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“She has survived them, and she doesn’t appear to tend toward self-harm. She knows we are here, if she wants to talk. Do not take the choice away from her.”
Verol was quiet for so long Marquin almost thought he slept. Finally, he said, “I don’t want to fail her, too.”
“You won’t.”
“I failed Marie. I apparently failed Fitz.”
“We all failed Marie. As for Fitz, he had his own pain to deal with. He chose to deal with it by taking everything you taught him about how his magic could protect people and using it to harm them instead. It’s hardly a surprise you didn’t know the Assassin of Blackrock might have his feelings hurt because you didn’t hug him enough when he returned from a decade of wetwork.”
“Now who is being unkind? You know what he did was more…complicated than that.”
“Regardless, I suspect hoping he and Clare will get along will be complicated.”
Verol pushed onto his elbow, frowning down at Marquin. “You can’t be asking me to send him away.”
“No. I am asking you to talk to him. At length. Before we leave for the palace in the morning.”
“I’m not sure I know what to say to him. He was barely more than a boy when he left.” Regret crossed Verol’s face. “And I wasn’t really there for him, those last few years. As a mage’s master or the surrogate father he apparently wanted. Not after…what happened.”
“Start there. I suspect you’ll find the rest will fill itself in.”
Sighing, Verol laid back down. “Unfortunately, I suspect you’re right.”
Clare tried to sleep. When she failed at that, she tried to read the card in the red envelope, the one Numair had sent with the dress, the one that was only for her. She failed for the third time, the temporary insight the Song had given her when she’d looked at the map now nowhere to be found.
“And you wonder why I don’t like you,” she muttered. The Song didn’t answer. It had been quiet since her discussion with Marquin and Verol, as if it knew that now wasn’t the right time to push her. It probably did know that, probably knew her better than any person ever had.
Maybe it was time to change that.
She did not want to be a thing, a host, a mere shell born to carry the power inside her. She wanted to be a woman, an artist, a person. She wanted the silly dream she’d had ever since she’d realized the effect her voice had on people, with or without her magic behind it. A dream that with that voice, she could be comfortable. Adored. Untouchable.
It was the dream of a girl who hadn’t yet understood what or who or where she was. A girl too young to know that people didn’t leave Renault County alive. It was a dream that had gotten her out. And now that she was here, she didn’t know if that dream meant anything.
She still wanted to be untouchable, but becoming that wouldn’t make her understand herself. It wouldn’t sort out the tumult of emotions that kept cascading down on her at every turn now she’d come to Veralna. The girl who’d lived in Renault County hadn’t understood that she could ever truly want anything more than survival.
And it had taken so very little—food, a place to stay, a chance to be seen—for her to want everything else. To want to be Clare Brighton, when Clare Brighton was only an idea she’d made up in her head, and not a very intricate one, at that.
But she wanted to be her with a fierceness that hurt, and she only knew one person who made her feel like she had any chance of finding her.
She slipped the envelope into her pocket, opened the window, and jumped out into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I Think You Need a Friend
A rock hit the sliding glass door of Numair’s third-floor bedroom. He sat up, on edge, the black heart vining above his bed responding to his stress. Another rock—just a pebble, really—hit his window. Then another, and another.
He moved to the side of the door, looking out through the one-inch gap between the curtains, and blinked. Another pebble hit glass, thrown with expert aim from the form below. If he had any sense, he’d ignore her until she went away.
He opened the door and walked onto his balcony, resting his elbows on the railing, his chin on his palm in precisely the manner love-stricken maidens always affected in those ridiculous stories where they were locked in towers and rescued by princes. He debated batting his eyelashes at her, but decided she probably wouldn’t see it from this far up.
“Are you really tossing rocks at my window?”
She grinned up at him, dropping her remaining rocks and dusting her hands together. “How better to get your attention, my lord?”
“And now that you have it, what do you intend to do with it?”
“Rescue you?” she suggested.
