Alie hid her hands in her lap. “Does He know where to look?” she asked casually. “For the other avatars, I mean. Other than me.”
“He has an idea. Truth be told, I think Apollius is… overzealous in His pursuit.”
“I’m surprised.” Her tone was cutting; she didn’t temper it, not for this. “It seems out of character for you to wish any clemency for them. Especially Gabe, after what you did.”
His hand, still lying on the table, curled into a fist. “I,” he said finally, “am a different person than I was at sixteen, Alienor. As are most of us.”
She swallowed.
“I wish I weren’t, sometimes.” Jax sat back in his chair, his gaze directed unseeing to the far wall, as if picturing that sixteen-year-old self. “It would make it easier to live with the things I’ve done. It was a time of war. My father raised me in his image, and thatimage was cruel.” He paused. “I would never venture to say I’ve become a good man. I am still cruel. I will still do whatever I have to. But I do not take joy in it.”
He was a bad man. That wasn’t changed by the fact that he sometimes felt remorse, or the fact that he thought he was protecting her. But Alie made her face soften, made herself nod. “There is always opportunity for change.” Something she believed, even if she was only trying to keep him talking.
He just nodded, still staring at the middle distance. “I thought killing my father could be an atonement,” he murmured. “But it was just one more weight.”
Alie wasn’t in a position to judge someone for wanting their father dead.
She retrieved dessert from her kitchenette, shaking off thoughts of patricide. Alie ate the flaky pastry and cream in moments; nerves made her crave sugar. Jax barely touched his.
A moment, staring at his pastry, then Jax rose from his place. He walked over to her, slowly, waiting for her to turn him away. Alie didn’t, though the muscles in her shoulders tightened with every inch he gained.
He stopped an arm’s length from her. They made eye contact, the flickering kind that seemed like an accident, but neither of them could look away.
“I hope,” Jax began, “that we can find our way to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I can’t release you from this engagement, Alie, but please know I would never force a closer relationship than you want. If you’d rather live separate lives once we’re married, that’s fine. I will do whatever I can to make you happy.”
There was nothing to say to that, really. She wasn’t Lore, with her biting remarks and acerbic wit; there was no way for Jax to make Alie happy, and they both knew it. Drawing attention to the fact would do nothing but make them both feel worse.
Jax offered his hand. A heartbeat of hesitation, and she placedhers in it. He had calluses, which she supposed was to be expected when you’d spent your formative years conquering most of a continent.
“We are at the tipping point of a whole new world,” Jax said. “We can make the most of it, you and me. We could be something good. Good for us, good for Auverraine, good for the Holy Empire.”
He kissed her hand. Then he left, closing the door softly behind him.
Alie chewed on her lip. Then she wiped the back of her hand on her wrinkled skirt and poured herself another glass of wine.
So they knew who she was. Jax and Apollius both. They knew, and were content to leave her be. Far from comforting, it made her even more fearful. There was some larger plan here, one she couldn’t fathom.
She poured the rest of the bottle.
The rose was right where Lilia said she’d leave it. Stuck in the front door of the Citadel, woven between the hinges. By the time Alie saw it, it had been nearly shredded by the door’s opening and closing, apparently unnoticed by anyone else. But she knew what it meant. The former Night Priestess was ready to search the Citadel for the missing Fount piece.
“Dammit,” Alie muttered, picking up her skirt to stride out into the southern green.
If Lilia had managed to get inside the walls of the Citadel, Alie was fairly certain she could search it without her help. But an agreement was an agreement, and she didn’t blame Lore’s mother for wanting a measure of protection. An unknown woman alone in the Citadel would raise suspicion; an unknown woman with the King’s half sister would be assumed new hired help.
Lilia had told her she would wait in the South Sanctuary.It seemed like a risky place to be, given what she was, but Alie wasn’t in a place to critique her plans. They were all doing the best they could, under the circumstances, and the circumstances were uniformly terrible.
Pushing open the Church doors, Alie gave a demure nod to the bloodcoat waiting just inside and walked toward the Sanctuary, trying not to run.
The former Night Priestess stood in front of the altar, as close as the velvet ropes blocking it from the pews would allow. There were no such ropes in the North Sanctuary—noble penitents could get as close to the lectern as they wanted. The braziers were already lit, clouding the air with fragrant smoke.
Alie stepped up to Lilia’s side, followed her eyeline. The older woman stared at the small, circular stained-glass window set into the arch of the Sanctuary, one Alie hadn’t paid much attention to before. A white-skinned hand, holding a knife. Jeweled blood dripped from its point.
“It’s funny, really,” Lilia murmured. “How we were ever convinced He was kind.”
She wanted to say she’d never been convinced, but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Before all this, Alie had never given much thought to Apollius, but when she did, she assumed He was good, because that’s what she’d been taught.
With a shake of her head, Lilia turned away from the window. “Come on.” She set off for the doors.
