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I clenched my jaw, hating myself for pushing but I needed to hear her say it. “Did you ever use your magic to shape my feelings?”
“I didn’t even know I was a mage until Eki pushed me from the balcony. I guess I should thank her. I used magic instinctively to make us flee under the city, but whatever feelings you might have had for me were all your own.”
The vice around my heart loosened despite feeling too much. If she had forced it, I could have hated her. Instead, I felt the opposite. My nails dug into my palms again. I could not have her—could not put her in the line of danger again.
“I still have the shoe. The one you lost…” I do not know why I brought it up, only that I had been unable to throw it away. Perhaps returning it would free me somehow.
“It was my sister’s.”
Unable to face her grief for the woman who tried to kill me, I turned to study the Grove on the other side of the bridge. In each tree, skeletons played in the wind—a mix of ancient, yellowed bones and gleaming white and gilded ones.
“How are you going to make them pay?” I asked. “Revenge is a slippery slope.” I let her see my twisted smile.
She shook her head. “You might believe Tal is yours, but I’m learning it’s mine as well. You probably don’t think much of mysister—she did what she thought best, I’ll leave it at that—but when I only wanted to find somewhere better, she fought to makehere better—for everyone. She knew she would never leave Tal. Perhaps the part of me that thought she could run died with her. My tomorrow is gone, now it needs to be better for the next one. That starts with the truth—the ugly and unbelievable.”
We left the bridge that haunted my sleepless nights, as if stepping past our differences.
“You’re going to tell me things without games or magic?”
We strolled in daylight as we never had before, the street slowly filling, and her cocky smile did more than the sun to diffuse my dark memories. With her, alive and arguing, everything seemed a new adventure. No matter what she had to say, I wanted to extend our final conversation.
She nodded, jaw clenched. A flicker of discomfort reappeared inside me. Truth was never easy.
“To repay my debt to Kirill, my stepfather who killed Alexei, I became a thief.”
She paused, breathless, hands hovering above her neck, as if expecting the curse to awaken.
In the Archive, she fell, ashen and gasping. This time, I raised my hands to catch her, knowing I would carry her to the hospital again, the consequences of her returning to life in the king’s arms be damned.
She blinked, gulped down air, and laughed.
It rang like chimes, clear and pure, as relief radiated from her emerald eyes. Hawkers readying their booths turned to stare as she did a pirouette—effortless and perfect—the priestess’s robe flaring.
“It’s gone.” She grabbed my still raised hands, a spark that had nothing to do with magic shooting toward my constricting chest. Watching her smile, I was the one robbed of breath.
“You can talk?”
“It seems death does free you. You cannot believe how it feels to speak without fear. To not guard my own thoughts.” She raised our joint arms, shouting, “I’m a thief!”
“Then stay away,” a merchant answered while others gave us the side-eye, though at least one laughed.
“I never thought I would say that with joy,” she murmured in a voice just for me.
My lips relaxed into my first genuine smile since I left her on the steppe. “So, you’re a thief.”
“Only you wouldn’t recognize one when catching her with the stolen goods in hand.”
I thought back as she retreated from my arms. “The crown.”
She nodded. “Councilwoman von Lemerch hired me and my sister to steal the female glass crown, but I couldn’t get away with it—even after you conveniently dropped it at my feet.”
I stumbled. “Von Lemerch is behind this?”
“She is.” Vanya hesitated as if picking her words carefully. “I believe she leads the sect Morovara spoke off, that she worked with Flora von Heskin to coerce Helia into marrying you wearing the fake crown. They failed and needed a replacement… I don’t know how she found me and my sister. I do know, she gave us a job to test us, or perhaps to see if her friends thought we resembled the princess as well.”
“Friends?”
Already, I was adding names to my mental list.
