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His crystal eyes bore into mine, and I see the gears turning in his mind.
“Do you think that she believes you’re dead now?” he asks.
I have thought about this at length, so my answer comes quickly.
“Obviously Dv --” I can’t quite force myself to say his name. “The alchemist believes it, since he saw the evidence in the cave. Whoever she had watching us must have reported to him.”
“How do you know she had someone watching you?”
“She always has someone watching. That’s her way.”
“So, rooting her out of even just my kingdom will be...”
“Impossible,” I finish.
“Nothing is impossible,” he argues. “I was going to say, a challenge.”
He thinks another moment. “So if you stay here, she may discover you, and you and your sisters would then be in danger. Not to mention, this is not a life for you.” His voice is contemplative. “But if you go to free them, your discovery is even more likely, and again, you and your sisters are in danger.”
It’s somehow bleaker hearing him lay it out than it was when I said it. I nod, trying to fight back the rising panic in the back of my throat.
“Have you considered that there’s a third option?”
I open my mouth to tell him there isn’t another option when I remember what he and Sigrid both said, about how I may have found another way out if I had been willing to talk to him first. So instead, I just slowly shake my head.
“You have the element of surprise on your side, invaluable inside knowledge of Ulla, and the resources of a king. Have you considered that instead of merely freeing your sisters, we could end her reign of horrors once and for all? That we could beat her?”
My mind snags on his use of the wordwe, and I begin to feel something suspiciously like hope before my better sense brings me back to the ground.
“No one can beat her,” I whisper.Least of all, the girl who has only ever been at her mercy.
“I’ve never seen you fail to rise to a challenge before,” he comments, though there is no judgment in his tone. “Have you ever thought about why she was so much crueler to you than the others?”
I suppose he’s picked that up from the handful of stories I’ve told him, but it isn’t untrue. And I have thought about it.
“She took me because she thought I was like her. She wanted me to be her prodigy. I think it upsets her more when I don’t live up to that.”
“I think it’s more than that,” he says. “I think she’s afraid of you, afraid of what you could do if you weren’t under her thumb.”
“She isn’t afraid of anything.” I disagree with him, and then immediately hear how it sounds.
It sounds like a child talking about the monster under their bed. She has done her job so effectively that I have ceased to see her as flesh and blood at all. But...what if I did? What if I analyzed her as just another person with weaknesses to be exploited?
“There it is.” Einar sounds proud and resigned, all at the same time.
I look up at him with a question on my features.
“I knew your unrelenting spirit couldn’t be held down for long,” he says.
“Then why do you sound so unhappy about that?” I ask.
“Because I know that no matter what happens, you will wind up putting yourself in the line of fire again.”
I can’t argue with him, so I say nothing. We finish our meal in silence.
The next twodays are filled with us telling each other everything we know about Madame. Einar is forced to leave me more than he would like to, sitting in on council meetings and getting back to the regular running of his kingdom, now that the castle is more or less functioning again.
He always makes it very, very clear just how much he hates leaving me for any period of time, and I try not to think about how long we may be separated going forward if a handful of hours feels like a lifetime.
