“Margaux. She said she’d had a vision from the Holy First. Do you think she said something to your father to make him change his mind?”
“My father is a mercurial man,” Leopold said carefully. “He’s easily swayed by those around him. Those who whisper loudest. And everyone is whispering at him.”
“But to execute that little boy? His own nephew? Why would the Holy First want that?”
Leopold winced, remembering. “I don’t think she would. But Margaux might.”
“You’ve said similar things before, questioning her motives. Why would she want…why would she want any of what happened today to play out?”
Leopold shrugged. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask her. But Papa…Papa always wants to look strong. And he’d want word of such strength to reach far and wide, to stop anyone who might think of taking up my uncle’s cause. It’s an effective strategy.”
“You agree with him?” I asked, horrified.
He shook his head with vehemence. “No! Not at all. Not ever.But…” He swallowed. “Heisthe king. And the one man who tried to stand against him just wound up with his head in a basket. So…” He drifted off, and I knew that the sentence would never be finished.
“Could I have some more water?” The words tumbled out perfunctorily. I felt too numb to think. The deaths that afternoon had been the worst I’d ever witnessed, and I couldn’t stop seeing them. The executions played on an endless loop in my mind. I watched over and over again as Bertie slaughtered Baudouin’s family.
Bertie.
My Bertie.
I tried to remember him as he’d been before, when we were young, before he’d been conscripted into a god’s service, before he’d sliced up his body in the name of his newfound faith, but I couldn’t do it. All I saw was the man who’d stood before the executioner’s block, carrying out the orders of a vengeful king gone mad.
Marnaignewasmad. Of that I had no doubt.
The deathshead had been right.
He was volatile, dangerous. The Shivers had changed something in him, breaking parts of his mind, altering him in ways no one could have foreseen.
And I could have prevented it all. Today’s deaths were on my hands. Whether their rotting spirits followed me or not, those ghosts would haunt me for the rest of my too-long life.
“How are you feeling now?” Leopold asked. He shifted his weight on the bed, as if making a move to rise and leave me, but stayed instead.
There was no way to truthfully answer that. Not at this court. Not with King Marnaigne as he was now, so jumbled in his emotions and paranoia that it was as though he was at war with himself.
No. The only way to make it out intact was to go along with him, appease his better side, then run at the first chance. There was nothing for me here any longer, and I already felt I was on borrowed time. Marnaigne would think up some sickness to worry over and demand that I fix him, but without my gift, without being able to see the cure, I’d fail time and time again. There would be no sympathy from this new version of the king.
I now feared his disappointment more than I worried about pleasing my godfather.
I reached for the silver compact mirror on my nightstand and studied my reflection. My face was pale and my eyes dark with worry. “At least tonight’s ball is a masquerade.”
Leopold looked horrified. “You’re not going to that, are you?”
I drew my legs out of the bedsheets before swinging them to the ground. “Your father expects it.”
“There will be hundreds of courtiers packing the hall. He couldn’t possibly notice your absence. And as you said, it’s a masquerade.”
“He’ll expect me there,” I said. “And the last thing I want is for him to find offense with me.”
“I suppose all of us are dancing to the music of someone else’s making here,” he murmured. I’d never heard him sound so bitter. “Do you always do what’s expected of you?”
Leopold’s words were spoken in a voice so low I strained to make them out and then spent too long wondering if I’d actually heard them at all.
With a sigh, he put his hands down to push himself from the bed, and our fingers brushed against one another. It was just a light touch, a whisper of skin against skin, but it sent a shiver down myspine.
“I don’t,” I admitted, daring to look up and meet his gaze. “I used to. Always. But then…” I trailed off, unable to continue.
But then I gave up one of my lives for your father.
