Midnight in Everwood(56)
The captain leant back against his desk, crossing his arms as he surveyed her. ‘Have I offended you in some way?’ he asked at last.
‘Not at all. I merely find it difficult to reconcile myself with your kindness towards me.’
His eyes were locked on hers. ‘And why is that?’
‘How can you be so compassionate in one regard and yet utterly unconscionable in others? I understand you have other obligations and perhaps I am incorrect in this, perhaps running an underground rebellion is a far nobler cause than all others, but does it justify your callousness elsewhere?’ Her words were soaring arrows. And each one hit their mark.
The muscles in his jaw worked. ‘I—’
‘And furthermore,’ she plunged on, all the pain, fear and rage she kept locked inside bursting out like stardust, ‘you took advantage of my being in a vulnerable situation to … to make me feel things.’
Captain Legat looked taken aback.
‘Sympathy,’ Marietta said. ‘I felt sorry for you. As if you were the victim in all this. As if your king was torturing you alongside us.’
The captain stepped towards her, her anger proving to be infectious. ‘I may not be the king’s plaything but do not make the mistake of thinking I do not care. I fed you when you were at risk of starvation.’ His eyes burned. ‘I am working day and night to ensure his reign of terror ends.’
‘You can leave,’ she hissed at him. ‘Step outside the enchantments that encase the palace and retain me as his prisoner. Do not pretend to understand how it feels to be confined within these frozen sugar walls. Waking each morning into the same endless night. I feel as if I am losing my mind.’
‘Once you have joined the King’s Army, it is disloyal to leave. And disloyalty is treason. I am risking my life for the people of Everwood, for carrying everyone’s freedom on my shoulders. I am sorry you are his prisoner, I truly am, but you do not have the liberty to proclaim your privileged existence is more perilous than the families I visit in Everwood. Their grief is deep. Bodies of children are left on the ice cliffs each night for the mountain vultures.’
His words hit Marietta with searing clarity but she could no more stop their argument than she could hold up the tides of the ocean. It ran between them, taking on a rhythm and wildness of its own. Nor could she elucidate why she felt such anger, burning inside her, why her breath hitched when she looked at him, why she longed to raise her voice and shout and lose her fingers in his tangle of hair. ‘And yet you were the one to save his life.’
‘An action I shall regret until the day I join the stars. Every time I am forced to watch you bleed and break at his command, I long to be in your place, to be the one to bear the brunt of his wrath,’ he said fervently, breathing hard.
Marietta looked up at him. He was closer than she’d realised. He smelt of the forest, of fir trees and snow and a hint of smokiness, and his jawline bore the shading of burgeoning stubble. She wondered if he’d been up all night. She watched his throat bob up and down as he swallowed. ‘Marietta, I want you to know, I—’
‘Yes?’ she whispered.
He looked at her for a long moment before shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever thought had taken root there. His timepiece sounded, shattering the fragile spell in which they had been locked. He looked as though he wanted to speak further and she was disappointed when he cleared his throat. ‘You ought to leave before we attract attention.’
Marietta inclined her head and walked back to her suite in a daze that failed to abate when the guards locked her back inside and she took up the mantle in monitoring Dellara’s condition. That night, there was a small vial of medicine perched alongside their dinner. The following morning, Dellara had regained her senses.
‘King Gelum has long since ruled with a frozen fist,’ Dellara told Marietta, reclining on a chaise as she polished off a rich gingerbread cream cake. ‘But he failed to both take into account what resided within his council room, and that I could possibly notice it.’ Her eyes were shadowed storms.
Fairy, King Gelum had called her. If Dellara was truly a fairy, she was far from the kind that had flitted through Marietta’s imagination as a child, dainty in petal dresses, sipping on nectar. No, she was cut from a different, fiercer mould. ‘I am afraid to ask,’ Marietta said after Dellara had devoured another slice.
‘There’s something about you.’ Dellara drew the words out as if she was tasting them. ‘You’ve captured his imagination. Stirred something up. There are drawings of dancers plastering his walls, parchments written imagining the specifications of your world and its possible locations. Drawings of you.’
Sickened, Marietta set her cup of molten chocolate down.
‘It isn’t safe for you here,’ Dellara said. ‘I’ve never seen the likes of his obsession with you.’ She paused to drink two cups of chocolate in quick succession. ‘Worse still, I managed to glimpse his desk. There were strategical maps of Crackatuck there. Reports on the number and skillsets of Crackatian fighters. Information pinpointing their whereabouts. It appears the unrest during the Festival of Light has been playing on the king’s mind. I would wager he plans to dispel any further thought of an uprising with a show of strength. Inciting war ought to do the trick.’
Pirlipata sighed. ‘There has not been war in Celesta for an age. Not since the peace-keeping accords were signed between our three lands.’ She stared out at the sugar wall. ‘My people are loyal and brave and intelligent but they do not possess the cruelty that King Gelum does. The majority are scholars. If he intends to invade, they must be warned, as must Mistpoint. I shall not let our world fall to a vindictive petty man who refuses to accept my rejection of him.’