A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(67)

Here, her voice failed completely. She sat down heavily at the foot of my bed, letting her hair fall like a curtain to shield her face.

I pictured Agrippa sitting at his cozy desk in the library, writing out an order to have a group of women dragged to the stake. I imagined him smiling so kindly, so gently, as the women screamed in the fire.

In a small voice, Maria continued, “They took six from the wagon. I was holding on to my mother’s skirt when they pulled us apart. Even now, I can feel the cloth slipping from my hands.” Her shoulders shook, but she kept going, her voice pitched higher with every word. “Then they tied them to the pyres as the sun crested the hill. They wouldn’t let me look away. Held my head so I could see ‘justice’ being done; that’s what they called it.”

For an awful moment, there was no sound but her strained breathing. I went to the bed, trying to think of something to do or say. Finally, wiping her cheeks, she said, “If you were me, would you carry soft feelings for your father?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Since I was a child, they spared me and sent me to the workhouse in Edinburgh. Would have been a greater mercy to kill me. That’s all my father ever gave me.”

I inched toward her, waiting to see if she’d let me near. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do you know why I’ve told you all this?” She pushed her mane of red hair aside and held her chin up, and her eyes, though red, were dry. “Because I believe I can trust you. And I hate to keep secrets. You? You cherish yours.”

Stung, I said, “That’s not true.”

“You tried to hide those bloody things. Quite a botched job you made of it, too. When you wake in the morning, you dress in your lies and keep them close. One day you’ll wake and even you won’t know what the truth is.” She bunched her knees up to her chest. “So. Talk. Tell me.”

Humiliated, I stared at my folded hands. “Rook attacked someone. He—he told me the man deserved it.”

“All right.” Maria shrugged. “Thank you for telling me what I knew to begin with. But I don’t believe you’d do anything so improper as go into a lad’s room in the dead of night without a reason. Something drove you in there. What was it?”

God, she was crafty. The secret boiled up inside me. I wanted her to know about R’hlem, but Maria could hold it over me, torture me with it. No, I couldn’t trust her. I couldn’t trust anyone.

Rook needed to be protected; the truth would hurt him. Magnus was too wild, too free to keep such a secret. And Blackwood’s father was directly involved in my father’s becoming a monster, so how could I burden him? I…

I was alone, living life in a glass box: visible, but impossible to touch. I’d end up like Mickelmas, lying about his identity to his followers, lying to me about my own bloody past. Oh God.

Maria touched my shoulder as I buried my face in my hands. “Tell me,” she whispered. “What is it?”

The path diverged before me. Truth or lie. Safety or risk. I’d lied to Agrippa. Would I lie to his daughter?

I made my choice and told her everything.

Mickelmas and the astral plane. R’hlem’s revelation and Blackwood’s father. As the clocks chimed six, I kept talking. By the time I was done, Maria had gone so pale that her freckles stood out starkly.

“So you see,” I finished, “it was an interesting night.”

The truth sat between us like a living thing that could bite…or not.

“See why you’d be anxious,” she mused. My laughter translated as sort of violent hiccuping.

“No one can know.” I’d given this girl the key to my undoing. But when I looked in her eyes, I trusted her. Not because they were Agrippa’s eyes, but because they were Maria’s. She nodded.

“As someone who’s problems with her own father, I doubt I’ll be telling anyone.” She twisted a piece of hair. “What are you going to do about, well, R’hlem?”

I stared at my hands, knotting my fingers. “What would you do?”

“First instinct says you should keep as far away as you can get. But then again, he didn’t have to burn, or tell you about Mickelmas. If he told you the truth, he probably wants something. Be good to find out what that is.”

God, what was I supposed to do? “I’m caught in an impossible place.”

“You are.” Maria smiled. “But you needn’t be caught there alone. Trust in your strength, and trust in mine.”

We shook hands on it.





That evening I lay in bed, listening as the bells tolled the hour. My feet were blistered from a day of marching along the barrier. It was midnight, and Blackwood and I had only just got home from our patrol, so tired that we lurched upstairs to bed without even a good-night. The entire day had been spent tromping through ankle-deep mud, walking the entire perimeter to seek out any weaknesses. Whitechurch had made every available sorcerer do it, including me, even after my dawn patrol. I’d not been able to sit for hours on end. Painful as it was, I’d been glad for the distraction from my thoughts. I should have fallen instantly asleep, but sleep did not come.

Fear overrode tiredness.

The sachet of herbs remained on my vanity table, beside my ivory comb. Thought of the astral plane made my gut tighten, but Maria had made a point. He probably wants something. Be good to find out what that is.