Page 53 of Sharpest Court

Valeria slowly lifted her gaze from the knife she’d intimately recognized and spoke steadily. “Mara Capewell is Briar’s eldest niece and first lieutenant. She always works alone.”

She looked toward her brother, and my heart ached at the agony in Keil’s expression. They held eye contact for three heartbeats, pain and love shimmering between them.

Then Valeria straightened. “No need to involve an artist,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll sketch her myself.”

The room seemed to hold its breath after she left, nobody wanting to voice what we’d all understood.

Mara Capewell’s face must have permanently carved itself into Valeria’s mind if, after all these months, she could still render it from memory alone.

15

Erik’s laughter echoed through my nightmares.

I was racing through the palace passages, toward the kitchen light, when my foot caught on the bump in the ground. The bump I’d somehow avoided through my practice runs and yet couldn’t avoid when it mattered most. I felt myself falling, then jerked awake, gasping from the phantom crash.

Shadows steeped the bedchamber, my breaths roaring into the silence. Too quickly, reality offered a worse scene than my nightmares: My father saying my name as he bled out. The sorrow glassing his eyes as he’d realized it would be the last time he could.

Then another thought struck me: I would never hear my father’s voice again. How had I never realized it before? How could that be my reality?

A helpless panic built inside me, so close to overflowing that I reached for the bedside table, fingers scrambling to grab my mother’s coin.

Though I’d always twirled this coin for a sense of release, I hadn’t done so since my last night in the palace, when it had distracted Erik long enough to help me escape. Now I wished I hadn’t reached for it at all, because my power erupted over my fingers with the useless liquidity of a sob.

And the only other time I’d been unable to spin this coin was in Erik’s cell, with my veins full of dullroot.

My heart drummed faster, the memory bleeding into the present, making me lightheaded—

A slam sounded from outside, yanking me from my spiral. Setting the coin aside, I forced the image of Father into a corner of my mind and vowed not to touch it. Because out of all the things that frightened me right now, having to confront this particular pain was at the top of my list.

After several long breaths, I padded shakily to the window seat and inhaled the cool breeze. The gardens below rustled under the last silvery breath of moonlight, a warmer glow spilling from the outbuilding. Someone must still be training.

As I watched the glow flicker, my mind returned to Mara. You should’ve seen how he begged, she’d said about Garret. Writhing under Briar’s blade like a worm.

My skin pimpled with a shudder. I hadn’t fully metabolized the loss of Garret, probably because part of me had believed he’d gotten away from Briar after he’d saved me. I tried to picture him now, somewhere out there, wounded but alive.

Yet the version of him that emerged was from my tenth birthday, back before roses had made me ill. He’d brought me a bouquet of them, wearing a waistcoat and blazer for the first time.

I can’t be seen with you like that, I’d teased. You look like you should be carrying a briefcase.

As he hooked his arm around my shoulders and shook the bouquet above my head, I’d giggled, secretly thinking that I wouldn’t mind being seen with him at all.

Now, I didn’t even know whether he was still breathing, nor how I would feel in either scenario. He’d lied to and manipulated me, had known that Briar had murdered my father. He’d carted Valeria and the other Wielder prisoners to a ransom exchange in a wagon filled with dullroot. Yet in the moment of his sacrifice, I’d glimpsed in him my Garret. The boy I’d once pictured as part of my future.

So for now, the simplest answer was this: I desperately hoped he wasn’t dead. Because I didn’t know how to mourn the man who had been both my enemy and my savior.

I was lost in thought, leaning against the cool glass pane, when I saw the large silhouette through the outbuilding’s window. I straightened up.

Since arriving in Ansora, I’d been running on the momentum of my escape. I’d brashly tried to rescue Keil; I’d fought a fellow Wielder; I’d even sprinted after a Hunter. But this wasn’t Rose Season, when I’d had the safety net of my status, and the privilege of lashing out when I was angry. If I took a reckless risk here . . . it could be my last.

And the most reckless thing I could do right now was to choose my pride over safety.

In begrudging determination, I tied a short silk nightrobe over my nightdress and slipped into velvet loafers. Then I hurried downstairs.

Moments later, the night air blasted me, my bare legs erupting in goose bumps. I wrapped my arms around myself and crunched across the lawn, toward the sound of thumping leather. Taking a last cold inhale, I opened the door to the outbuilding.

Goren’s head whipped toward me, his fists raised toward a punching bag swinging on its chain. His expression was murderous, but that wasn’t why I stumbled over the threshold, my breath catching.

His entire torso was webbed with dullroot scars.