Oh gods. This was bad. So very bad.
“May I be honest with you?” Aemonn’s expression lightened, his features trading their sharpness for a look of pity I wasn’t sure I believed. “I’m sure this Henri must be a wonderful man. But relationships between mortals and Descended…” He grimaced. “Mortals die so quickly and so easily, and of course the children are forbidden, and—”
I bristled. “You do realize I am the child of a mortal?”
“And if you were not the Crown, you would be put to death as a result. Is that the life you want for your offspring?”
I flinched at his words. I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, but the idea of a child of my blood being executed merely because of its father…
I staggered a few steps back. “I need to go. I need to talk to Luther.”
I had no idea why I’d said it. Luther was the very last person in the world I wanted to discuss Henri with, and I was already cringing at the lecture he would surely give me for ignoring his advice.
“Luther?” Aemonn gave an incredulous laugh. He smoothed a hand over his hair, careful not to disturb his perfectly coiffed appearance. “Yes, perhaps you should,” he said coldly. “He knows best what becomes of half-breed children.”
I tensed. “What do you mean?”
“Diem darling, Luther is the Keeper of the Laws. It’s his job to enforce King Ulther’s rules.”
I shook my head, beginning to understand but refusing to believe. “En… enforce them?”
His smile turned cruel at last. “Who do you think carries out the executions of all those children on behalf of the Crown?”
“What?” I gasped.
Aemonn tutted softly. “He must have killed dozens of them over the years. Those poor creatures. Most were infants who couldn’t understand what was happening, but some of them…” He clutched at his chest and dipped his chin, his voice falling to a whisper. “How terrified the older children must have been as Luther’s sword cut through their necks.”
My vision went red.
Murderer.
That evil, soulless, irredeemable murderer.
No wonder he’d been so unmoved when Henri had seen him trample that child to death. What was another slain mortal child to a killer like him?
My rage awakened with an explosion, filling my chest with white-hot fire.
Fight.
For once, that gods-damned voice and I were in complete agreement.
“I need to go.” I spun away from Aemonn and stormed toward the palace.
Above me, Sorae let loose a shrill cry, the flowers in the garden quivering under the downdraft of her beating wings. As I broke away from the manicured pathways, she slammed down on the grass ahead of me with an inferno in her eyes. Her heavy breathing tracked my own, her smoke-tinged breath ruffling my hair.
Tell me who to kill, she seemed to be saying. Unleash me upon them, and I’ll make them pay.
And she would do it, I realized. She would tear Luther into ribbons of flesh if I asked—perhaps even if I didn’t, given my fury.
Had Luther used her to kill those children? I felt sick at the thought. So many Crowns had commanded Sorae before I had—there was no telling how much mortal blood she’d spilled at their request.
That was the problem with blind loyalty. It could be wielded by evil just as easily as good.
My eyes fell to the gilded chain on her neck. It wasn’t really loyalty that drove her. Her obedience was slavery, and nothing more.
Did she ever grieve her orders? Were her dreams plagued by the screams of innocents as they begged for a mercy she was powerless to give?
I gazed into her golden eyes, but Sorae didn’t answer. When I reached out to her across our bond, I felt only her deep and unconditional desire to destroy whoever had caused me such distress.
“Leave him be,” I commanded as I routed around her.
She snapped her jaws in frustration.
“Sorry, girl,” I muttered. “If anyone’s going to kill Luther Corbois, it’s going to be me.”
Chapter
Eight
When I returned to the palace, Luther wasn’t on the terrace, nor was he in any of the common rooms Eleanor had pointed out to me earlier.
This turned out to be a good thing, because over the course of the hour that I searched for him, my temper chilled—slightly—and I remembered with no small amount of frustration that I couldn’t kill him.
Yet.
At the very least, I still needed answers about my mother. And killing the Regent’s son would probably not bode well for getting through the Period of Challenging with my head intact.
The realization had done little to soothe the voice. After I’d surrendered to its call the night I received the Crown, I thought it might be gone, but the events of that night had only emboldened it. Whatever strange force it represented had taken to punctuating every breath with the same word: Fight. Fight. Fight. The chant was a steady metronome, keeping the tempo of my racing thoughts, and I felt my patience grinding to an edge with every stroke. I was anger embodied, and I was in no state to be around anyone, let alone a palace full of people I didn’t care for to begin with.
I was still stalking up and down the halls, having blown off a number of Corbois kinsmen who tried to corner me “just to chat,” when Lily popped her head around a corner.
“Your Maj—I mean, um, Diem,” she whispered. She beckoned me closer as her eyes darted around. “Your brot—uh, the thing you asked me to get. It’s here. Well, not here, but—”
“Where is he?” I asked bluntly.
“I was going to bring him to your room, but there are so many people in the royal wing, I think because they’re clearing the Crown suite for you, and then I was going to bring him to the library, but Elric is in there studying, and if there’s anyone in this family who can’t keep a secret, it’s Elric. Honestly, he tells everyone everything. So then I was going to take him to my room, but that seemed like a really, really bad idea—”
“Lily, tell me where he is. Please,” I added through gritted teeth.
“Oh, yes, right.” She grinned. “Follow me.”
I trailed her to a set of hefty iron doors with a complex web of latches and thick bars securing the outside, as if the locks were meant to keep someone in, rather than keeping intruders out. The doors gave way to a twisting staircase that got progressively darker as we descended. Lily waved a hand, and a set of glowing orbs appeared at our feet to illuminate the ground.
Wherever we were going, it was a miserable place. The walls were carved of jagged rock and brutally bare, empty of the tapestries or artwork that were so ubiquitous in the rest of the palace, and the humid air smelled vaguely of decay.
“What is this place?” I whispered, the silence almost too ominous to disturb.
“The dungeon. It hasn’t been used in years. We used to play games down here when I was little.”
“Lily, is that you?” My brother’s voice ricocheted off the expanse of damp stone.
“Teller!” I called out.
“D, I’m down here! Hurry up, this place is terrifying.”
I launched myself at him the moment I found him in the darkness, flinging my arms around his neck. It had only been a day since we last spoke, but it felt as if my entire world had inverted since then. So many plans had been born and died since that unexpected revelation outside our little home on the marsh.