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“Don’t tell anyone. I think she likes me, but that won’t stop her if she learns I revealed her most precious secret.” Lumi winked, taking the sting from her words and, just a little, we were as we had been.
My swirling belly settled. Finally, she was sharing her secrets.
The Witch of Lowtown a sigil crafter working outside the Guild. So much made sense. Sigils could create weaker but independent versions of most other magic. Mariska had explained how each sigil carried the will of the mage, the swirling shape steering its flow. Popova must draw them somewhere on the potions bottles where no one could see them.
“If the Guild finds out, they’ll come for her,” I mused.
Lumi nodded. “And kill her, for she’ll never work for them.”
I had lived on the shore of a sea of secrets, never looking beyond my world of music and dance, listening and moving to the city around me without thought. Perhaps Morovara had been right. I had to separate myself from my magic, for it had always been there. Even now, talking to my twin whom I had searched desperately for, the joys and sorrows of others, the bats and cats, the horses’ complaints of the heat all sang to me.
Mentally, I rebuilt my wall, leaving only the narrowest of holes to connect me to Lumi—enough to tell me she was alive. She was somehow blocking the rest again anyway, and I needed to focus on the present. Needed to convince her we should work together. All of us.
“Dimitri says food and people are missing. They’re somehow entering Tal, and no one knows where they go. The Spirit of Lowtown is everywhere. It’s somehow all connected.”
Like distant notes, separate parts of a symphony I could not fully hear.
Lumi’s face closed again at the mention of the prince, her suspicion a jagged note. “And everything has to do with the palace. He’s not the answer, but part of the problem.”
“Meet with him once, for me. Let’s share what we know.Please.”
I held back my plan for connecting the palace with Morovara and Popova—she would think me bat-bitten if she knew I wanted everyone to work together. One step at a time.
Lumi’s fingers clenched around the letter. “Have you shown this to him?”
I shook my head, and again, thoughts moved behind her eyes like sharp-clawed griffons circling their prey.
“Don’t tell him anything before we meet, including who I am, and I’ll do it.”
“Who should I even say he’s meeting then?”
“A representative of the Free Tal. Or, as he would say, a rebel—if you prefer.”
My own anger at her snapped. “You lied to me, hid everything, and now you want me to convince the crown prince—who doesn’t trust me—to meet with a nameless rebel? How?”
“That’s up to you. Or we don’t meet. I’ll wait on the Dragon Bridge at midnight in ten days. Come or don’t.” She raised her hand with the letter. “I’ll keep this until then.”
When she walked into Popova’s house, I did not follow.
It had been worse and better to see my twin than I had imagined. At least we were no longer tiptoeing around each other. Our old closeness had been gone for years; we had only not wanted to acknowledge it. Somehow, our desire to protect each other had broken the thing we sought to preserve.
Perhaps after the Day of the Dead, we could get to know each other again—not as the twins who were once one person, or the girls on the outside of society, but women, both fighting for the life they wanted.
I imagined her and Dimitri talking, us coming up with a plan together and stopping von Lemerch. Sure, they would fight. Might hate each other at first. But I knew both. They wanted to do what was right for Tal. I needed to make them see that working together—even a temporary truce—was the key. That we were the sheep bringing down the wolf.
Hope squiggled inside me. Tonight, I would regain another piece of Dimitri’s trust. In ten days, he would know it all.
Chapter nine
Vanya
When I arrived, the Drunken Dead’s regular patrons abandoned our back corner table without comment, a worn set of King’s Conquest already waiting and tea arriving before I could order.The privileges of working for the Crown, the drink hall’s owner said when I first asked. I searched for Dimitri, longing for that involuntary curl of his lips as our eyes first met.
Some of the men rewarded my searching gaze with their own smirks. I wanted none of it. Not that male attention had ever been a high priority, but since meeting the prince, they hardly registered.
My heart sank as no mismatched eyes found mine. But he would come. I could wait.
It was the seventh night of looking for answers since I found my sister, seventh time meeting Dimitri as if he was any other man. There were no repeats of the act on the Sinking Spoon, but despite my betrayals and me sometimes seeing the killer in his smooth movements, we had relaxed more in each other’s presence each night.
