Something’s wrong,the voice inside me warned. But underneath that, another one giggled. A blare lit through my head, wide with alarm, yet I had the oddest urge to simply laugh.
He tilted his head. “Everything all right?”
I sank against the wall, my legs as heavy as iron, my mind cumbersome as each thought dragged through it.Sing to him, I ordered myself. But it was almost as though I’d forgotten how.
I opened my mouth to try anyway.
The King of Calder punched me in the stomach.
Air whooshed out from the single blow, vacating my lungs. I buckled, folding over his arm, but he carelessly yanked it out from under me, letting me flop onto his rug. The sudden need to vomit struck just as hard, but I reeled it in, mouth gulping for air instead, begging my lungs to fill.
“Selena, Selena.” He lowered into a squat just beyond my head, hooking a finger through the strap of my mask and pulling it off. “Do you realize I’ve experienced the same thing with you?” His face spun in a slow circle. Behind him, the ceiling rotated in a faster one, the difference between the two so disorienting I had to close my eyes. “It’s odd, isn’t it? You’re the most beautiful woman in the palace. The most beautiful woman many men have ever seen. Your sister is nearly as flawless as you. Deimos is far from ugly, but why would the two of you waste your time with little Cain?”
The texture of his rug was the only thing I could see. Crisscrossing fibers, coarse but plush, each dyed thread its own voice in a violent chorus of Calder blue.
I managed to cough, dragging a fragment of air deep enough to use my voice.
He struck me again.
The force of it didn’t make a sound. Neither did I as I rolled slowly onto my back. Pain rippled, surging and then surging again, made even worse by the desperate reach for air that wouldn’t come. My mouth hung uselessly open, my chest hostage to a torrent of spasms. Water clouded the corners of my eyes. A strand of hair stuck to the side of my mouth, and I made to wipe it away, the motion clumsy. Imprecise.
“That’s where I always lose you,” he said, still crouched beside me. “You open your mouth to say something, and I find myself staring into your eyes, thinking how vivid they are. It’s always right before it all goes blank that I think I might be in love. But then I wake up. And remember I’ve never been in love. Try that again, and I’ll just continue to hit you.”
He patted my bare shoulder almost affectionately, dropping back into casual speech as I coughed and sputtered. “So, I visited the Aalton temples. None of them had answers here in Calder City. But can you believe my luck, Selena, I was visiting my brother and stopped in a sun shrine in Merriam, and one of the herbal priests there had heard of a temporary ailment involving lost memories. He’d been studying his records and found the affliction more pronounced along the coast. Until somewhere close to the Rivean border. Then it disappeared entirely.”
I tried to shift away, but I couldn’t move. I was too heavy, too liquid, too low to the floor. Almost sunken through it. The King drew me upright. I wheezed as he did, clutching my stomach, the bottom of my ribcage already throbbing with the promise of bruises. He straddled my legs, his weight held over the balls of his feet, pushing me against the wall. Then wiped hair away from my face before leaning into his heels, drawing away one of the strings from his mask.
His hand entered his pocket.
I breathed roughly, watching. I expected a knife. Something small and sharp and menacing. Something to threaten me. Scare me.
It wasn’t a knife.
It was a frothy stem with wispy leaves, as soft and textured as the blue fibers of his carpet. I’d heard of it before. Had found sketches among Thaan’s scrolls. Thaan had worked hard to keep it out of Calder, sending Naiads to eradicate it. I’d never seen a sprig of it up close.
“Do you know what this is?” Emilius asked.
The way he asked, he knew I did.
But he waited for my answer anyway. Waited for me to incriminate myself, to admit I’d sung him into a stupor before, that Cain had done so even more than I. I swallowed, my mouth dry from its desperate pleas for air. “What did you put in my drink?”
“A powder,” he said flatly. “For sleep. They developed it in Krava. Then outlawed it just as fast. It’s deadly in large doses, but I only gave you a tiny pinch.” He cocked his head, stroking a fingertip down my cheek and under my chin, angling my head up. My eyelids fought to lift. “Don’t worry,” he said, his gaze shifting over my face. “I won’t let you fall asleep. I just need you docile enough to answer my questions. How did you meet Cain?”
I swallowed thickly, warily meeting his eyes.
Fuck Thaan.
I wouldn’t die for him. I wouldn’t die for Deimos. After everything we’d been forced to do in the past ten years, I wasn’t above forsaking him. Selling him out to save my own skin. It hardly mattered if I did. Thaan could dispose of Deimos. He could take a new form, leave his identity as Cain, and worm his way back into the court as easily as I could shed one dress and don another.
But Cebrinne—I’d die to keep our secrets safe. Keep my sister safe.
I let my skull slide out of his grip as I gazed back at him, mouth firmly closed.
The King’s jaw hardened. “All right,” he said, grabbing the sheer lace of my dress at my chest. His nails were trimmed short, but they cut into my skin as he balled his fist into the fabric, dragging me behind him. Through a door and down a hall, into his bedroom. My long skirt twisted around my legs. I drunkenly beat my arms, my feet, my hands, anything to wrench myself out of his grasp. The world blurred in color and motion, every movement delayed. The sensation of being lifted came before my eyes registered the floor retreating. My back slammed into the hard seat of his leather chair before his face sharpened back into view.
My head hung over my shoulder as he turned and left me. Doors closed, three of them.Snick. Snick. Snick.I fought to stay awake, fought against the weight behind my eyes. Emilius returned, a coiled rope in his hand, hovering over me again. He slapped my face. The snap of it blew across my cheek, laying a bright sting across my skin. “Don’t fall asleep,” he ordered. “Answer the question.”
I spat. I didn’t aim for his face. But that’s where it landed.
