: Chapter 34

When I’m wary and uncertain, I often seek out the infirmary. It’s usually where I find Noah. Grey may have taught me how to defend myself—how to save myself—but when I was younger and terrified of what fate might have in store, Noah always gave me a safe space to heal. He’s always steadfast and unflinching, no matter what he sees—or what I tell him.

Today, of course, he has patients, so I have to wait. I don’t mind, though. The infirmary is warm and tranquil, and Salam has trailed me down here to sprawl in the late afternoon sunlight that beams down through the windows. After traveling all day yesterday and sitting sentry all night, I slept most of today away, and I’m still not quite awake. I send for tea and entertain myself by teasing the cat with a piece of straw, smiling when he leaps to bat at my knuckles with barely sheathed claws.

Eventually, though, I’m alone with Noah, and he begins unpacking a crate full of supplies.

“I heard about Jax,” he says without preamble. “I figured you’d find your way down here eventually.”

“Hmm,” I say noncommittally. Jake must have told him about what he discovered in the workshop. “I haven’t told Grey about all that yet.”

“ ‘All that’?” he echoes.

I glance at him. “The sketches and seals.”

“Oh.” Noah is quiet for a moment. “Why not?”

“Last night wasn’t—it wasn’t the right time.” I shrug, then run a hand over the back of my neck, remembering the weight in the room when Grey admitted what had happened, confessing his fears. “Well. You know.”

Noah nods solemnly. “I know.”

“And then this morning,” I continue, “Grey gave me leave and said he was due to meet with Lia Mara’s advisers. That didn’t feel like the right time either.” At daybreak, he was cool and distant, as stoic and reserved as I’ve ever seen him.

Or maybe I was just looking for a reason to postpone a conversation about how I might have been sharing breath with a man conspiring against the Crown.

Noah says nothing, but he glances over. He pulls a large fold of muslin from the box and uses a knife to tear it into more manageably sized strips. And he waits.

I don’t know what to say. I know I’m supposed to be thinking about my duties here, about my responsibility to both Syhl Shallow and Emberfall. I carry a lot of secrets and truths, and what I learned last night is one of the deepest, darkest secrets I’ve ever been given. I have no idea how Grey and Lia Mara will reveal this loss to the people. Word of the queen’s pregnancy has already begun spreading among the citizens of Syhl Shallow. Jake and I even caught wind of it in a few of the taverns on Emberfall’s side of the border. Could the Truthbringers have been involved in whatever happened to little Sinna? There have never been threats against the princess. The queen’s children, especially daughters, are always held in high regard in Syhl Shallow, and that’s been consistent the whole time I’ve been here.

And why would Jax have seals bearing the Truthbringer sigil? What are he and Callyn involved in? Does Alek have anything to do with it? Years ago, his sister was a traitor to the Crown, but Alek has always staunchly denied any involvement. He might hate me, and he might hate Emberfall, but that doesn’t mean he’s plotting against his queen.

The worst part about all this deliberation is that thoughts of Jax keep pushing everything else aside. I’m imagining the silken feel of his hair between my fingers. Or his hands, a little rough and a little uncertain. Or his eyes, cool and focused when he drew back the string on my bow.

I’m remembering the tearstains on his cheeks after his father nearly killed him. I’m thinking of his hand holding mine as he showed me how to feed steel to the forge. I’m thinking of him brandishing a red-hot iron in front of Lord Alek.

I’m thinking of the taste of his mouth.

“Tycho.”

I blink and look up. “What?”

Noah keeps tearing muslin. “When I said I heard about Jax,” he says gently, “I wasn’t talking about plots against the king and queen.”

I make an aggrieved sound and flop back on the cot where I’m sitting.

Noah laughs. “You’re not the first kid to fall for someone acting a little shady.”

My insides clench. I keep my eyes on the ceiling. “I let myself get distracted. I should have stayed focused on my duties, Noah.”

“I don’t think that’s how life works. Like you can just stay focused and nothing will ever go astray.” He pauses. “People will surprise you, Tycho. For bad, for good, in so many ways you’ll never expect.”

