Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(76)

I swallowed. Here it was—my alternative agenda. It couldn’t be different from hers. If she knew what they’d done to us, she’d agree. “Grell da Sousa, Eight, Seven, Horatio del Seve, and Thorn da Tonin. I got Shan de Pau arrested for murder, and I might’ve killed more when I was a street fighter, but I don’t know for sure.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Horatio del Seve fell from his garden and snapped his neck. A tragic accident.”

She knew. Everyone knew, and yet here I stood.

I opened my mouth, stopped, and shuddered. She’d seen the monsters who’d created the shadows and turned them on civilians. She’d killed them to save us.

“Because if it were anything other than an untimely accident,” she said softly, “the lords of what was once Erlend would have cause to challenge my rule and our nation’s sovereignty, and we would be at war again.”

“They shouldn’t even be lords anymore. Not with Nacea—” I’d not spoken this aloud in years, and my tongue fumbled over the words. “They left us. Every single Erlend soldier left us before the shadows came. They didn’t even warn us, just used us to slow down the shadows so they could save Erlend. They shouldn’t get to be lords, alive while Nacea lies forgotten.”

Our Queen leaned back in her seat, eyes narrowed, and laced her fingers in her lap. Light reflected off the four rings on her left hand, and red, purple, white, and green flickered over my feet. “The world is not so simple.”

“They slaughtered us.” I shook my head. This wasn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t what I’d dreamed. She’d known and she’d done nothing. “And you’ve let them live in comfort while I got tossed from town to town. You know how many orphans you’ve got with no place to sleep and no food to eat? While Erlends are running round rich?”

“Sallot,” she said, voice caressing the peaks and dips of my name properly. “I have many regrets, but none so painful as what happened to Nacea.”

“Regret does nothing but soothe your own guilt.” I sniffed. “I thought you didn’t know. You’d have done something.”

“I bided my time.” She beckoned me forward, eyes on my face and sad. Lady, they were as teary as mine. She cared—she had to. She couldn’t fake this. “The lands of Erlend are fertile but wild, and the charges of the nobles are as stuck in their ways as anyone else. I couldn’t erase a nation overnight. The lords had to stay if Igna were to thrive. We’re thriving now though, and the old lords of Erlend are restless. I need them no longer.”

“But you’ve never done anything about it?” I said. “I waited and waited, went to all your processions, and you never even mentioned us.”

“I could not acknowledge Nacea without acknowledging what Erlend had done, and my rule has been dependent on Erlend until now.” She exhaled slowly through her nose. “I could not move against them without giving Lord del Weylin reason to attack Igna. More people would’ve died.”

“And now?” I lifted my head and met her eyes. “What can you do now that you don’t need them anymore?”

Her face didn’t change—no frown or smile—and a high whine built up between my ears. I’d talked back to Our Queen. I’d talked back to her, and I wasn’t even nice about it. I was dead. Disqualified or dead.

“I believe we want the same thing, Sallot Leon.”

I jerked, mind reeling and nodded. “Truly, Our Queen?”

I froze. She’d spoken Nacean, and I’d responded in kind. It was clumsy and old, like an old door rusted shut and stuck, but it was there. I’d forgotten how smooth the words were on my lips. How my name really sounded.

“Thank you, Twenty-Three.” She dismissed me and switched back to Alonian. “You may leave.”

“Of course, Our Queen.”

I bowed so low my head ached, but she said no more. The door slammed shut between us. I blinked back tears and sniffed. I still loved her.

But I did not trust her.





Forty-Four


I was either Opal or dead, but Our Queen was so steady that I couldn’t make sense of what my chances were.

Great.

Maud and Dimas talked with each other in the corner, neither meeting the other’s eyes properly. I slid behind her, and Dimas startled. He tore his gaze from her shoes.

“Maud?” I asked.

Dimas bowed to me and took off.

“Are you still in the running?” Maud turned to me, shoulders straightening despite the downward crook of her mouth.

I nodded.

She led me out the door. “Good, at least that’s working out in our favor.”

Maud had me unfancified and the clothes folded neatly faster than I could’ve done it, and I slipped out the door. She said I’d permission to be anywhere we’d trained. I headed to Emerald’s greenhouse.

“You’ve seen her?”

I jumped. Two smiled from her perch in the branches of a tree above me. I nodded and raised my hand in greeting. I’d not even thought to look up.

“Our Queen?” I leaned back to get a better look at Two. She’d not bandaged the cut on her arm. “She’s something different.”

“She is.” Two pried up a piece of bark and crumbled it in her hands. “I saw her once at the carnival. Even with the crowd between us, I stumbled when she looked at me. Dropped a knife on Four’s foot.”