His jaw firmed. “That beast should never have been able to break in here. Not with our security.” He bowed his head. “For that I am sorry. And that you were the one that had to fight it.” His eyes grew flat. “But you shouldn’t have tried to attack the creature. You are much too important to be killed by some weak rebel attempt.” He cocked his head. “Even so I would like to knowhowyou managed to kill it.”
His eyes pierced into me, as if I were naked again and he was examining every inch of my skin.
To my relief, my voice didn’t break. “Truthfully, I’m not certain I did much.” I recounted the same thing I told Mishah, including omitting the detail about my mother’s bangles.
I nearly looked right at them in the moment, but I didn’t want to draw his attention there, and the questions that would come about my mother.
Then would come questions about who she was. About who I was. About what I wasreallydoing here.
He still didn’t know I was a human from the other side of the wall, nor that I wanted the crown for myself.
Finally, he nodded. “You still saved the peris in this palace. And the Viceroy.” He cleared his throat. “And the threat is even greater than I suspected. If the rebels have infiltrated here, we must find the crown now before they try and wrest control. Only the crown can give him the power he needs to crush them.”
A shudder flitted through me. But he was right. The rebels had unleashed a beast capable of killing thousands.
But a voice whispered inside me, one that I’d heard before.
What had the Viceroy done to them to make them rebels?
And hadn’t my father been one too, just in a different land?
It wasn’t as if I was going to let the Viceroy take the crown.
If this all worked out, I’d be the one to steal it, and take it back across the River. The Viceroy was just my path there. He could talk all he wanted about crushing and destroying the rebels, but he wouldn’t get the chance to if I walked off with his power.
I cleared my throat. “When do we leave?”
Kiyan’s eyes roved over me once more, as if he were assessing damage, but I sensed it was more. Something heated his gaze with more than concern, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Anger.
He was angry at me, for what, I couldn’t discern.
“Are you well enough to travel soon?”
“How soon?”
“The Viceroy wants to leave tomorrow.”
“And you?”
“It’s my job to enact the Viceroy’s wishes.”
“But what doyouwant?”
His mouth thinned, eyes darkening. “My wants don’t matter.”
I swallowed, trying to get to the bottom of the clear anger in his words, wishing I had my spectacles so that I could see the nuances of his expression better. “Then tomorrow works fine,” I snapped back, tired of his attitude. Was he regretful that he had to carry me? I certainly hadn’t asked him to save me. “Let’s just find the crown.”
“And then? What happens after?”
I tilted my head, trying to understand what he was asking. I was confused by this new side of him, as if he were frustrated by my presence. “What happens after?”
“What happens toyouafter?”
For a second, I thought he might have guessed my plan to steal the crown and head for the River, but if that was the case I would already be back in the dungeon.
The floorboards creaked as I shifted uncomfortably. “It’s what the Viceroy said, I help him find it and then I work at the palace as a scholar.”