I turn that around in my head for a bit. “I don’t know,” I finally say. “Grey is never distracted. Jake isn’t. Lia Mara. Nolla Verin. You.”

He chuckles softly. “Tycho, I’m here. If you don’t think being yanked out of Washington, DC, was a distraction—”

I scoff. “That’s not the same.”

“Fine. I can tell you I was plenty focused when I was a doctor. So focused. I graduated at the top of my class at Georgetown—that’s a really fancy, expensive school for medicine. Then I landed at Hopkins for my residency—one of the best places you can get into. I had my whole future lined up. But I forgot my wallet one day, and there was this … this …” Noah looks up at the ceiling, searching for words. “I’m trying to think of what you’d call it here. Like … a scruffy young outlaw, I guess. He was in line behind me. He paid for my coffee. He was probably a heartbeat away from prison—or, hell, a grave. He had trouble written all over him.” Noah rolls his eyes. “Even once I got to know him, he’d never tell me what he was doing, but I could tell it was bad. He’d show up with bruises. Once he got a cut over his eye and I had to drag him to get stitches. Sometimes he’d have blood in the creases of his knuckles, and I’d have to pretend not to notice. I probably should have steered clear—stayed focused—” He gives me a look and rips clean through another piece of muslin. “But on that first day, there was something … something gentle about the way he offered me two bucks. He looked like someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, but as soon as he spoke, I was no good.”

I study him. “Who was he?” I say. “What happened to him?”

Noah startles, then bursts out laughing. “I’m talking about Jake.”

I sit straight up. “Wait. Jake was a scruffy young outlaw?”

“The scruffiest.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was shaking people down for money. Threatening them if they couldn’t pay what they owed.”

“Huh.” I try to reconcile that with the man who sat next to me on a horse and lectured me about my duties to the Crown.

A servant appears in the doorway. “My lords.” She bobs a curtsy. “His Majesty requests your presence in the library, Lord Tycho.”

“Of course,” I say, though the request sends a tiny spike of dread right into my heart. I wish I could shake the worry that I’ve been carrying around for weeks. “Right away.”

“Tycho.” Noah’s voice catches me before I’m through the door, and I pause, looking back.

“Jake wasn’t doing good things,” he says. “But he didn’t think he had any other choice. He was trying to protect his family.”

I nod. “I know. Jake is a good man.”

“He was a good man then, too.” He pauses. “You’re not distracted. You’re not reckless. If your heart tells you someone deserves your attention, listen to it.”

The library is on the far side of the palace, with thousands of books, dozens of tables and armchairs, and countless shadowed corners where anyone could sit and get lost in a story. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the Crystal City, allowing the sun to flood the space with warmth in the afternoon. I don’t think Grey has ever summoned me here, and I’m surprised at the location he’s chosen—until I reach the library and find him sitting at a table with a sheaf of papers, while Sinna sits at a distance with a middle-aged woman I’ve never met before. Sinna is playing with her dolls in front of the windows.

When she spots me, she sprints across the velvet carpeting. “Tycho!”

I reach out to catch her, to throw her in the air.

Grey looks up. “Sinna,” he says sharply, and she skids to a stop.

“Forgive me,” she says primly. She offers me a crooked curtsy, then whispers, “Da has been cross all afternoon.”

I want to frown, but I school my features to stay neutral, then bow in return. “No apologies are necessary, Your Highness,” I say, then wink, and she giggles.

The older woman has caught up to Sinna. She looks more regal than the usual nannies who chase the princess around the palace, which makes me wonder if they’ve hired a governess instead. This woman has gray hair in braids that are coiled on top of her head, and one eye is blue while the other is brown. She curtsies to Grey and then to me. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. My lord.” She takes little Sinna by the hand and leads her back to the sunlit spot by the windows.

I brace myself and approach the table, but Grey gestures to a chair. “Tycho. Sit.”

