Oredison Palace, Gazda.
Less than two weeks before Sanctus Aurelia.

Caine had been volatile those first few days back in the palace. The Erydian people were anxious. They had a new king, but his appearance had been unpredicted and had come as an unwelcome surprise to many. The temples were uneasy, the priestesses pushing for more information on Kai's claim to the throne. Everyone wanted to know about his intentions with the Culling. Would he continue it? What would be done with the remaining goddess-touched girls? Since he wasn't raised in Erydia, no one was certain he would follow our traditions.

With so many fires to put out and mine so effectively doused, Caine had left me to my own devices. The rules of my confinement were simple—I couldn't try to see Kai, I couldn't leave the palace, and I couldn't go down to the prisons. So, I spent most of my first few days just walking the halls of Oredison Palace, holding my breath for a glimpse of the new king.

I was so mad at him.

My heart was this aching, raw thing in my chest. And I couldn't seem to reconcile my brokenness with the fact that he'd done that—he'd cause this. The worst part was that I wanted him desperately. I missed having him on my side. I missed the sure, unwavering faith he'd always had in me.

Surrounded by so many enemies, both seen and unseen, I realized pretty quickly that I had no faith in myself. There was no faith, no hope, to be had. Instead, I was eaten alive by deep-set guilt and a longing for the man I'd thought Kai was—the one who had kissed me and held my hand through the darkest parts of the night.

I missed him.

I also wanted to kill him. I wanted to hurt Kai the way my heart was hurting.

I wondered if he ever laid awake at night and remembered the look on Uri's face as she'd died. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd spent hours trying to imagine things differently—we should have never let her out of our sight. I should have kept her by my side while we'd waited for the rebellion to start—we should have never aided the rebellion in the first place. But wishing didn't do anything to bring her back.

She was just dead.

Uri was just dead and I was just pacing the halls of a palace, looking for a boy I wasn't sure had ever really existed. I never found him, not really. And yet, he was everywhere. I saw the barest shadow of him in the portraits of a dead king. I saw evidence of his presence, sat across from him at the dinner table, but I never really saw my Kai. Not the man who'd kissed me. Not the man who'd claimed to love me.

I wondered if he'd died with Uri.

I wondered if he'd ever lived to begin with.

***
The Palace Library.

After breakfast, Heidi, Nadia, and Kinsley were escorted from the dining room and taken to their old palace bedrooms. Caine wanted everyone well-rested for the coming days. Despite the fact that I'd been abused and my friends had been imprisoned for over a month, we all needed to appear well-treated. We needed to seem happy.

Lies.

All of it.

Since Caine was busy forcing Cohen, Larkin, and Kai to sit in the same room without killing each other, I had the rest of the morning to myself. My guards, Igell and Ross, trailed me at a leisurely distance as I headed for the library.

The musty room with its large windows and mauve velvet curtains had become my favorite haunt. I'd grown up adventuring through books—and libraries had always been a thing of wonder to me. I'd never been able to fully imagine what it would be like to have an unending supply of books at my disposal. The lonely, frightened girl I'd been when I'd lived on the homestead, awaiting my fate, wouldn't have known what to do with herself if she'd been given so many small worlds to thumb through.

My chores would have never gotten done. I'd have read my days away and I'd have been happy to do it. But I hadn't had this many books. I'd had a few old novels, a handful of pamphlets and magazines my brothers had brought home to me, their old school books, and a very old world encyclopedia. And that was that.

My world had only ever been so wide.

Things like libraries didn't exist in Varos. People didn't have the time, money, or safety to read, and most had even less time, money, or safety to write. But that couldn't be said for the people in Gazda. Here, literacy was common and art...art was second-nature.

I often wondered what my life might have looked like if I'd been raised somewhere like this—somewhere with libraries and museums and art galleries. Once upon a time, I'd believed I was fighting to give those opportunities to others. I'd believed that the Culled would help to diversify our nation's wealth, push factories and companies and traders to go outside of the biggest cities. I'd believed that there might one day be libraries in Varos.

I'd hoped that maybe one day, people might feel safe enough, well-fed enough, to produce art.

I'd been fed lies.

And even with all of my practice with Viera, I hadn't been able to taste the poison in them.

Stupid girl. Foolish girl.

Hope-filled girl.

It hardly mattered anymore. Like Uri, what had happened with the Culled couldn't be changed. And so, I turned my attention to the future. It turns out, the few dog-eared volumes I'd poured over as a child were nothing compared to the ocean of literature Cohen had been raised in. The library in Oredison Palace was massive, with rows and rows of wooden shelves, ladders that rose to the highest shelf, and tables and chairs meant for studying. This became my new home.

The smell of musty pages, leather, and bitter incense from the priestess acolytes was new and yet familiar—as if my soul had been here, done this, before. And I'd been so hurt recently, that I leaned into that feeling of comfort. I craved any semblance of safety.

I also craved power.

Caine had been surprised when he'd realized I wasn't illiterate, but he hadn't stopped me from going. He believed there was nothing in the palace library that could help me escape. The only doors led back into the palace or out onto a massive sunroom—a sunroom without an exterior door.

