The Sundered Crown was right. I could do better, and I did. She spent two hours going over the inner workings of my arm with me, pointing out the tendons, bones, and muscles that were the easiest to re-create if I needed to sacrifice them. She flayed herself open for me and asked for nothing—yet—in return. She let me use her for the sacrifices so long as I wrote beforehand what I was asking my vilewright to do. By the end of our meeting, I had repaired the shattered bones of my off hand’s little finger.
The Crown, of course, had done the shattering. She said that I, like all wrought, would get used to the pain.
She said, for now, the pain was useful, but later I would need it as sacrifice.
The Heir’s familiar three knocks rattled my door. I let him in, hands still shaking from the easy way the Crown had severed that guard’s finger. He didn’t linger in the doorway, this time slipping inside and shutting the door, and he sat gingerly on the edge of my bed. I sat next to him and wrapped myself in Julian’s coat. He took a deep breath.
“You could have warned me,” I whispered without meaning to.
“It’s how I learned,” said the Heir. “It’s how many noblewrought have learned how to heal. Warning you of something so natural did not even occur to me until I saw your face.”
“That explains so much.” I shifted, the papers under the blanket crinkling.
The Heir reached under it and pulled out my notes on Will’s case. “You didn’t have to do that. She knows about our agreement.”
He rose and helped me organize them. We stacked them on the floor near the desk, each tower a different section. Business expenses, tax information, and citations from the court and council: I had read them all and learned little. There was nothing treasonous in the documents.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “He hasn’t committed treason unless your mother suddenly cares about wage violations.”
“She doesn’t.” He folded himself onto the edge of my bed and picked at the blanket. “You asked her some interesting questions.”
“Alistair, it took everything in me to not just scream the whole time she was talking.” I collapsed next to him. “Which question?”
His mouth quirked up. “Lorena, you asked her if her wrights were always so slow.”
Had I made it too obvious what I was truly asking about?
“Like anyone else could have done anything faster or survived Beatrice,” said the Heir. “I remember that day. I was there. The blow didn’t sunder her face. It only tore it open. It was her chest that was sundered. I saw her heart, Lorena. We all thought she was dead. It took her hours to heal those wounds. I don’t know how she did it. I don’t know if she does.”
So her healing wasn’t fast. Mine wasn’t either, but it didn’t take hours. I’d never had my chest cracked open though. She would’ve had to slow her heart without killing her brain. To kill her, her heart had to go.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I lied. “Do you think she’s upset?”
“No. If she were, she would have said so.” He straightened his glasses—it was such an easy tell—and froze with his fingers on the arms. “Her moods are hard to predict, but no, she is no more upset with you than she would be anyway. Even if she is, she’s too thrilled by the concept of a dualwrought daughter to care.”
I shuddered. “I don’t want to be her daughter.”
“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “That would be awkward.”
“Take them off.” I tapped one finger against the back of his gloved hand. “It’s me, Alistair. I know exactly who you are.”
He pulled the red glasses from his face. The shadows beneath his eyes were puffy and tinged with red. “Who knows you best, Lorena Adler?”
“My wrights.” They trilled, the sound inaudible but shaking within me. “They know me as well as I know them.”
They were as harsh as the world, giving nothing without taking something.
“Not your mother?” he asked.
“I was so young when she died. She never really knew me,” I whispered. “I never asked her anything important. I know her favorite color and joke, but I don’t know what she wanted from the world beyond surviving. I don’t know what she would’ve done if she left the Wallows. I never asked her what flowers she wanted for her funeral plot.”
Maybe I was destined to be an undertaker the moment I heard her last breath.
“No one knows me now. My mother does but she doesn’t,” he said.
I nodded. “I know what my mother’s heart looked like. We shouldn’t have to know that.”
The Heir’s hand twitched. He laid it on my shoulder, fingers slightly curled. The warmth of his body seared. My mother and so many I had grown up with were dead and cold, and the memory of her death still haunted me, and the Heir seemed to know. He yanked his hand away and sighed. Laughter bubbled out of my chest as a sob. I pressed my palms into my eyes.
