Once Vaness had drunk her fill, she sank onto a flat stone. Ferns sighed against her, green and sparkling beneath the morning sun.
“We cannot stay,” Vivia warned.
“I know.” Vaness stared into her iron cup. “Just a few moments. I am not as fit as you.”
Vivia huffed a tired laugh. She felt anything but fit right now. “You should see my first mate. She is fit.” Vivia settled into a squat beside the stream. Though she couldn’t bring herself to drink, she did let her hand slip into the water. Cold despite the warm air.
“Vizer Sotar’s daughter?”
“Hye.” Vivia nodded. Her reflection wavered up at her, indistinct and unsteady.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“I am sorry then.” Vaness’s voice softened, as if her thoughts had turned inward. “I lost my Adder High when I fled Marstok. Rokesh was the closest thing I had to a friend.”
“Oh.” Vivia didn’t know what to say, and judging by the taut line of Vaness’s shoulders, there was nothing to say.
She pushed back to her feet. Her leg muscles screamed, but she was used to pain. Used to ignoring it and finishing what needed doing. “Come.” She offered Vaness a hand.
The Empress didn’t take it. Instead, she stared at Vivia’s fingers, wet from the stream. “I am sorry about your father. I cannot imagine it is easy to learn that he betrayed you.”
“Oh,” Vivia repeated, and her hand fell like a hammer. Suddenly the pain seemed impossible to ignore. Suddenly she was tired and thirsty and the horror she’d avoided since fleeing Yoris—it was punching in too fast to escape.
“It … is not the first time,” she squeezed out.
“But this is the worst,” Vaness replied.
Indeed, it was the worst. Before, her father had simply wanted the crown Vivia was meant to inherit. He’d wanted the title he’d had before Jana’s death. He’d wanted the power he’d wielded for so many years. And though deep down, past the final shelf of her own being, Vivia believed he’d cared for her …
His need for power, for adoration, had won out against any love he had for his own child. And no doubt, he’d expected Vivia to fall in line. When she hadn’t, he’d pursued.
That was what she’d told herself for the past month. That was the story she’d made herself believe. But where did this new truth fit into it? How could a father sell his child to the enemy? How, how, how could he love her at all yet so willingly give her away?
“I am sorry.” Vaness shot to her feet, abrupt. Graceless. “I did not intend to cause pain.”
“Then why did you say anything?” Vivia snapped. It was getting harder by the moment to form words and sneak them past the heat in her chest.
“I simply…” Vaness wet her lips. “I wish I could make it better.”
“There’s nothing to make better.”
“I need not be a Truthwitch to spot that lie.”
No. Vivia would not have this conversation. She would not give in to the tightening around her chest. She needed to move. They needed to move—there were hunters behind them, after all, and sitting still was a quick path to madness. She stepped into the stream to cross it. It kicked and kissed at her, so gentle.
She only made it two steps before Vaness said, “Wait, Vivia … Your Majesty. Please wait.”
And against her better judgment, Vivia paused, right in the middle of the stream. Behind her, Vaness took her own first step into the running waters.
“My parents died when I was young,” she said. “I have been Empress for as long as I can remember.” A second step. Then a third. “Like you, I have had to hide everything I feel lest the world use it against me.” Three more steps and she was at Vivia’s side.
But Vivia did not look toward her. She simply stared at the water and willed the storm clouds inside her to pass. No regrets, no regrets.
“I have never had anyone to whom I could show myself,” Vaness went on. “But I … but you … We’re alike, you see?”
Vivia did not see. The Empress had grown up in a world with wealth beyond imagining. Vivia had been born to a nation poisoned and dead. Before Vivia could stop her, though, Vaness reached out and grabbed Vivia’s wrist. “You do not have to hide in front of me, Your Majesty.” Her fingers tightened. “Vivia, you do not have to hide.”
Vivia frowned at Vaness’s fine-boned fingers, curled against her skin. The Empress’s Witchmark was sharp and black, even in this dappled light. As if she had it regularly dyed anew. The hairs on her arms glistened with sweat. Her iron bracelet rested gently against a delicate wrist.
She was beautiful. She was regal. And she and Vivia were nothing alike, no matter how much Vivia might wish that they could be. She’d grown up hating this woman. Like her fear of the waters once poisoned around her, she could not change her hatred overnight.
But that was not why she had to hide from the Empress. It was not why she needed her masks or her little fox den. It was because right now, she needed the bear inside her to keep going. The only reason she was still afloat upon this stream—the only reason the bludgeoning in her lungs had not claimed her—was because she had masks to protect her from a world too bleak to face.
She tugged back her hand, and Vaness released her instantly, though the Empress’s arm stayed long, her fingers outstretched as if about to plead. But when Vivia said, “We must keep walking,” Vaness did not tell her again to wait.
For some reason, Vivia wished she had.
* * *
The Hammer came for Stix and Ryber at the hottest part of the day, when the sun had begun its descent, but the roads and rooftops had soaked up enough heat to emanate their own. The inn bedroom had become an oven, and even the six-fingered tabby had melted away in favor of cooler arenas. Compounded with the voices’ endless bellows, it was enough to make Stix consider leaving Saldonica and never coming back.
When the Hammer arrived, Stix practically pounced on him. She didn’t care that they were traveling back toward Kahina, nor that the burn mark seemed to itch the closer they got. She didn’t care that she might have to fight today. She was moving, and Noden bless her, it felt good. The carriage swept in a breeze to cool the sweat on her skin, and the voices quelled with each creaking spin of the wheels over swampy road.
“What is today’s fight?” Ryber asked with a suave trainer smile. She shuffled her cards absently, flipping one every few moments. Though Ryber never looked at them, Stix caught glimpses of the corners.
Six of Hawks. Eight of Hawks. Three of Hawks. Queen of Hawks.
“No fight,” the Hammer said, and for once he looked at Stix with something other than vague irritation. “Kahina says the prisoners are yours now. To do with as you please.”
Stix stiffened upon her seat. She met Ryber’s surprised eyes across the bench.
“That was fast,” Ryber said. Shuffle, shuffle.
“When Kahina wants something,” the Hammer replied, “she gets it done.” He stared at Stix as he said this, and his fingers tapped a curt rhythm against his knee. Clearly he expected her to explain this enormous gift. And clearly, when she offered nothing up but a blank stare, his usual irritation was returning.