58. Mortifer

mortifer ~era ~erum, a.

1. lethal, deadly

I’m left alone that night in bed with my midnight thoughts, the marble circles staring at me like dead-white eyes, the fifth freshly scratched out. Two left.

Dravik’s rhythmic tapping announces his approach before he ever raps on my door. I don’t have the strength to be angry anymore. “Come in.”

The prince wedges the door open with his cane. “Do you truly wish to continue to speak to Velrayd?”

My heart leaps. Push it down. “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

The simulated moonlight hangs heavy and cold over us. The prince’s voice goes thin. “Your safety is all I know, because my safety is all I wanted my father to know. I wanted him to care more—about losing me. He didn’t. And in some strange way, I’ve been trying to make up for that with you.”

My eyes never leave Dravik’s shadow on the floor. It’s the hope that kills me, always—not the scheming, not the attempts on my life, not the pain. Hope. Hope that I could be his real daughter. Hope that I’ll live long enough to learn to love him like a father.

“You’ll stop reading my vis,” I say.

“Certainly.”

“And you’ll unblock him.”

“I’m afraid I cannot. Private communications are a serious risk, you understand.” I open my mouth, and he cuts me off. “Public communications are another matter. Sir Rax will be attending my sister’s birthday fete, and so will you. In my stead.”

“Sister,” I repeat.

Dravik’s shadow has no face, but I can hear his smile.

“Yes. My half sister, Leyda Esther de Ressinimus, crown princess of the Nova-Court, and your next opponent.”

The fifth circle is my cousin.

Was.

Dravik’s ping comes in as I’m readying for the birthday fete, my fingers freezing over the silver buttons of my dresscoat. The vis glow is only slightly bluer than the skirt Dravik insisted upon. “For dancing,” he’d said with a smile. “Leyda loves dancing.”

Olivere Solunde-Hauteclare was my second cousin by marriage. He was two years older than me—freshly twenty-two. A boy, really, but old enough to know better, and certainly old enough to know better than to meet the Spider’s Hand on my father’s behalf and deliver them the contract money. According to Dravik’s ping, Olivere was an expert on navigating the taverns of Low Ward, and most prominently the ones that doubled as brothels—the sort of brothels with girls barely old enough to bleed.

My teeth bare. The message logs glare. My eyes skim over Father’s words.

FARRIS: I hate to ask it of you, Olivere—to get you involved in such a thing at all. But you’re the only one I can count on. The others are not as familiar with the territory as you are.

OLIVERE: C’mon uncle. You know I’m here for you—anything for the guy who showed me the ropes.

My shaking hands smear hair oil into my black strands to keep them down. Polished.

OLIVERE: It’s just two girls, right? Mom and kid? That’ll be done in no time. I can hang out and confirm it, if you want.

FARRIS: No, thank you. The deliverance of the fee is all I require from you.

We were prey. Less than. Prey, at least, is eaten before it’s discarded.

Crown Princess Leyda Esther de Ressinimus is turning thirteen years old.

This is evidenced by the thirteen swan-shaped ice statues placed on the front lawn of her palace. Her own palace. Separate from the royal palace, her rose-marble complex is surrounded by tulips and marigolds and a redwood gazebo drenched in pink wisteria like countless petal-threaded waterfalls. It’s a heaven made for a girl, for a young girl, and for a girl who wants for nothing.

every blade of grass, grown with corpses.

I don’t deviate a single step from the gravel pathways. Gilded noble shoes crush verdant blades with joyful abandon all around me, with shrieks and cries of “hurry” and “you must see it, it’s magnificent.” Luna trots at my feet, growling softly at everyone and everything, though the blue ribbon tied around its neck negates any imposed ferocity.

“Save your energy,” I urge it. “The night’s only just begun.”

The doors to the princess’s palace waft forth icy-cold mist in continuous gossamer strands. It’s the same low-hanging mist found in Low Ward during Winterfolly—a mist that kills every garden made to combat starvation, freezes babies in their cribs and lungs in pneumonia and people sleeping in the streets, the whites of their eyes glittering with frost.

The air as I step into the princess’s palace is breathtakingly cold, but the blood in me burns hotter than ever.

The interior swells with soft rolls of ice like in old Earth caves—bulging, cloudy, cut in stark slabs to show translucence lit in ghostly whites and blues and pinks. This is a toy box, and they’ve taken the hardship of Winterfolly out to play make-believe with. For fun. For celebration.

I follow the main ice path. It ends at a door flanked by frozen stalagmites and icy-blue holocandles—the cavernous ballroom beyond echoing every mandolin and synth-harp. Below the proud lavender banners embroidered with swans, nobles dance in furs and silks, in rigid couples like courting animals. The ballroom floor is white and gold marble in a chessboard pattern, and I pause at the threshold. The herald smiles at me, a glass bell in his ready hand. “How shall I announce thee, milady?”

“You won’t.”

“Milady, I—I must.” It goes unsaid—he must, or the nobles will discard him.

“Synali von Hauteclare,” I finally say. “Of House Lithroi.”

His unease melts as he rings the bell. The sound doesn’t stop the jubilee, but it does slow it. The nobles gathered on the edges of the ballroom floor pause as the herald’s cry rings out, “Synali von Hauteclare, of House Lithroi!”

A hundred blacklight halos on a hundred foreheads flash blue in my direction. a pack. Luna’s sapphire eyes stare out at them all, unblinking, pitiless.

The pawn steps forward onto a golden square.