The White Sheep's Disguise ✓

Chapter 45

Hours before I'm ready to wake, Setsuko retrieves me from my room. Like everyone else that ventures this far into the palace, she tucks her arms tight against her chest and rubs her hands against her trousers in a search of non-existent pockets to keep her freezing fingers warm. Also following the trend of others, her eyes immediately lock onto the faint bruise marking Rylan's fist, but she's kind enough to keep her mouth shut.

She told that a meeting including all palace officials, members of the court, and servants were being held in the throne room. The queen had a special announcement. Immediately, my mind goes towards the possibility that Cloak is behind this, and he wishes to reveal to the entire world that my healing abilities robbed his chest of an invisible ache that would otherwise have no cure. But I don't get my hopes up.

On the way to the throne room, after I button my jacket with slow, tedious fingers, Setsuko questions how I'm faring, how my eye is healing. Once she receives the answers she desires, she spins an entirely new conversation about the quick ways of the immortal body's healing abilities, how a wound that would take weeks to disappear on a mortal vanishes within days—sometimes hours—on a beast of our make.

I can't fathom how relieved I am to speak with someone that doesn't wish to kill my husband for what he did. Setsuko's soft ears droop farther against the side of her head, the only sign of disappointment I manage to make out, but she isn't Cloak, Gustus, or Theo, who have ideas of their own on how to deal with Rylan the next time they see him.

Setsuko keeps herself the busiest out of all the children. While Gustus has his husband and dragon training to tend to, Setsuko spends long hours in the library researching ancient practices of potions in hopes of uncovering the birth—or something new—that her mother can use to her advantage. As Cloak trains and makes an ogre of himself, Setsuko crafts poisons that'll bring down a rootbeak in two seconds, or bombs that blow them to pieces. Aela stands at her mother's side and constantly lurks in the shadows, sometimes following Setsuko through her trials of working in the healers' quarters to gather their knowledge on medications and their ill-effects.

Her innocent appearance is not all that it seems. Carrying herself to a higher standard, her body betrays her and the smart brain hidden underneath hair that darkens in the shadows but brightens to a crisp brown underneath the sun's beam. Per usual, she braids back those long, curly strands and tightens them into a crown around her head, officiating her appearance bring light to the professionalism taking up too much room in the palms of her hands.

Each sibling is deadly in their own way. But Setsuko stands leaps and bounds above them all. Not out of brute strength or the ability to rob someone of the advantage, but by literally blowing them up or poisoning them. I will never cross her.

We walk into the throne room together and she deposits me towards the back with the rest of the palace servants. Some move aside, others whisper under their breath after Cloak stayed well into the night, cramped in my small room. The servants that brought us down two meals received plenty of knowledge as to where our positions were. Only one cot, and hardly enough room for myself. Though I tried my best to shove into the corner, Cloak isn't exactly the smallest person to hide, nor conform to.

I spot him towards the front of the room, standing in front of the dais and saving a spot for Setsuko between him and their brother. I stare at the side of his face for what seems like a too-long moment and give myself a shove. His stare locks on the rose throne that his mother spreads herself atop, a throne that will one day belong to one of the four children. If Aela is to have her way, then it'll be her. Not Gustus, and definitely not Setsuko or Cloak.

With her three siblings, she sways back and forth impatiently, waiting for her mother to speak. I squirm in my spot, the silence in the room seeming to stretch and expand. The guards hold their breath; the servants remain hushed; the royal children solidify their stare onto their fearless leader and mother, the Raven Queen.