I swore internally. I’d completely forgotten about that offer, blurted out in a last-resort bid to keep his trust. “Right now, I’m just trying to stay alive. After the Challenging, we can come up with a plan—”
“Vance thinks we need to act before the Challenging. Just in case…” He trailed off, struggling to look at me.
Hurt clouded my thoughts, and I pulled away. “Is that all I am now—a resource to exploit as much as you can before I die?”
“No,” he said quickly. “But what if we could stop the Challenging from happening at all? If we take the palace before then, they’ll have to cancel it, and you’d be safe.”
“They would send in the entire army to take it back. Do you really believe the Guardians can survive that?”
His defeated expression said he didn’t, though traces of doubt lingered. I reached for him and he stiffened, and just like the day he’d found me in the palace, a desperate kind of frenzy began to overtake my better sense. I’d already lost my father, and now I was holding on to Henri by the barest thread. If I lost him, I feared I’d lose myself forever, too.
“Let me prove to you I still want to help. Remember that mission I failed? The Guardians wanted the details of the Crown’s boat—I can get them access to it.”
His face lit up. “You would do that?”
“Only if it’s done my way.” He looked as if he might argue, and I raised a hand to cut him off. This was a line I would not cross, not even for him. “If the Guardians want my help, our targets have to be in the right place—ending the unfair laws, ensuring all mortals are cared for and protected. Justice, not murder.”
He nodded, slowly at first, then more emphatically. “Yes—yes. We all want those things. Surely the others will see that. Although…” Henri frowned and raked a hand through his hair. “Vance thinks you only support them now.” His eyes shot across the clearing, his tone turning chilly. “You two have made friends quickly.”
My gaze followed his to the Corbois. One of the cousins had their arm around Teller, Lily clutching his hand as they quietly talked. Eleanor and Taran were pretending that they hadn’t just been staring at us, while Luther glared at Henri like a nocked arrow, ready to fly. Alixe had wandered to the scorched soil of my old home, where she knelt and held up a glittering onyx rock, turning it over in her hands.
I couldn’t deny it—I had befriended them quickly, even though I’d always struggled to make friends with mortal peers. I couldn’t help but wonder, was it just because of the Crown? Or had I isolated myself from other mortals because, somewhere deep down, I’d always known I wasn’t like them?
“It’s not as black and white as we thought when we were kids,” I confessed. “A lot of them are good people. Some of them even want to end the injustice just as we do. A few are as evil as we imagined, but…” I looked at Vance, noting his sour look as he eyed us from afar. “So are some of the mortals.”
Henri slumped, looking queasy. “I’m so sorry, D. I let my anger get carried away, and everything spun so far out of control.”
I snaked my arms around his waist and buried my head in his chest, needing to feel him against me and know he wasn’t gone forever. Tension eased from his muscles as he pulled me close. For a blissful moment, it felt like we had gone back in time, back when our love was untainted by war and unburdened by the weight of a Crown.
“I miss you,” I whispered. “You were my best friend, and then suddenly you were just… gone.”
“I regret so much of what has happened,” he murmured against my hair. “This isn’t the man I want to be.” He leaned away and raised a hand to cup my cheek. “Let’s put all this behind us. Forgive each other for everything we’ve done and start over. A clean slate.”
I managed a weak smile and nodded. “I’d like that.”
He nudged my chin up and pressed his lips to mine. It was tender and soft, so different from the breathless frenzy of our last kiss. That kiss had been like a plea—a promise, of what I might offer him if he would agree to stay by my side. This was a plea of a different kind.
Henri let out a groan as he deepened the kiss. He gripped my waist hard and my eyes fluttered open in surprise, falling instantly on two familiar pools of blue-grey across the clearing, stormy and teeming with emotion.
Regret. Hurt. Loss.
Taran wrapped a hand around Luther’s arm and tugged him back, forcing him to look away.
I pulled back so abruptly that I yanked clear of Henri’s grasp. He bristled, cocking his head with a frown.
Suddenly, I needed to be anywhere but here.
“Tomorrow,” I rushed out, falling back a step. “Meet me at sunset. The cove where we used to collect oysters.”
“Diem—”
“I have to go. I… I’ll see you then.”
I turned, and I ran—through the forest, past Mortal City, and down the road to the palace. Even as my guards shouted in confusion, Perthe chasing me with pleas to slow down, I ran and I ran, and I didn’t stop until I was back in my chambers, gasping for breath under the scrutiny of Sorae’s dark ochre eyes.
But no matter how hard I fled from my problems, there were truths chasing me I couldn’t outrun much longer.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
“Try it again.”
“I’ve tried it ten times.”
“So try it an eleventh.”
“I tried it twenty times yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. It’s not working.”
“Then you need to try harder.”
“Oh, is that all? Why didn’t you just say so?”
Taran and I scowled at each other from across the dungeon. My magic training sessions had been going poorly, to put it mildly. They hadn’t really been going at all. After countless daily sessions, I hadn’t been able to manifest a single spark.
Initially, Taran and Alixe had been supportive, dismissing it as a consequence of my grief, but their patience—and mine—had begun to wear thin. Taran had changed tack, deciding to force an outburst of power by provoking me in increasingly juvenile ways, and I had been responding in kind.
Luther continued to attend, though he kept a careful distance. At first, he had offered occasional advice, but every word from him only pushed me further into my head. Eventually, he took up a silent vigil, always watching but never speaking.
I wanted to beg him to leave. I wanted to tell him that every time I stumbled in front of him, every time he watched me dig into myself and come up empty-handed, it was an excruciating reminder of his words at the ball—the peace-bringing Queen he believed me destined to become—and the smothering heaviness of my own inadequacy. Failing was embarrassing, but failing in his eyes was almost more than I could take.
But, true to form, my stubborn pride won out, and instead of being honest, I retreated deeper into my own foul mood. So Luther watched, Taran teased, I sulked, and Alixe just tried to keep the peace.
“Maybe you need motivation,” she offered, scratching the shorn side of her midnight blue bob. “Perhaps we need to give you something to fight for.”