I was still clutching the jewelry I’d taken from Maeven’s chambers, and I laid the watch, the signet ring, and the pendant on top of the wall. I traced my index finger over the coined woman’s face, then stared down at the Retribution Bridge and the plaza on the far side of the river.
The dead geldjagers were still strung up on the scaffolding, and the snow had started to crust their black cloaks. I wondered if the DiLucris had realized that their geldjagers were dead yet and that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill whatever contract they had with the Mortan king. I hoped so. I wanted the DiLucris to realize how spectacularly they had failed, and I especially wanted them to worry about how I was going to strike back against them.
My gaze flicked from one dead magier to the next until I finally focused on Lena, the girl whom I’d so badly wanted to be a Blair.
That mix of anger, shame, and embarrassment scorched through me again, making my cheeks burn, despite the snow. I’d told myself over and over again not to get my hopes up, but I’d done it anyway, and the DiLucris had thoroughly crushed them. No, not the DiLucris—the Mortan king. He was the one who’d most likely hired them, and he was probably the one responsible for the Blair rumor and everything that had followed, including this terrible, terrible ache in my chest.
Footsteps crunched through the grass behind me, and the hard, sharp smell of blood mixed with coldiron filled my nose, along with a faint, fruity tang. Serilda walked up beside me. She was clutching two empty glasses, and a bottle was tucked under her arm.
“A crown for your thoughts?” she murmured. “Or perhaps some cranberry sangria to drown them?”
“I’ll take the sangria.”
Serilda grinned and set the glasses on the wall. She eyed the jewelry that I’d arranged there, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she opened the bottle and poured the sangria. I grabbed one of the glasses and clinked it against hers. We both took a drink.
The sangria hit my tongue like a ripe honey cranberry exploding in my mouth, sweet and tart at the same time, with faint notes of apricot and just a trace of bright, tangy orange. Cranberry sangria was a popular drink during the winter months, served ice-cold, and I took another sip, savoring the intense flavor, along with the pleasant warmth that started pooling in my stomach.
Serilda and I sipped our sangria in comfortable, companionable silence for several minutes.
“What are you doing out here so late?” I finally asked.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to roam through the palace, soak up the quiet, and clear my head. It’s a ritual of mine. You?”
“The same.”
We fell silent, and I once again stared down at Lena’s body.
Serilda tracked my gaze, then studied me over the rim of her glass. “You’re still thinking about what happened with the geldjagers. Not the attack itself, though. You’re upset because the girl wasn’t a Blair.”
“Did your magic tell you that?”
Serilda was a sort of time magier who saw possibilities, all the ways that people might act in the future and all the consequences those actions might have.
She shrugged again. “My magic, and the fact that I know you, Evie. You tried to hide it, but I could see the hope on your face as soon as Xenia told you that another Blair might still be alive.”
I sighed. “Was it really that obvious?”
“Only to me.”
I eyed her. “You didn’t say much during our planning for the plaza meeting. Did you know the rumor wasn’t true? That the whole thing was a trap?”
“I thought it was more likely a trap than not, but I always think that way. It’s one of the reasons I’ve lived this long. I also knew that you had to see it for yourself.” She paused. “But you weren’t wrong to hope.”
“What do you mean?”
Serilda stared out into the snowy night, her blue eyes dark and dreamy. The scent of magic swirled around her, although the wind quickly whipped it away. “Because I think there really is another Blair out there somewhere,” she murmured. “Maybe even more than one. I don’t know who or where they are. My magic won’t let me see them. It just whispers to me about them.”
Once again, a bit of warm, sweet honey hope oozed through me. I let myself feel that hope for a moment before ruthlessly quashing it and latching on to the other emotion that it roused in me—cold, cold rage.
Serilda stared out into the dark, snowy night a moment longer, then blinked and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be more help.”
“You’ve been plenty of help. You brought me sangria.” I toasted her, then drained the rest of the fruity liquid and set my empty glass aside. Time to get down to business.
“I already asked Auster to increase the number of guards patrolling the city plazas, and he and Xenia have their spies searching for more information about the geldjagers. Now we need to talk about how we’re going to respond to this latest attack.”
Serilda snorted and waved her glass toward the bodies hanging in the plaza. “I think you responded quite clearly.”
I shook my head. “That was only the beginning. I mean how we’re going to respond during the Regalia.”
“What do you have in mind?”
I gestured at the silver signet ring and the gold-coin pendant lying on the wall. “Maeven, the Bastard Brigade, and now the DiLucri bounty hunters. The Mortan king just keeps sending people to kill me.”
“So?”
“So I’m tired of always being the one on the defensive. We need to beat the Mortans at their own game, and the Regalia is the perfect opportunity. The Mortan king and the DiLucris will be there, maybe even Maeven too. No doubt they’ll try to assassinate me again. Whatever they do, however they come at us, we need to strike back at them even more viciously. We need to end the threat they represent to us, to Bellona, once and for all.”
Serilda’s eyes narrowed with understanding. “You want to kill the Mortan king during the Games.”
“I want to fucking crush the king.” I slammed my fist down on top of the wall. “I want to take away every little thing he cares about, no matter how small it is. I want to hobble him, break him, and yes, I especially want to bloody kill him. But only after he’s felt some of the pain that I have. He crushed my hope, my heart tonight, with his damn Blair rumor, and I want to crush his in return.”
My words echoed out into the night air, although the wind and snow quickly drowned them. But they couldn’t douse the cold, cold rage flowing through my veins with every beat of my heart.
“Diante told me earlier that I needed to do more of that.” I gestured at the dead geldjagers. “And she is absolutely right. I have to go on the offensive, and I can’t think of a better way to do that than by assassinating the Mortan king during the Regalia.”
“How do you want to kill him?” Serilda asked, ever practical about such matters.
I shrugged. “Shoot an arrow into his throat. Poison his wine. Bash in his skull with a brick. I don’t care how he dies, only that he does.”
“Very well,” she replied. “We’ll start working on it tomorrow. Auster, Cho, and I can talk about arrows and the like. Xenia and Sullivan will probably have some ideas about potential poisons. And I’m sure that Paloma would be quite happy to bash in the king’s skull with her mace.”