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“Don’t say that.” I’ve heard that word enough in my head.
“This witch sowing distrust between kingdoms—it’s a headache, but it’s aggravating issues that already existed. Even if we find her and get rid of her beasts, even if Cyrus and ‘Lady Raya’ get married, that won’t automatically solve Auveny’s overreaching. It’s easy to blame everything happening on prophecy, but the core of the problem is…here.This kingdom’s greed.”
I don’t tell Dante about how the king asked me to speak at the wedding in support of unification. It’s a guilt I’ll bear in secret, like the thorn in my cabinet.I will make that decision when I get to it,I tell myself, even though I know sympathy has no place in survival.
Better to run among wolves than be devoured by them.
“What can we do?” I still ask.
“Ihopethat relations will be different under Cyrus and tensions will ease as a result. That is yet another reason why we need this marriage soon. He has dukes in agreement with him, but they are quiet at the moment, biding their time until he wears a crown.”
“But King Emilius might not abdicate yet.”
His brow dips. “I thought after the wedding…”
“He’s been healthier.” I kick at the dirt. “I suppose with Cyrus acting out, he wants to rule a little longer until Cyrus sheds his, ah, idealistic impulses.”
Dante drags a hand down his face, smearing a line of sweat along his cheek. “Gods, this outing was supposed to be relaxing. It’s like nothing we plan makes a difference.”
Above, a thumbprint of a day-moon rises. I find littlecomfort in the drifting clouds and darkening sky—the sign of cooler, shorter days as summer ends. A stray fairy blinks a trail overhead as it flies toward the capital.
The light is oddly familiar in its pattern, and as I stare at it, I think of a few of the dreams I’ve had lately without the Fates speaking to me, the ones where fairies seem to have slipped inside. Fairies lit the sky when I dreamed of beasts in the countryside, and even earlier than that, they guided me to a cursed Cyrus who was consumed by briars. It was like they were trying to warn me beyond what my innate Sight could show me.
My lips purse into a frown.
Including the vision I had seven years ago that allowed me to save Cyrus.
I remember it as clearly as the night I dreamed it: the sky above the marketplace had been filled with an impossible number of lights as the prince died below them. But I know better now than I did back then—those lights were fairies.
Were they warning me then, too?
A long-held thought turns and shapes itself anew.
“Itwillmake a difference,” I murmur. “That’s what the Fates are afraid of.”
Dante looks up. “What will?”
“Cyrus becoming king.” The threads drifting in my mind coalesce into a clear picture. “I think he’s cursed because the Fates don’t want him to reign—because that future must be the only one where we avoid bloodshed.” The Fates want blood, so they want war, so they want a king who will allow that to happen. “That’s why they intended him to die seven years ago. That’s why I wasn’t supposed to save him.”
The world shifts into sharp focus as I leave my thoughts. It’s just a theory, but there’s a rightness to it in every layer of my mind. A gasp of hope I can offer Dante—that maybe all of his trouble won’t be for naught as long as Cyrus survives to take the throne.
But my present dreams are still barbed with threats and thorns, and there is so much I can’t admit to him. I still can’t answer the most important question of all.
Where will I be standing after this prophecy has passed?
Blood returns between my legs at night. In my dreams, the Fate who is not a Fate sighs. They lurk in the starless shadows of my mind, that place my Sight finds unfathomable, though it knows something is there.
The boy yet lives.
Their condescension rankles even as I expected it. “What are you doing here?”
I have come to remind you of the prince’s betrayal. And to laugh at you for your foolishness.
I narrow my eyes. “If you want me to kill Cyrus so badly, tell me exactly how he will betray me.” I’m through with the vague phrases of prophecy.
What will happen when he bores of you? When you cross him? Use your imagination. Such is the veracity of kings.
“That isn’t proof.” It took a problem bigger than either of us could handle on our own, but working with Cyrus hasn’t been so impossible. Even if our private activities areunwise. This voice in my mind gave me that thorn at my lowest of lows, and they’d known it. Now they’re desperate to push me down again.
