“The Darkness I won’t,” Diara shot back.
Selena and I gazed at her in shock. Everyone knew the third god—Darkness. But no one spoke of him. It was unwise to even say his name, let alone say it in vain.
Selena cleared her throat. “Tell her to do something. Not out loud; in your head.”
In my head?
“Diara,” I said, calling her attention to me. I hesitated.Tell me how you feel about the crown.
Her jaw twisted and rolled as though she fought herself from answering. “The royal family is made of petty thieves,” she said, her brows stitching tight together. “Charging my father to raise draft horses for farms my whole life, then six years ago, demanding destriers for war.”
Step closer. Why is that a problem?
“Because.” She threw up her hand as her feet moved toward me. “It takes years—decades—to begin a new line of breeding. The King took half my father’s assets when he refused to buy the drafts my father raised for him.”
I cleared my throat.Move ba—
“And then had thegallto ask my brother and I to come here and work off our debts, where all the nobles look down their noses at us for a mistake the King made. We’re the jesters of the court, and everyone knows it.” Her fingers curled tight, and the tension returned to her shoulders, though not the stillness of avacous. She shook with quiet rage.
“Hmm,” Selena murmured calmly. “Either break the hold or take back some control, you’re about to lose her.”
Alarmed, I tightened the hold. For a moment, Diara went still. Her expression dropped away, her eyes focusing on something in the air as she fought me. I pulled harder, feeling my grip wobble, and realized she’d somehow wandered outside my mental grasp.
Diara gave an idle shake. “And he sits on his throne, completely aware of what he did to my family. My mother is sick, and we can’t afford her care. She’ll probably die in the next few months—”
“Maren.”
I clenched my teeth. “I’m trying.”
Wild tears sprang from Diara’s eyes. “—and I’ll be here, in this place I hate, a city full of vultures and no way out but to marry some rich, snobby noble who’ll probably spend the early years of our marriage trying to explain how to raise horses to me, and I’ll have to nod andoooohat his words as though I’m privileged to listen to his lectures. Someone insufferably dull, who sniffles with cold and thinks he needs to lay in bed for days, who wipes his ass with—”
The cord broke.
I felt it give, soft as the touch of a feather, like she’d gone so far it had simply fallen off her.
Diara’s eyes went blank, and the long-stemmed glasses in her hand shattered as she crumpled to the floor.
48
Selena helped me carry Diara to the couch. We covered her with a blanket, tucking a pillow under her head. The Naiad gently brushed Diara’s hair from her face.
“She seems as though she could use a friend,” Selena said, her eyes flicking to mine.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“I would only caution you with this. It’s difficult, loving someone who is angry.”
My teeth gnawed on my lower lip. I said nothing of how I’d recognized Diara’s anger in myself. How it only made me feel more at home with her. How, for me, it had opened a measure of trust in a palace where I trusted so few.
“I’m running late,” my mentor sighed. “She’ll be awake in half an hour. She won’t remember anything. If she asks why she was asleep, just tell her she came back from getting drinks and asked if she could take a nap. They’re always easy to convince right after, with trace oxytocin still in their blood.”
She stretched out her hand, offering to help me up, then dusted my shoulders for me. “I’ll be at the ceremony tonight, butI’m not sure I’ll have the chance to see you. If I don’t…” Staring into my eyes, she paused, and I had the sudden feeling a hidden message lay behind her blue gaze.
“If you don’t what?” I asked, equally curious and impatient with the change in subject.
Selena lifted a curl from my shoulder as she had the day we met, smoothing it between her finger and thumb. “Just remember. This night was planned for you, butyouare in control. Take things at your own pace. Voice your concerns. Voice your inner feelings. Voice yourdesires. And remember what I said. There is more to the agreement between Nikolaos and Thaan than meets the eye.”
“If there’s more, it’s not apparent,” I said stiffly.
