This thought was at the forefront of my mind as I sat in my office with him and Vale, listening to Septimus tell us, oh-so-casually, about how he couldn’t send Bloodborn troops to Misrada, after all.
Vale was not happy. He wasn’t bothering to hide exactly how not happy he was.
“That’s unacceptable,” he said.
Septimus’s stupid fucking face arranged into that stupid fucking smirk.
“I understand why you feel that way,” he said, “but the nature of the matter is what it is. I can’t bend time and space, sadly. Desdemona confirmed it multiple times. We just can’t get the forces there in time. We’ll have to make the move later.”
“So let me make sure I understand.” Vale leaned across the desk. “We now have to reschedule an operation that we’ve had planned for weeks on account of your shit generals’ poor foresight? With a day’s notice?”
Septimus’s smirk faltered. I’d noticed that he was perfectly happy to accept whatever insults you wanted to lob his way, but he didn’t like it much when you disrespected those who worked under him.
He let out a puff of smoke through his nostrils. “My shit generals are doing most of the work putting down this little rebellion of yours. Maybe if your own forces were willing to fight for you, it would have been handled faster.”
Vale looked like he was close to blows. Against my better instincts, I shot him a warning glance. Vale held that stare for a moment—fought it, because even after these last weeks, he still wasn’t really ready to accept me as his superior—before shaking his head and leaning back in his chair.
“This is what I did not miss about this job,” he muttered, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Working with incompetence.”
Septimus chuckled. Then his gaze slid to me.
“You’re terribly quiet, Highness.”
I had indeed been quiet. I’d been watching Septimus, thinking about this suspiciously neat little last-minute rescheduling of his. There was more to it than he was saying. I had no doubts there, even if I didn’t know how or why.
I’d been so busy thinking that I’d neglected my role. I wanted Septimus to keep on dismissing me as the brutish, Turned king. Let him keep thinking I was someone he could take advantage of.
My returning smile was more of a baring of teeth. “What would you like me to say?”
Septimus shrugged, as if to say, You tell me.
“Do you want me to bitch at you for your poor planning and your carelessness?”
Again, he shrugged. “If you wish.”
“Why would I waste my breath? I already wasted enough of it planning this offensive with you. Maybe I don’t feel like giving you any more of my time.”
He cocked his head, staring me down a little too thoughtfully for my comfort.
I sat up straighter. “I don’t see what else there is to talk about.” I waved my hand at him dismissively. “I have actual work to do, if you’re done.”
A brief, cold smile, as Septimus rose. “Quite done.”
It was now baffling to me that the first time I’d laid eyes on Sivrinaj’s skyline, I’d thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I’d thought it looked like nothing less than salvation.
What a fucking joke.
That view had looked a lot like this one, from the roof of the armory on the outskirts of the city. It had been night then, too, the city drenched in moonlight. I supposed there was a certain architectural appeal to it, all those domes and towers and spires, marble and ivory and silver. The kind of thing you could only admire until you’d seen firsthand the blood that had been spilled to build it, and the rot that festered underneath.
“You shouldn’t be out here, Highness,” Vale said, for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes. The words didn’t change, but his tone did, growing increasingly frustrated.
“I heard you the first time.”
He let out a grunt of wordless disapproval.
I turned around, taking in the rest of the landscape. The armory was located right where the city limits gave way to the desert—smooth rolling dunes to the north, rocky inclines down to the sea to the south. It was a foggy, overcast night, which I didn’t like. Poor visibility to the ocean. Poor visibility above.
I glanced over the rail to the city streets below. To the west were the human districts, blocky patches of tan and gray. Just beyond them, the slums of the vampire territories of the city. A few haphazard barriers, clumsy constructions of wood and stone, still remained in some of the streets. The remnants of the Hiaj’s attempts, in the days after the coup, to claw back some sections of the city. Failed attempts. But they’d put up a fight.