I’m not going to tell her anything, but if I were, I could tell her that I know exactly how it feels to have someone at my side. I could tell her that Ale has been with me for every day of my life.
Almost every day.
“It’s not just that we were born together,” Verene says, clearly annoyed. “No one else in the whole city was raised the way we were raised, and being alone in that would have been— You know what? You don’t deserve to know anything else about me.”
She turns around impatiently, trying to get a look at the greenhouse door.
“What was it like?” I hear myself say. “Being raised by her?”
She goes very still, and when she speaks, her voice is low. “What do you think it was like?”
I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s so hard for me to picture the watercrea doing anything ordinary people do, let alone raising two children. I just think about her impassive stare and the feeling of her magic invading my body. I think about her throwing Ale through a glass door like he was a rag doll.
I think about the way her broken body looked after I was done with her.
“Did you have… another parent?” I say. “Or was it just—”
Verene whips around, and all at once, the bag is back over my head.
“Get up,” she says. “I’m tired of waiting for the boys to get their acts together. And I’m tired of you.”
THIRTEEN
APPARENTLY, VERENE HAS A KNIFE. SHE DRAGS ME TO MY feet and presses it into my back, then forces me out of the greenhouse. We’re sneaking somewhere. I can tell from the erratic way she keeps pressing me up against walls and then making me run. When we hit a staircase, she doesn’t see fit to warn me first, so I tumble to the bottom, my ankle twisting painfully.
The ground is cold and dusty and familiar. As soon as I hit it, my skin starts crawling.
I wish I knew what was happening to Ale. I wasn’t supposed to have to do anything else alone. Especially not anything involving the catacombs.
“Keep going.” Verene is right behind me, nudging my rear end with her foot.
“If only your people could see all your generosity and compassion on display right now,” I say, fumbling to crawl.
“No more—” She’s still nudging me. “Talking—I’m so tired of your—voice—here. Stop.”
I stop. I wiggle the bonds on my wrists, trying to subtly loosen them.
“Can’t you at least take the bag off my head?” I say.
“No,” she says.
“Why?” I say. “Because when you can’t see my face, you can tell yourself that you’re not really killing a person?”
She pulls the bag off my head. I sit up, enjoying my small victory. We’re in the middle of a narrow hall. The only light is a lantern on the ground at her feet, and the shadows on her face are startlingly sharp.
“I know you’re a person,” she says. “A terrible person. A person who tried to kill me. A person who needs to be stopped.”
“Must you declare everything so dramatically?” I say.
She glares at me. “I must.”
“You think that I deserve to die, then?” I say.
“The vide isn’t going to kill you,” she says. “It will swallow you and carry you to our prison. And maybe, while you’re there, you’ll think about the morality of coming into a new city and trying to kill its ruler. Maybe you’ll have a change of heart. It could happen, I suppose.”
“Where’s the prison?” I say. “In your cathedral?”
“No,” she says. “At the very bottom of the catacombs. And I do mean the very bottom. It’s incredibly dark and isolated. But don’t worry. We’ll send you food.”
My heart thuds in my ears. I can find a way out of this. I always find a way out.
Verene pulls off one of her gloves to reveal a bandage around her hand, then starts to unwind it. On her palm, there’s a long gash, barely healed. She slices it open with the knife in one quick motion. She turns back to me, squeezing her hand into a fist, and pointedly lets the blood fall onto the ground by my feet.
“So it’s not just your brother,” I say. “You feed the vide, too.”
“I would do anything for my people,” she says.
I remember her random dizzy spells that I saw in the cathedral. I know how dizzying it is to lose your blood. It seems she’s doing quite a lot for her people.
At my feet, a shadow is starting to form. The air is getting colder. I shiver.
I don’t have much time. I have to get her to tell me something I can use. Anything.
“You know,” I say, “in a way, you’re even worse than your mother was.”
Verene goes very still. Her eyes are fixed on me, dark and intent and, suddenly, unblinking.
“What?” she says.
The shadow has eaten up her blood.
“You think your powers are noble, don’t you?” I say. “Instead of the people of Iris bleeding for you, you bleed for them. But what you conveniently neglect to realize is that when you steal water from the other cities, that’s still water that somebody had to bleed for—”
In an instant, she’s on the ground and in my face. I flinch away automatically, and she grabs a fistful of my hair, forcing me back.
“Don’t—” she says. “Don’t you ever—”
I feel something cold against my neck. It’s the blade of her knife. It’s shaking in her hands. It’s digging in a little too hard.
“Don’t pretend that you know me,” she says. “Don’t pretend that you understand me. I did this for my city. No one will ever hurt them again, and it’s because of me.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I say. “You were born into this life. You were born into this magic. Your power obviously doesn’t look like your mother’s, but that doesn’t make you—”
I falter. Because, just for a moment, I felt her falter, too.
I meet her gaze. We’re close. Too close. I can feel the warmth of her breath and I can smell her sweet hair. And I can see something deep in her eyes. Something that she’s trying to hide. It looks almost like fear. Like she’s afraid of what I’m saying. Like I’m getting too close to asking a question she doesn’t want to answer.
She believes in her power so strongly. She believes in it like it was something she chose.
People don’t choose to have magic. Our rulers are born with magic, and that’s why they’re our rulers. That’s what I’ve always been told. That’s what I’ve always believed.
But so many other things I’ve believed are turning out to be wrong.
I know that I only have a split second to act, so I do the last thing she would expect me to do. Instead of trying to throw myself away from her, I throw myself forward.
The knife cuts into my neck with a sting. Before it can go too deep, she flings herself back. The knife lands in my lap, and I twist around in my bonds until it falls to the ground. A drop of blood flies off it and lands in the dust.
Verene and I both used the knife to cut ourselves. I don’t know if the blood is hers or mine.
Either way, the dark shadow is already underneath it. I scoot away and watch as the vide swallows it up.