Safire felt like her body was turning to stone. “Are you listening to yourself?” she whispered.
Dax had never cared if Safire challenged him. In fact, he welcomed it. He always wanted her opinion—most especially when it was contrary to his—because he respected and admired Safire. Because in arguing with her, in talking through the issue, Dax came out the other side better prepared to make whatever decision needed making.
Now, though, instead of arguing back like he usually did, his eyes darkened and he looked away from her.
“What would you have me do?” He kept his voice so low, it was almost a whisper. “Challenge her? Condemn her laws? Tell her you won’t catch the criminal you promised to catch for her?”
Safire opened her mouth to respond, only to find she didn’t have an answer.
“We need her, Safire. The scrublands need her. Without those seeds she’s promised us, hundreds of thousands will die. Tell me those lives matter to you.”
Safire’s throat burned. Of course they mattered to her. How could he ask her that?
Because if they mattered, she realized, I would put them first. Above Eris.
People were starving to death. Roa’s family was starving to death. And here Safire was, compromising the very alliance that would save their lives.
She suddenly wanted to rise from the table and leave. Not just the grand ballroom. Not just the citadel. But Axis itself. This city, these islands, they were was twisting her into someone she wasn’t.
Sensing her agitation, Dax said, “What is really going on here?”
Safire couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at any of them. So she stared down at the dead fish on her plate and said, “I killed a man I hated once. That decision haunts me. I won’t kill a girl I—” She stopped herself, afraid to say the words aloud.
Dax turned to her a little more, casually resting his elbow on the top of his chair as he reached for his goblet—but he didn’t drink. He was trying very hard not to draw attention to their conversation. But his gaze was sword sharp.
“Saf,” he said gently. “This is the same thief who ran you ragged back in Firgaard. All you wanted was to lock her up.”
Safire studied the fish’s blackened scales and limp fins as she thought, Things have changed since then.
“She tortured you on Jemsin’s ship.”
“Actually,” Safire said, knowing she was grasping, “she had other people do the torturing.”
She thought of Eris watching as Jemsin’s men dunked her head again and again into the water. Trying to break her. To force information out of her.
Dax threw her a strange look. “Safire.”
She was losing him. She could hear it in his voice. And the awful thing was, he was right. Eris wasn’t some innocent; she was a criminal.
But she was also the one who held back Safire’s hair while she was seasick. The one who stopped that sea monster from eating her alive. Eris had saved her from Caspian and the other Lumina soldiers in that alley.
They would have beaten that woman to death, she thought. But that didn’t prove anything. Every barrel had a few bad apples. And not so long ago, a few of Safire’s own soldats had plotted against Roa—their queen. There were always going to be a few corrupt soldiers in a sea full of loyal ones.
“You yourself believe she’s planning to hand Asha over to a deadly pirate,” Dax reminded her.
Safire sagged under the weight of those words.
All these things were true.
And yet.
“She saved my life,” Safire whispered. “More than once.”
Dax roughly rubbed his stubbled cheeks. “And if she’s manipulating you?”
Safire looked away, across the room, to the balcony. The curtains were thrown back and the mist from earlier had receded, leaving a clear sky full of stars.
“I’ve heard of things like this before,” said Dax.
Safire glanced back. “What things?”
“A kind of . . . illness,” he said, almost gently. “An illness of the mind.”
Safire frowned. What was he talking about?
“Sometimes, when a person is kidnapped and abused, the mind becomes warped—to protect itself. The person becomes convinced that she and her kidnapper are . . . in love. That her kidnapper isn’t a villain, but rather, a kind of hero.”
The words chilled Safire. She searched Dax’s face. “You’re accusing me of such a thing?”
He said nothing. Only watched her.
“You are,” she whispered, feeling the table full of guests blur around them.
But then, hadn’t she let Eris kiss her? The very girl who kidnapped her, then ordered Jemsin’s men to torture her?
More important: Hadn’t she liked kissing Eris?
If she were honest with herself, as she stood on that balcony with Eris wearing that stolen soldier’s uniform, she’d wanted to kiss her again.
Maybe Dax was right. Maybe there was something wrong with her.
Safire upheld the law; Eris flouted it. Safire hated pirates; Eris worked for them. Safire loved her cousin; Eris was currently hunting her cousin down.
She thought of that moment in the rowboat, when Eris learned Safire couldn’t swim.
I won’t let anything happen to you.
And that moment in the alley, surrounded by men who wanted to hurt her. It was Eris who’d come for her.
Don’t let go.
But how much did it matter?
And who was Eris, really?
Safire didn’t know. No one knew.
But Dax was her cousin. And not just that, her friend and her king. As children, he’d taken the brunt of Jarek’s abuse when he could. Not so long ago, he’d fought a war at her side, then made her his commandant.
Safire couldn’t—wouldn’t—go against him. They were supposed to be on the same side. They’d always been on the same side.
“Where are you going?” Dax asked as she rose from the table.
“I need some air.”
Thirty-One
Eris walked the lamplit streets of Axis feeling like she’d swallowed a prickle fish.
After jumping from that balustrade, she’d landed on the balcony one story below. Hurt by Safire’s betrayal, she wanted nothing more than to step across. But as she’d slashed the spindle over the balcony tiles, the silver line shimmering before her, the voices above made her pause.
Hidden by the fog, Eris listened.
The next time she seeks you out, I want you to kill her. Is that understood?
The memory of Leandra’s icy voice made Eris shiver now. But it was nothing like the gaping wound that opened in the wake of Safire’s answer.
Understood.
Eris’s hand had shaken as she finished drawing the silver line. Her vision blurred with hot tears. She should have been focused on the labyrinth as she stepped into the mists. But the hurt and loneliness and utter lostness overwhelmed her, and all she could think about was Safire’s answer to Leandra’s question. All she could see was the horrified look in those blue eyes as Eris stupidly blurted out her true feelings.
Which was how she’d stumbled out into the grid of Axis’s streets instead of Across. And now that she was here, free from the empress and her soldiers and most of all, Safire, Eris had changed her mind. She didn’t want to go back to that haunted lonely labyrinth, with nothing but a ghost to keep her company.