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He has this way about him where he can almost always get more out of our sovereign than I can.
I asked him about it one time. He claimed all he does is treat the queen with respect.
I decided that wasn’t going to work for me.
The queen chews at the inside of her cheek, and for a moment, I think Gunter’s actually convinced the monster to tell us what she’s up to.
When the queen received a lead that sent her barreling for Dwellen, I’d never seen her so ecstatic. So drunk on a thrill.
I don’t know what happened in Dwellen, but I’ve scrutinized the queen well enough by now to note her disappointment. Whatever she’d been anticipating, it wasn’t to have to carry this girl all the way back from Mystral and turn her over to me and Gunter.
If I know the queen at all, she expected to waltz into Dwellen, and for the parasite that dwells inside this girl to give itself up to her.
And why should she expect any less?
That’s exactly what I did.
But I was a child when I gave myself over to the queen.
Whatever lurks inside this girl’s mind? I have a gut feeling it’s old enough to know better.
“Perhaps what the two of you need is not information, but motivation,” the queen says through teeth that look as though she’s attempting to pin a blade between them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “I’m fairly content with torture for the sake of torture.”
As if on cue, the girl lets out a wilting scream, one that sends me into a high, down from which I have to wrestle my mind.
I’ll regret this tomorrow—enjoying her pain.
But for now, my head isn’t pounding, and that’s all I can think about.
Until the queen speaks again. “Find a way to extract the parasite, deliver it to me, and I’ll free you.”
I exhale. Heavily. We both know that if it was my freedom I cared about, I would have broken myself out of here years ago.
“All of your freedoms,” she adds.
Gunter stiffens beside me. My heart pounds, grating against my ears, mingling with the racing pulse of the girl whose auras I’m currently sifting through.
I lock eyes with the queen.
“All of us?”
She grins, and for a moment, I’m taken back to a snow-crested hill, a mouthful of snow, and a melodious laugh.
“I swear it.”
It seems like a dream, one I’ve been grasping at each morning I’ve woken in this dreadful palace, so I make her repeat the bargain. Make her patch every possible loophole, outline each step of what she agrees to do for me and when.
And once I’m satisfied, I agree.
CHAPTER3
BLAISE: AGE TWELVE
If Father notices I burned his eggs this morning, he doesn’t mention it.
Instead, he gobbles them up. I have to help him, of course. His fingers are weak, and they shake with such ferocity he’s ended up with more egg bits on his silk bedsheets than in his mouth.
