my knowing it, every single girl in Keszi is dead?”
Gáspár draws a breath. “Can Keszi not survive the loss of one girl every few years, as it has for all my father’s reign?”
I consider it, even as my stomach roils. Virág will live another decade at least—she is as hearty as an old tree, which only grows stronger with its years. Another seer would likely be born in the meantime, her white hair a happy omen. And until she grew into her magic Keszi could learn to live without one, even if it meant not knowing when the frost came to kill our crops or when the Woodsmen would arrive at our door.
As if by instinct, I reach into my pocket for my mother’s braid, but I remember that I am wearing Jozefa’s dress, and not my wolf cloak.
“I was only one girl,” I whisper. “And so was my mother.”
Gáspár opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again. Guilt flits across his face, though I hadn’t really meant for my words to wound him. I know that he is remembering the first time he saw me across the clearing, a bound and quaking sacrifice. Before the memory can make me falter, I turn on my heel and shove into the king’s chamber.
King János is kneeling at his bed, hands clasped. When he sees me, he leaps to his feet, reaching up to steady the fingernail crown on his head. He blinks at me mutely; there is something crusted into the corners of his lips.
“I’m not here to kill you,” I say, “but it would be only fair if I did, since you broke our bargain.”
The king lifts his chin, indignant. “I’ve broken nothing. Your village is unharmed, if not for the loss of one girl.”
“That’s all our village is!” I burst out. “Girls and women, boys and men. People. Would you say I left you unharmed if I cut off your arm or your leg?”
King János takes a step away from me, one hand still on his crown. “You wouldn’t dare, wolf-girl. My blood would spill under the door and reveal you. You would never leave the palace alive.”