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But all she says is, ”No.”
“Your benefactor, then?” I ask.
“No,” she says again, but this time with more disdain than disgust.
“Then who?”
She holds my gaze for a long time, letting out a quiet breath. “He’s just another of Madame’s monsters.”
I don’t miss the way she lumps herself in with those monsters, but I can’t disagree, either.
“Who exactly is Madame?”
“I already told you that.” But she’s looking away, confirming every single one of my fears.
I bang my fist on the wall, and she raises her eyebrows. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re so quick to go back on your word, but really, did it take you ten whole minutes to decide you were finished answering my questions?”
“If you don’t like my responses, maybe you should ask me something different.” She clenches her slim fists. “It would take me half a lifetime to explain in detail the answer to your incredibly vague questions. Ask me what you want to know.”
I want to argue with her, but in the handful of months I’ve known her, she’s never said more than she meant to. It was foolish of me to expect her to be talkative now. As it is, I’m not sure why I’m asking her anything when I don’t know if I can believe her answers.
Only the realization that I am stalling,again, spurs me to ask her in very specific terms what I want to know.
“Do you or Madame work for Ulla?” I bite off every single syllable.
“I had never heard that name before I came here.” Then why did her skin lose two shades of color?
“That’s not what I asked.” It hits me all at once. Zaina is pale and fidgety. She is afraid, like she was when she got the letter from heraunt.From Madame, the only person she ever seems to be afraid of.
“Madame is Ulla.” I don’t bother to phrase it as a question, and she doesn’t waste her breath with the answer that’s written all over her face.
Zaina works for Ulla.
Chapter Sixteen
Zaina
Einar’s face goes slack with shock, and I can hardly blame him. He has spent seventeen years looking for the woman who destroyed his life only to discover he married her pet spy.
I let him process that for a moment, watching while the last vestige of irrational hope I held on to that he might not hate me someday burns into ashes that I can practically taste in my mouth.
He recovers more quickly than I would have expected, and I’m reluctantly impressed.
“So, she sent you here to, what, finish the job her poison started? Or to kill me when she failed? And how does the rose play into this?” He has clearly lost himself somewhat, firing each question at me before I can answer the previous one.
Why did she send me here?
She gave me two jobs, but that’s what she wanted me to do, not why. I had thought at the time that she chose Jokith because Einar was the only unmarried king. That was naive of me, though. If a queen had been standing in her way, she would have just removed that problem.
I suspect if she truly meant to kill him, he would already be dead. More like this is about making him suffer, about revenge. About power, as everything with her is.
I eventually settle on the simplest answer.
“I told you, I don’t know what she wanted from any of this. I didn’t know about the poison or the cure, any of it. Just that she wanted the rose.”
I don’t tell him about my mission to secure an heir, because it hardly matters now that he has found me out.
No sooner has the thought flown through my head than horror follows in its wake. The night before I left, I never expected to survive. There was no point in taking any precautions. It’s not likely...but I may not have failed at that second part after all.