I sit. He looks better rested than he did last night, but there’s still a tension around his eyes that’s never been there before. I wonder if it’s about Sinna and the baby—but the king wouldn’t have called me here to talk about that. Maybe Jake finally told him what we found at the forge. About what happened with Jax.

Despite everything Noah said, Grey is the king, and he deserves the truth. I can own up to my mistakes. Warmth crawls up my neck, and I inhale to do exactly that.

But Grey says, “My brother tells me we’re at odds.” He shoves a leather-bound folio in my direction.

I freeze, then clamp my mouth shut. So much has happened over the last week that I almost forgot about my conversation with Prince Rhen. I let out a long breath. “I did not say we’re at odds—”

He taps the letter. “See what he wrote.”

I hesitate, then look down at the first few lines of Rhen’s perfectly even script.

I snap my eyes up. “Grey. I didn’t tell him to write this.”

“I rather doubt you could tell Rhen to do anything he didn’t want to do himself.” His eyes flash. “Keep going.”

I bite my lip and look back at the letter.

I wince. I don’t want to read the rest of this letter. I can just imagine what it says. “I’m not trying to escape,” I say quietly.

Grey’s eyes are unyielding. “Is there conflict we must resolve?”

I think of everything I’ve done wrong: Nakiis. Alek. Jax. Magic. Briarlock.

I think of all the measures Grey took to mitigate risk: Keeping me here. Sending Jake with me to Ironrose.

The worst part is that he was right. I shouldn’t have freed Nakiis. I shouldn’t have threatened Alek.

I … shouldn’t have lingered with Jax.

“No,” I say. My insides feel tight and uncertain, and I can’t tell if my deep-seated worry is about arguing with Grey or about denying everything I’ve felt up till this moment. “There isn’t.” I pause. “Grey. I’m sorry.”

He sighs, then runs a hand over the back of his head, casting a gaze at the window, where Sinna is now lining up her dolls to peer out through the glass. His gaze softens when he looks at his daughter, and it reminds me of the heady emotion from last night. Sinna is talking to her dolls, but her voice is so soft that I can’t quite make out everything she’s saying.

“We have to watch the skies,” she’s murmuring. “You can all look.”

“Lia Mara wants to make a statement about the baby before rumors can begin to spread,” Grey says, dragging my attention back to him. “I expect she’ll want to do it first thing in the morning, if not this very evening.” He pauses. “But Jake tells me there were some complications in Briarlock again. He seemed surprised you hadn’t spoken a word of it.”

I freeze.

“Is this more of the conflict we’re not having?” Grey says.

I frown. “Last night didn’t seem the best time—”

“I’m not just talking about last night.” He taps a hand on the letter from Rhen. “You haven’t been forthright with me for weeks.”

I bristle. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“Deceit isn’t always about lying.” His eyes are intent and focused.

Deceit. My emotions hit me so fast that I can’t seem to sort through them quickly enough to respond. I’m frozen in place, simultaneously hurt and ashamed, belligerent and repentant.

“Tycho.” He smacks the table. “Talk.”

I jump, and from the corner of my eye, I see the governess flinch. At the window, Sinna whirls. She clutches the dolls to her chest.

Not all of this is about me. I know that. The king is buried in his own emotion, and I wasn’t even here for the last few days—days that must have been filled with heady fear and worry.

But my jaw is tight. Maybe we are at odds—and a lot of that is from his side.

I’ve never faced Grey like this. Every muscle in my body is tense, and I’m very aware that anything I say, anything I do, is going to be witnessed by little Sinna.

A page appears near the archway. “Your Majesty,” she says. “Lord Alek of the Third House has arrived for an audience with the queen.

He says he has an urgent matter for discussion. Her Majesty requests your presence.”

“Right away,” he says, and the page curtsies before slipping away. But Grey’s eyes haven’t left mine. “Is Alek bringing us any surprises?” he says.

“No—I—” I swear and break off. Of course Alek would arrive at exactly this moment. “Grey, I don’t know what he’s doing. But I’m not keeping any secrets. I’ve never been disloyal.” The words almost hurt to say.

“Good.” He rises from the table. “Come along. Let’s see.”