But when I’d found Sophie reading through my mother’s journal that she’d stolen from my satchel, the betrayal felt like she’d taken a Citadel saber and stabbed me in the gut with it.
She had been mining the journal for secrets, feeding the Citadel all she learned, the songs and stories that my mother had spent her life compiling, the ones that weren’t contained in any book in the Citadel archives.
And as Sophie stood before me now, her face full of shock, I felt supremely satisfied that I had at least bested her in this.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her tone filled with accusation.
“I didn’t want you to have all the fun, you know.” I kept my voice light.
“You?” The lead excavator came forward, a man named Robert Winthrop, who’d barely ever spoken to me when I’d worked in the archives. He pushed in front of Sophie, his face furious. Bits of stone from the blast clung to his grey hair and uniform, making him seem like a statue come to life. He pointed at me, but his gaze whipped back to Sophie.
“Hightower, what is the meaning of this? How could an archive scholar have gotten here before us?” He looked back at me, his lip curling with contempt.
“I was the one who led you here in the first place,” I offered, daring Sophie to challenge me on it. She’d followed the clues in my mother’s journal just as I had, songs and poems she’d found laying a path to the Golden Vault’s location. Only I had been the one to find the door, to unearth the key. Sophie had exploded through the vault ceiling with dynamite. In response to my statement she flushed a deep crimson, her freckles standing out in stark relief.
“It’s true,” she offered, biting her lip. A wave of surprise washed over me. I had assumed she would pretend she didn’t know me, or at least didn’t know what I was talking about. “We used her research to get here, so she did assist us in finding this place.”
Not willingly.
“Well, this is Citadel property now.” Winthrop folded his arms across his chest, giving me a cold stare. I knew that look. It was the one I received most often when I walked through the halls of the Citadel, the gaze that said,you don’t belong here.
Even when my feet were planted on the ground of my own kingdom, I didn’t belong.
“Scholars arenotallowed on excavation sites.Youare trespassing.” Winthrop stepped forward, surveying the golden fae vault around us, as if he’d already dismissed me.
“Arrest her.” He waved his hand in my direction, and at least ten soldiers surrounded me, their guns drawn.
Panic seized me, not at the thought of my arrest, but at them searching me and finding the Queen’s bracelet there. I needed to get out of this mess, and fast.
“Do you really need this many Citadel soldiers to arrest one girl?” I asked mildly, but no one was listening to me. Even the soldiers who’d approached me were distracted by our surroundings. They were all staring at the Golden Vault, as if only just realizing the magnitude of fae wealth around us.
“Remove and compile all the valuables in the vault to send to the Empress,” Winthrop continued. “But there’s one relic in particular we need to find now.”
Sophie nodded, and I wanted to throw her into the pit full of spikes I’d just climbed out of.
“The quqnoz,” Sophie said softly and I stood a little straighter at her mention of the statue I’d just held in my hands. Of course, she would go right to it.
Winthrop gave a disgusted face. “What is that?”
I let out a little laugh. After all this time, they couldn’t be bothered to learn the proper names of the Astolan mythological creatures and relics they stole.
Sophie shot me a look. “The phoenix statue,” she explained to the excavator. “The song says it’s in an antechamber, not in the main portion of the temple.”
Only because my mother’s journal told you that, you traitorous weasel.
I didn’t say that out loud.
But the betrayal of our friendship still burned like rubbing black salt into an open wound. She had been one of my closest friends in the Citadel, even though she’d come from the Angrezian Empire. But I thought she had understood what we were going through and cared about helping us. Instead, she had been using me to find treasures for the Citadel, to leach our land of life magic and starve more of my people.
I didn’t scream at her, because I also didn’t want to give them another excuse to search me.
So I stood with my lips pressed closed while they excavated the vault, and tried not to react when they shouted about finding the phoenix statue.
“Give it to me!” cried Winthrop.
A thorn of fear pierced through me. I couldn’t be here when they noticed the haath phool missing. Though first, they would have to get through the fae’s traps.
Slowly, I took a step toward the hole they’d blasted open in the ceiling, the rubble piling up like a makeshift staircase. But as I did so, I realized what they were about to do. Dread pooled in my veins as I watched Winthrop stride toward the antechamber.
