Then her hands are behind his neck and the noose is fastening into place.
Except that it’s not.
Nothing happens when she tries to press the chain closed. It remains open, unattached, a useless piece of gold.
And now Henrick is shoving her off of him. His eyes bug, his mouth sputters. He grabs her arms and forces her back. “What the hell-gates,” he begins … until he realizes what is clasped in Safi’s fingers. She is too slow to drop the chain, and now he is watching it slip from her grasp.
It lands on his chest, then slinks down his stomach, a golden snake across muddy velvet.
For several seconds, neither Safi nor Henrick moves. The Hell-Bards all have their backs turned discreetly away; they have not seen. I should kill him, she thinks. Before he kills me. But she is, again, too slow.
Or perhaps Henrick is too fast. With shocking ease and skill, he swoops beneath her outstretched arms and tackles her to the ground. He is viciously strong, and Safi stands no chance.
Her skull cracks on flagstones. Her vision shadows, and everything suddenly moves a thousand miles away. The Hell-Bard armor clanks her way, and Caden’s voice barks, “Protect the Emperor!”
And the Emperor himself bears down on Safi with snaggletooth and spitting tongue. “What a disappointment,” he snarls, forearm digging into her throat. “You could have been a great leader, but now there is only one path for you.”
He rolls off of her as two Hell-Bards lurch in. Her hearing is muffled, her eyesight uneven. She knows, in a far-off sort of way, that she has made a very dangerous mistake. That she has ruined not only her own life but the lives of all those people depending on her.
“Tell Paskella I will not be coming tonight,” Henrick commands once Safi is on her feet. He will not even look at her. “And then take my Empress to the Hell-Bard chamber. It is time she learned what true obedience feels like.”
THIRTY
There was no time inside the Well. There was only now. There was only all eternity, stretched and unknowable.
Vivia recognized the feeling as soon as it curled over her. It was her favorite feeling—the only thing to truly calm her during an attack. The only time she ever felt truly, truly safe. Except …
As she sank to the jagged bottom of the Well, as she watched her blood swirl and spread, she realized this water wasn’t calming. It wasn’t welcoming. In fact, it felt nothing like the waters of the lake beneath Lovats—her safe place, her secret place. There, fox fire spread across a cavern ceiling, and the presence, the life, the weight of the Well was a comfort. It was as sad as she. It was as lonely as she. And it was always glad to have her there.
Here, six cypress trees were just visible above the water, wavy shadows around the Well’s edge. And here, the waters were not glad to have her. Intruder, they seemed to say. Thief, usurper, false queen.
She wanted to swim for the surface and break free from this strange, burgeoning rage. But she was too weak. She couldn’t swim, much less rise.
And she was healing, even if the waters resented it and the Well wished it could withhold. Not you, it seemed to say. Anyone but you. It could not stop the healing, though, and as eternity drifted past, the flames inside Vivia receded. The blood stopped leaving her. Until soon enough, the only pain came from her lungs—desperate for air—and from her mind, still filled with the sense of disgust, disdain, disruption.
Once Vivia could swim again, she did. She frog-legged and spread her arms. She pushed and pushed, no help from the water, until the surface wavered in. She broke free. Air washed against her, spread through her lungs. She gulped and gasped and for several thudding heartbeats, she did nothing but tread water and breathe.
Then she sensed movement, heard splashing, and when she turned about, she found Vaness in the water too. “You are … healed?” the Empress asked.
Vivia nodded. Her throat and lungs still hurt too much for words.
“That is good.” Vaness offered a tight smile, her limbs splashing to hold her afloat. “I was about to dive under to find you.”
Still Vivia said nothing—now, though, it was not because she couldn’t. The Well healed constantly; it had already soothed away the sharpness of her lungs overstrained.
No, she held her silence because she didn’t know what to say. She had gone racing after Vaness—had killed and almost been killed—to protect an empress she would have gladly left to die two months ago.
Vaness seemed to follow the same thoughts as Vivia. Her cheeks pinkened. Her gaze darted toward the horizon and the sea, where night still reigned. “You saved my life. The assassin was Dalmotti, no?”
Vivia nodded. The waters were warming around her, the Well’s strange anger receding. As if it had forgotten her. As if perhaps she’d imagined the entire thing.
“Why?” Vaness’s hands reached up to rub water from her eyes, her legs paddling to keep her in place. “Why did the Doge refuse to help us then hunt us across the sea?”
“I don’t know.” Vivia’s voice croaked out, though not from exhaustion. She felt anything but tired now, with the Well’s healing touch to course through her.
And with Vaness so near.
Something ached low in Vivia’s belly. The Well, she told herself, even as she couldn’t take her eyes off Vaness’s face. Her hair was coiled and wet against her head, while her arms and shoulders, shapely and defined, were somehow far more appealing with white cotton clinging to them than they ever had been in her most revealing gowns.
Vivia wanted to swim closer. Her fingers wanted to wipe that stray hair from Vaness’s cheek.
No. She exhaled sharply. This was just the Well’s magic. This was just the exhilaration of life when death had been so near. She turned away from Vaness, water splashing, and paddled for shore. A strong stroke while the gently roiling waters of the Well rumbled against her.
Vaness followed—of course she did—but Vivia dared not look back as she hauled herself onto the ramp out of the water. As she shook her arms and legs, and sprayed water in all directions.
And she didn’t look back when she walked to the nearest cypress, its trunk hidden within a latticework of green. She braced a hand on the feathered leaves. They scraped her palm as she lifted her leg to wring out her pants. Ineffective. Pointless even, but she needed something to do.
Water dripped and splattered behind Vivia. She could feel the Empress exiting the Well, even if she could not see her. A lantern emanating light. A flame hawk billowing heat.
She kept her attention locked on her pants, on the squeezing and wringing. “How do you feel?” Vivia’s voice came out rough and strained. “Did the Well help your … illness?”
“I feel good.” Vaness’s voice held its usual clarity, but there was something else there. Something that made the imaginary light, the heat off of her seem ten times stronger.
Vivia squeezed even harder at her shirt, stained in blood.
“This Well is different from the Fire Well.” Vaness’s bare feet padded over the flagstones. “A different … energy. But it heals, and that is what I needed. That is what you needed.” She came to a stop several paces away, and Vivia tried to hide behind her arm braced against the tree.
But it was no use. She could still see the Empress in her periphery. Sodden and gorgeous and all wrong, wrong, wrong. Vivia dropped her hand, and with stout avoidance of Vaness’s dark eyes and thick, wet lashes, she aimed for the horizon. For the ocean and an empty expanse where maybe she could breathe.