“I know what my sisters’ blood tasted like,” he whispered. “I know how blood arches from a slit throat. I know how knowledge of death makes nightmares of grief. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not fair.”
“The world isn’t fair,” he said. “It demands we harm ourselves and others to manifest power. Without coldness, we would suffer. I used to care so much that it hurt and I thought I would drown in it. To care in a world so soaked in cruelty is to suffer. We can’t afford to care.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I lifted my face to him. “Everyone except you and the peerage has to harm themselves to survive. That back-breaking, finger-flaying work of factories and mines or the endless hours at any other job in Cynlira. My mother worked in a munitions factory. She was never not bleeding and tired. She had to be to keep us housed and fed, and that is not a fact of the world but a fact of Cynlira. She’s dead because Lankin Northcott didn’t care if his factory went up in flames so long as he got enough money out of it first. She wasn’t even the worst off. You’ve always been powerful, even if bad things have happened to you, so of course the first time you noticed that power had a cost was with your vilewright. The rest of us didn’t need wrights to notice.
“I am scarred not because I am noblewrought,” I said and held out my arms, “but because I scrubbed floors till my fingers bled to pay for my mother’s cremation. The world doesn’t demand we break ourselves to survive; the people refusing to help us do.”
He blinked at me and reached into his coat, pulling out a tall, thin flask. He held it to my head. The cold metal burned and eased the ache.
“Once the threat of the Door is dealt with,” he said, “we may begin dealing with the other threats to Cynlira.”
“You know I mean the peerage, right?” I took the flask from him and held it to my cheek. “You didn’t tell her about Carlow’s prediction.”
He smoothed tendrils of my hair from my forehead, tucking them behind my ears. “No. I know what she will say—we will survive, and the strong will survive with us. Telling her now isn’t beneficial.”
“Does she always use you for sacrifices like that?” I asked, turning to face him. My cheek bumped his hand, and his fingers fell to my shoulder. “What did her vilewright take?”
“I have extensive journals, so I’ll figure out which memory it was later.” He held his breath for a moment and then let it out. “She makes sure I always fill in the blanks.”
“Alistair,” I said slowly, “how do you know she’s telling you the truth after she sacrifices a memory?”
“She loves me. She is a monster, but she loves me.” He pulled his hand away from me, gray eyes wide, and stood, looking nothing like the red-eyed vilewrought Heir his actions had made him. “How do you know Julian is not simply using you to save his father?”
Because he loved me, and I knew him better than he knew himself. He couldn’t lie worth a damn.
“He’s my best friend,” I said. “He wants to marry me. I doubt he’d propose such a binding contract if he wanted to be rid of me.”
The Heir’s brows shot up. “Such a vivacious boy for a girl who survived by staying hidden.”
“It’s easy to hide in his shadow.” I had made myself unassuming and standoffish to stay safe, but Julian was too cheerful to be scared off by sarcasm and jerked-away hands. Being an undertaker had kept nearly everyone at bay. “Are you jealous that I have friends and not contractually obligated business partners?”
He flushed.
“Don’t worry. I understand. My wrights were my only friends for years until I moved to Felhollow.”
He rose, cheeks still an unsettling shade of pink. “I’ll have someone bring you lunch. I’m sure breakfast was unappetizing. Thankfully, I’m fairly certain my mother will leave you be now.”
“Small mercies,” I said. Five months—what a horrifying number. That was hardly any time, and it wasn’t enough to get the Crown out of the way. Will would be safe by then if he was innocent, but how many would we be sacrificing every week by then? It wasn’t enough to keep Will safe. Eventually, all of us would be sacrificed to the Door. Cynlira couldn’t survive like this. “Have you eaten? I want to tell you about my time in the Wallows. I want to tell you what Mori is like for the rest of us.”