Bring Me Their Hearts(76)
Love. It makes sense, falls into place—why Fione is risking so much. A foggy tendril of sadness worms into my heart locket; a love unfulfilled. I hope Fione got to tell Varia how she felt, at the very least. The more I find out about her life, the harder and harder it gets to cling to my jealousy of her.
The carriage stops in front of the palace, and Malachite and I get out and head toward the watering party gathered on the lawn beneath the oaks. The sun is piercing today, the air thick and hot like steam. Inside a moving carriage it was bearable, but now it suffocates me. The shade is only mildly cooler, and when I draw into it I realize the nobles at this party are entirely my age—the only adults are handmaids fanning their charges and palace servants offering cups of chilled barley wine. The Priseless twins are here, though they can’t meet my eyes with Malachite next to me. Charm and Grace are here, too, unfortunately, but both of them ignore me. Lucien sits beneath a tree surrounded by a few celeon royal guards. Malachite shoos them off, quickly retaking his place by Lucien’s side. The prince seems relieved to have Malachite back, and I can understand why now—Gavik might not have control over the royal guards like he does the lawguards, but influencing them would be a simple matter of manipulating King Sref. And Gavik’s proven he can do that—even if it means killing the Crown Princess.
Perhaps Gavik, too, knows that to get to Prince Lucien, Malachite has to be out of the picture. The thought sends a cold chill down my spine despite the summer heat.
Fione walks up to me in a beige off-shoulder dress, her ivory cane sinking into the grass and the curls in her high ponytail shuddering with her slightest head movement.
“Lady Zera!” she chimes. “So very good to see you. Have a walk with me, would you?”
I take her arm and we walk a little way from the party, the nobles absorbed in their game—something played with silver throwing sticks and triangular dice. When Fione’s sure we’re alone, she speaks softly.
“I’ve informed His Glowering Highness over there of my plan, but I haven’t informed you. Let’s correct that oversight.” She turns us at a hydrangea bush, the brilliant magenta flowers temporarily hiding us from view of the other nobles.
“My ultimate goal is to provide King Sref with irrefutable evidence that my uncle had Princess Varia killed,” Fione murmurs. “The king is my uncle’s one check. Varia is the king’s one weakness. If he knows my uncle killed her, he’ll orchestrate his downfall swiftly and surely. But my uncle is nothing if not very good at covering his tracks.”
“Better than you are?” I marvel at the path she leads me through—around trees, between bushes, and behind fountains, smiling at me all the while. To the outsider it must look like a perfectly innocent walk.
“Where do you think I learned it from?” She laughs. “But that isn’t the point. My uncle might’ve relished—” She swallows anger. “Killing Varia. But there’s one thing he relishes more than eliminating his enemies.”
“Executing innocents?” I ask lightly. She shakes her head.
“Acquiring technology. You’ve seen the prince’s sword, right?”
“Is that a dirty joke? And here I thought Y’shennria said you were the perfect lady.” Fione mimes vomiting, and I can’t help laughing. “The prince has Varia’s sword, right?”
She bends and picks a water lily out of one of the man-made rivers. “He does now. But it’s my belief my uncle had it first, before the court got news she’d been killed.”
“You’ve lost me.”
Fione buries her nose in the flower, the petals shading her mouth. “That sword is rare—a marvel of smithing expertise. There was only one polymath in the world capable of imbuing white mercury into metal seamlessly. He made four swords in the war at King Drevenis’s deathbed request and then disappeared.”
The prince’s sword is white mercury? I make a note not to be cut by it anytime soon. Fione hands the water lily to me.
“Some say the polymath was overcome with guilt for making such powerful witch-killing weapons. He left behind no blueprints, no apprentice. The swords were destroyed in battles, or lost in the fog of the Sunless War. No one else has been able to replicate the technique since. And it drives my uncle mad to this day.”
“I’m sure he’d love nothing more than to arm his lawguards with a thousand witch-killing swords,” I muse.
Fione nods. “Exactly. Everything changed when King Sref presented Varia with one of the swords. My uncle coveted it, tried to get Varia to give it to him to study, but she knew his devious ways and refused. He killed her for many reasons, but the sword is the only tangible reason—the only hard evidence left.”
I furrow my brow, but she just smiles wider at me—one of her strong and insincere smiles.
“The night she was killed, I believe my uncle’s people delivered the news she’d died, and her sword, to him first. He had a whole day to study the sword before he returned it to the lawguard reporting the news to the royal family. He must have some notes on it, somewhere. If I can find those notes, I can prove he had the sword—that he knew Varia had been killed before the rest of us. That he arranged it with his own two hands.”
I’m silent. It’s a sound line of thinking, but so convoluted and dangerous it sets me on edge.
“He’s been trying to replicate Varia’s blade for five years now, but his attempts are clumsy,” Fione presses. “Yet every year, they get better. He must have notes.”