Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(52)

“I’m no oracle if that’s what you’re after, but I have strong intuition.”

“The possibility that you’re even a little like the king’s Oracle, who might be even more mad than the king, offers little relief.” Fowler practically snarled the words at her.

She tapped at the center of my palm, indifferent to him. “You should be grateful. What I see here can help you both.”

“No,” Fowler growled. “We don’t want to hear anything that you—”

“Help me how?” I asked, cutting him off.

“Knowledge is power,” she responded.

“Luna,” Fowler warned. “You don’t want to hear—”

“Now. I’m no oracle, but I see enough to know you’re the one they are after.”

My head lifted. “Me?”

“Yes, you. You are the one the king is looking for . . . the reason he’s killing half the females left in Relhok.”

Her words sank like rocks through silt, chugging through me slowly, difficult to hear aloud even though I had already concluded as much. Now I had to face it. Now Fowler knew.

“How d-do you know that,” I stammered.

“Oh, my, yes. It’s you,” she asserted.

For a moment not a sound could be heard. No one moved. It was as though I had stepped in a sudden vacuum of silence. I felt like I had been dropped into a very deep and endless well occupied by no one save me. It was only me and my beating heart. The blood a dull rush in my ears. The king wanted me dead. Either I let him hunt me or I figured out a plan that did not amount to me running for the rest of my life while countless innocents died because of me.

Fowler finally broke the silence. “What do you mean the king is after her? He doesn’t know anything about her. She’s just a girl . . .” His voice faded, but I heard what he was saying: I was just some girl he found. Not anyone who mattered. Not anyone who could be important to a king.

I shook off my silent stupor.

“It can’t be because of me,” I finally said, deciding to play ignorant. The less they knew about me, about the truth, the safer they were. “Why would the king be after me?”

“You’re the one,” Mirelya was quick to reply. “The one true heir to the throne.”

I stood with a gasp, the mad urge to run seizing me. She had seen the truth I was desperate to protect. Even beyond my gender and blindness, she knew this most important detail about me. And she spoke it aloud.

“Luna?” Fowler’s voice was whisper soft. At my silence, he turned to Mirelya. “What are you saying?”

“Oh, you don’t know who she is?” Mirelya laughed lightly. “What other secrets do you keep from each other?”

I tried for denial again, shaking my head, but this time the lies would not come. “I’ve admitted nothing.”

“You needn’t admit anything for me to see the truth, girl. You are the late king of Relhok’s daughter. The one they said was never born before the queen died the night of the eclipse, at the hands of dwellers—”

“It wasn’t dwellers,” I snapped, unable to suffer the lie that had been spread following my parents’ deaths. “It was the chancellor. Cullan. He killed them both and blamed their deaths on the rise of the dwellers. Then he declared himself king.”

My outburst was met with silence and I knew I had essentially just announced myself to be the one true heir to the throne.

“You’re the princess of Relhok?” Fowler’s gravelly deep voice was quiet but full of incredulity. His hand slipped from my shoulder. I turned as though I could see him just behind me.

“Well,” Mirelya murmured. “Would this not make her the queen?”

“Stop! I’m not a princess or a queen.” At least I didn’t feel like it. Not sitting here in boys’ clothes, travel weary and covered in grime.

“Why did you not tell me?”

“It wasn’t important—”

“You didn’t think such a detail important?”

“No!”

“Well, apparently you’re important enough for the king to wish dead,” Fowler accused.

It was sobering to hear this announced aloud. He was right. It was bad enough to know that girls my age were being killed all across the kingdom, but to know it was because of me. . . . I couldn’t run from this reality any longer.

My shoulders sagged under the weight of this knowledge. It wasn’t something I could carry. “I have to stop him.”

“What did you say?” Fowler demanded.

I pulled back my shoulders. “He has to be stopped.”

“There’s no stopping Cullan. Just get that thought out of your head.” Fowler paced an angry line across the room. “We’d need an army to do that.”

“Or just a girl,” I offered. “Once he has me, there would be no need for him to keep killing girls.” I exhaled and released an uncomfortable laugh. “It’s that simple.”

“You’re out of your mind. There’s nothing simple about that. Travel back across the entire kingdom to reach the capital? Even if you could, even if we make our way inside the city, what then? You just surrender yourself? They would kill you. You would die.”

The echo of laughter faded from my lips. “I know that. I didn’t expect to stop him and live.”