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I looked at where she was gazing. Sure enough, there was a small cut on my leg. “It must have happened when I was crawling into the passage. A sharp blade of grass or a twig or something.”
“Here, I’ll take care of that.” She came over with a small white cloth in her hand, cleaned the cut, and then pressed a compress over it. “Wouldn’t want it to become putrid now, would we? My brother would throw a fit if something happened to you.”
“I want to murder your brother,” I said conversationally. “So while you seem lovely, Rychel, I’m honestly not sure we can be friends.”
“Oh, I want to murder him, too! Please, let me help.” Rychel clapped her hands together. “He’s infuriating, isn’t he?”
I nodded reluctantly, but wasn’t sure she was taking me literally enough. “No, I mean, I might go back to our room and if he dares to make an appearance, I plan to stab him in his sleep.”
Rychel tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, just don’t stab him in the heart. Anything else, and I can probably fix it. Or he’ll heal. He has incredible healing abilities. I’m sure you’ve noticed. He’s pretty hard to kill, but give it a shot if you need to. I’m sure he deserves it if you’re this angry.”
I stared at her. “I.... thank you.”
“Sure, of course. Now, I’m sure you have a lot of questions and I doubt my brother has given you many answers. Probably part of why you’re ready to kill him, am I right? So go ahead and ask me. That’s part of why I had Beks bring you here.”
“You...did?” I thought for a moment. “Why weren’t you at the ceremony tonight?”
“Oh, I’m persona non grata. Out of the court’s favor.” Unsurprisingly, Rychel looked completely unconcerned by this admission. “The Queen Regent hates my guts. So, that means I don’t get invited places. It also means I don’t have to go to stupid things like her little garden parties.”
“It was rather in bad taste,” I acknowledged. “Not just failing to invite you, I mean. But having a party after her court was attacked.”
“And a rebel exposed in her midst?” Rychel nodded. “But it’s all part and parcel with the Court of Umbral Flames. Just keep your chin up, pretend everything is fine, ignore the fact that we decimated the children of an entire people who, by the way, we’re still basically related to, forget about how we’re now doomed to childlessness ourselves, pretend there’s no dissension in our midst until its literally hitting us in the face... or biting us in the face.”
I winced at the image. “Speaking of the childlessness, I would have thought that was the problem you would be trying to find a solution for.”
Rychel raised her eyebrows. “Why? Because you think I want to help the Siabra?” She tapped the table beside her with a finger. “You don’t think they deserve exactly what they got? Or worse?”
For attacking children. Destroying the lineage of a people.
“Well,” I said, taking a breath. “Your father was the one primarily responsible for what happened, wasn’t he? As the emperor?”
“He had a fleet of advisors to back up the decision, I can assure you. Not that I was alive then.”
“Right. Of course, he did. And it was a horrible thing. But the way your brother made it sound... your father didn’t know only the children would be affected? Did he? Or what was going to happen?”
Rychel looked at me thoughtfully. “That’s what he told you? I suppose he was trying to present the most balanced version. Honestly, I don’t think we’ll never know. My father was too much of an asshole to ever admit that he knew exactly what he was doing.” I cringed, thinking of how I had been thinking of Draven exactly the same way. Was he more like his father than I’d thought?
“Especially after it came right back to bite him,” Rychel went on. “He didn’t exactly go down in Siabra history as our most beloved emperor, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“Why does the Queen Regent hate you, anyhow?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Well, I’m not a trueborn child, for one. Not like Draven, who’s at least the child of her dead sister.” Rychel began ticking off items on her fingers. “I’m half-human. I refuse to marry and try to breed. Sorry, no desire to die in childbirth for this stupid curse, thanks very much. I’m a constant reminder that my dad–Sephone’s husband–was a serial cheater who basically fucked half her court. No gender preference either, in case you were wondering about that.”
“I wasn’t, but that’s... interesting,” I managed. Definitely not interested in any details of who Draven’s despicable dad had or hadn’t slept with.
“Oh, and she thinks I’m mad for being down here, conducting my little experiments and trying to undo the mess my father made,” Rychel finished.
“I mean, it is a little... bold,” I said cautiously. “It’s admirable that you want to try though. I still don’t see how it would ever be possible.”
“Flesh and memory.”
“What?”
“Well, if it was simply a matter of restoring the Valtain children’s bodies, I could probably do that right now. But it’s memory that’s the sticky thing, isn’t it? Think of a fae child. Say ten years old. They’ve lived hardly any time at all. Then one day, bam! They’re victims of this horrendous plague. And they spend the next one hundred and fifty years...”
“Oh, Zorya...” I was horrified.
Rychel nodded. “Exactly. They wouldn’t want tokeepthose memories, would they? No one would. It’s a conundrum all right.”
