She sleeps in pain.
Her fingers twitch with each tap of Samson's, grunts of pain echoing from her lips. Sweat beads at her forehead, and I know I could end it. That if I spoke the words, he would retreat, taking the rest of my court with him. But I cannot risk it. Not when I already teeter so close to the edge.
"Her brother is dead." He says it with so much glee. "She's watching it, over and over, forced to learn how she could have saved him."
I straighten. "You are dismissed, cousin."
His eyes twitch, and I wonder if he'll break. If I will have an excuse to avenge her as only I can. But he withdraws, leaving me to bear her presence alone. Her guards trickle in, lining the bed at all sides. Wren follows, my head healer, lover of Ptolemus Samos and potential liability. Who she sides with, I can't know.
Sometimes I wonder who I'd choose if Mare reciprocated.
She takes her wrists in her hands, and jealousy curls its claws. If I were a healer, maybe she'd love me. Maybe I could take the pain away.
Wren withdraws as the bracelets come forward. Manacles, Mother whispers, and I can't disagree. Mare stirs. Perhaps she's been awake the entire time.
My hand waves as her gaze flickers to me. I know she expected a collar. I know she has been subject to more wrath than I can control.
Then the guards leave.
Her arms don't lift. Her feet don't twitch. She is immobile but for her head, whose eyes burn holes in mine. I swallow. "I'm quite aware of what you'd like to do to me."
She manages all the rebellion she can: a clenched fist. "More silent stone." A whisper to match my own. "You must be running low by now."
I almost laugh. "Thank you for your concern, but the supply is well in order."
She spits at me, and I smile despite myself. "Get it out of your system now. The court will not take kindly to such behavior."
"As if I–Court?"
I hum. "I did not misspeak."
A plan. A play. A move that corners both her and court, keeping all within my reach. Mare sneers. "Lovely." My heart pounds at her voice. "You're tired of keeping me caged up where you can't see me."
I find myself surveying her, the unyielding gaze, the scars Wren didn't bother to erase, the lips that spit at me moments ago. "Actually, I find it difficult, being this close to you."
"The feeling is mutual."
If only she knew. "I doubt that."
"Where's my leash, then?" Why she baits me, I don't know. "Do I get a new one?"
She can't see how my heart pounds, how my blood rushes to every part of me. It was a mistake, taking her alive. It was a mistake, letting her close.
"No leash. No collar." My festering idiocy hopes for gratitude. "Nothing but those now."
She keeps staring. I need to make it stop.
I clear my throat. "Your interrogation was very fruitful. So much to learn about you, about the terrorists calling themselves the Scarlet Guard." She stares harder. I find myself drinking it in. "Cruel people, aren't they? Bent on destroying everything and everyone that's not like them."
Her brow wrinkles, and I want to lean closer, to run my hand along her cheek as I show her how I can scheme. How I know her, how I know my court, how she will fit into us all. Impressive. Clever. Something she cannot fathom, no matter how terrible. "What are you talking about?"
"Newbloods, of course."
"It's such a shame, to know you were treated so badly you felt the need to run from that old man calling himself a colonel. Worse still, that he debated shipping you all to the mountains, discarding you like garbage. And of course, I was very upset to learn the true intentions of the Scarlet Guard. To make a Red world, a Red dawn, with no room for nothing else. No one else."
"Maven." My name, spoken with such hatred I almost recoil. "You can't–"
"Can't what? Tell the truth?" Oh, she must be seething. "Tell my country the Scarlet Guard is luring Newbloods to its side only to kill them? To make a genocide of them–of you–as well as us? That the infamous rebel Mare Barrow came back to me willingly, and that was discovered during an interrogation where the truth is impossible to hide?" I don't touch her, but I still lean forward. "That you are on our side now, because you have seen what the Scarlet Guard truly is? Because you and your newbloods are feared as much as we are, blessed as we are, Silver as we are, in all but the color of blood?"
Mother protests, complaining of rats, of foolish, smitten boys and their downfall at their own hand. But I am a burner. I have no problem playing with fire.
For once, I get her to look away. "You're a monster."
I almost soften. "Never tell me what I cannot do. And never underestimate what I will do–for my kingdom."
For myself. For Mother. For our shared dreams, precarious and fragile, one wrong step from sliding across the edge of a knife.
Yet I find myself doubting them as her voice cuts through the haze. "Were you there?"
My face of stone slips.
"Through this." She doesn't blink. "I dreamed you were here."
Dreams. The thought makes me cold, moreso when Mother berates me for staying. For wanting to answer, and let her in on my weakness. "Every second."
She speaks no more, her eyes tracing mine, and I stay for far longer than I should. Listen to her breathing, her silence, the cries of pain in her eyes. I stand. I pause. I don't know how to leave.
Put away your toys when you're done, son.
I will always choose Mother, no matter the price. The one person who has never abandoned me, not even in death. I close the door. I close my heart. And I close the last bit of light I have, and let the darkness swallow me whole.
