“Miss Neven?” Mr. Wolfe gently drew my attention. “May I speak to you in private for a moment?”
I nodded, but my throat was narrow as I followed Olivette’s father into the corridor.
“Nura and Phelan told me the details of the dream,” he began with a stammer. “I feel like I must apologize, Miss Neven.”
I stopped walking so I could face him. “No, Mr. Wolfe. Please, don’t apologize. The dream was mine. You are not at fault.”
He sighed, struggling to believe me. I imagined it was horrifying to see your daughter dragged into a room, crying and bleeding from a wound your phantom had given her.
“That may be, Miss Neven,” Mr. Wolfe said. “But there was truth within it.”
I wondered if he was hinting at my secret—the price for that bejeweled dagger. And then I recalled the armor.
“You forged the armor that Emrys used to walk the new moon,” I said.
He nodded. “I made it long ago. But the inspiration for it has always been betrayal. I began my service to the duchy as a guard, but my mind was given to other things, mainly the spells of metamara. Transforming one thing into another. My father was a smith, and as I held no other skill but to protect and guard, I began to learn how to craft armor and weapons. I soon joined Raven’s inner circle, only because her brother the duke wanted me to create more and more weapons that I felt were dangerous and wrong. And Raven was the only one who was powerful enough to protect me from her brother’s bloody whims.
“She asked me to make enchanted armor. The seven of us who desired to see the duke gone had formed an alliance, and we were to draw stones, to see who would give him the killing blow. Whoever was selected would wear the armor, as a way to protect their identity and themselves from any magic the duke might cast in defense. So I began to forge it, and I thought all would be well with the plan, but none of us realized how slow the armor would make us. And to kill the duke . . . one would have to be swift.
“I completed the armor, but we never used it. I left it in a storage closet in the castle armory, locked away. I forgot all about it when things fell apart, when I fled to Bardyllis.”
I was silent, thinking on his words. I envisioned the duke’s chamber, the bloodstain on the floor. The bones beneath the bed. And I wanted to know who had been the one to kill the duke.
“Who drew the stone?” I asked.
Mr. Wolfe glanced away from me, as if he could not bear to look me in the eye. “What do you mean?”
“Who drew the stone to assassinate the duke?”
“Emrys did.”
I retreated to my chambers. The sun streamed in through the arched windows, and the floor was bitterly cold beneath my feet as I removed my boots.
My mind whirled, thinking of stones and armor and what the wraiths must have been like before the curse had fallen.
I had just pulled the ribbon loose from my braid when a knock sounded on my door.
“Come in,” I said.
The door opened. Phelan stood on the threshold, hesitant until I motioned for him to step inside. He did, shutting the door behind him. His boots were scuffed from the nightmare, his trousers ripped at the knee. His cravat and jacket were abandoned. His shirt hung slightly open at the neck draws, and I remembered the scars on his chest.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I waited for him to speak and began to unwind my braid with my fingers, my hair coming loose in rich waves. He watched me, transfixed, until I asked, “What did you need to talk to me about?”
“This is Mazarine’s magic, isn’t it?”
I knew he spoke of my disguise, and I looked away from him, bracing myself for this conversation. One that had been brewing between us for well over a week now. I sealed the door and windows with a quick spell to hold our conversation private. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“Why I donned a disguise and became your partner?” I walked to the small round table by my hearth, where a pitcher of water sat. I poured myself a glass but didn’t offer one to him. “I was angry. You and your brother arrived without warning and challenged my father and me for my home. You won it, fairly, and yet I couldn’t let it go. The way you both disgraced us. How we were now homeless.”
He sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “Why did you come after me? What did you intend to do, Clem?”
I made myself take a long swallow of water, but I was trembling, torn between my desires. To be shrewd and continue withholding things, or to let the truth unfold. I set down the glass and drew my cloak tighter around me, as if it could protect me from the discomfort of both choices.
“Did you plan to kill me?” he asked.
“Honestly, Phelan! Do I look that merciless to you?”
He stared at me. “I don’t know what I see in you.”
“I wanted to disgrace you, as you had done to me,” I confessed, walking to him. “I wanted to hurt you and your family, to make you feel the things that you had inspired in me. I wanted you to be devastated. And I wanted to win my home back.”
He stiffened, as if my words had cut him. But he held my gaze, insistent. “Did you ever plan to reveal to me who you were? Or were you going to up and leave me without word, without a trace?”
“I wanted to tell you. Eventually.”
“To bask in your victory, I suppose.”
“Yes.” I sounded callous, and I watched Phelan flinch.
“So Anna was all an act?” he asked.
“In some ways,” I replied carefully. “But in others, no. I was and still am exactly who I was before. Even in the moments when I was with you as Anna . . . I was Clem.”
“Did your father put you up to this?”
“No. It was all my doing. My decision.”
“And do you feel the same as you did at the beginning?” he asked. “Do you want to see me devastated? Disgraced? Do you want to hurt me, Clem?”
How should I respond? I was suddenly terrified to be vulnerable in his presence, uncertain where such a path might guide us.
“No, Phelan. You were not who I thought you to be at the beginning,” I said, my cadence clipped with frustration. “You turned out to be different. And I wanted to despise you. I wanted to throw more kindling on my hate and yet you gave me nothing to burn, because you are simply too good. Even now, you are too good.”
I shoved his chest for emphasis. He didn’t budge, but his hands rose to capture mine.
“How so?” he said. “I told you I wasn’t kind.”
“You gave me a room when you thought I had nowhere to go. You clothed me and spared no expense. You listened to me when I began spouting wild claims about Seven Wraiths and the knight. And even after you realized who I was . . . you protected me,” I said. “You should expose me now. I don’t know why you are holding my secret like it is one of your own.”
“And yet perhaps I will expose you,” he said. “In time.”
I froze, my hands still caught in his. “Are you threatening me now?”
“If my dreams are a threat, then yes.” He fell silent, as if he wanted me to find the explanation in his eyes. I couldn’t see it and pressed him for more.
“What are you speaking of?”
“I dreamt of you yesterday, Clem.”