I could no more escape from the palace library than I could from my bedroom.

So, my guards spent their days trailing me down rows and rows of dusty shelves. They leaned against the muraled walls as I curled into armchairs and read book after book. Stories—they thought. They would report it to Caine, telling him the names of the titles. At dinner, he would often question me on what I'd read.

They're romances, I'd tell him. Raunchy things. Lots of bodice-ripping and snarling men.

But that wasn't true and if the guards had actually paid me any mind, they'd know it.

In actuality, I'd been reading about past Cullings. There were hundreds of them. Thousands of innocent girls like me, all of them forced into an arena, all of them forced to kill or die. Most accounts were written by videras or high priestesses. They almost always focused on the winning girl and the beauty of it all, rather than the dying and the dark truth.

I'd begun to make a mental list of the girls who had become queen. The goddess-touched girls who had died were oddly more familiar to me than the victors were, since the dead were considered saints and the most popular names were attached to every Monday in our calendar.

I wasn't sure why I wanted to know, or why it mattered who had died and who had become queen. I just needed something to do. And I thought that maybe—just maybe—one of these accounts might mention a drug like tacet.

Of course, the chemist who had first created tacet had only done so in the last few decades, but the idea of quelling a goddess-touched girls' ability couldn't be new. Someone else might have figured it out sooner—someone else might know a cure.

But I never came across anything to help me.

Instead, I just read account after account of girls dying painful, public deaths.

I died right alongside them each and every time.

I'd just entered the library, prepared to curl into my regular armchair and begin from where I'd left off, when I saw a familiar sketchbook. It lay tucked beneath a few books on an ornate reading table, the flickering oil lamp the only light in that darkened alcove of the library. The nearby fireplace made the spot warm, but the lighting was too dark, too shifting and shadowy.

It certainly wasn't a place to draw.

The leather-bound sketchbook had blended in with the rest of the books stacked on the table—all of them volumes I'd left out from my last visit. Set beside them, the notebook looked like just another dusty tome—just another long-winded account of a Culling.

So, no one had suspected a thing as I'd picked it up and taken it over to my reading corner—far away from the keepers of the books and the priestess acolytes that stalked the shelves like vultures.

It was strange, to hold something that belonged to him. This sketch pad and the drawings within were a part of Kai that he considered to be vulnerable. A weakness.

Like me.

I was a weakness to him.

And he hated feeling weak. I knew it. I'd seen it eating at him for over a month.

So, he didn't usually show people what he drew. Often, he didn't even tell people he was an artist. But he was. And he was talented too. I'd seen his sketches, seen him drawing. I'd always thought it was magical—the way he saw the world through a lens that made it worth drawing.

And he had so many drawings of that world.

I'd become used to seeing Kai's notebooks. We'd shared a tent for weeks, so I knew what his art supplies looked like. I knew that he was partial to leather-bound volumes filled with stacks of cream-colored blank pages, just brimming with possibility. He often wet the leather and used a knife to carve his birth mother's surname—Callahan—into the covers.

But this notebook was newer and didn't have his name on it. This was a sketchbook I'd only seen a handful of times. In fact, I might not have noticed it if it weren't the exact same sketchbook he'd bought in Linomi all those weeks ago.

I knew it—remembered it from the moments before the explosion. I'd kept it for him, brought it to him after he'd awoken in the medical tent and he'd wanted to draw. It was red leather, the thread-bound cover no wider than two hands laid side by side. Ink smudged the outer edge of the pages and the pencil stuffed into the folded spine was whittled down to a stump.

And he'd left it here for me to find.

My guards said nothing, only grumbled to themselves as I fell into my chair, flipped it open, and started thumbing through Kai's drawings. They were simple things—images I recognized. A half-done drawing of Swara Garbic's dog, Elias. A portrait of Carina Conard as she sat next to Kai's sickbed, her swollen feet propped up on an overturned bucket and her hand laid idly across her stomach. There was an image of Ruthie, her fingers halfway through re-braiding her hair. A drawing of me, sitting at the foot of his bed, flushed and smiling like an idiot.

And lastly, a sketch of Uri.

This one was recent, drawn in the same dark blue pencil I held in my hand.

In the picture, Uri sat by one of the Third Corps fires. Her dark hair was in a simple braid, her smile so wide it crinkled the skin around her eyes—Kai's eyes, I realized. She wore a plain set of day clothes, her cotton leggings and thick sweater too big for her thin frame, but rendered cozy by her posture and Kai's skilled hand. A group of children sat on the ground at her feet, only their silhouettes depicted.

For a moment, I didn't quite understand what the drawing was supposed to be of—but then I saw the bundle of Galanthus flowers in Uri's hand. I remembered how the small white blooms had burst through the cold dirt of Vayelle during our first few weeks there. It had been a strange, almost mystical occurrence, unlike anything I'd seen during a Varos winter.

In Kai's drawing, Uri's other hand was in her hair—fiddling with the small crown of flowers there. Upon further inspection, it was clear that at least two of the children in the picture also wore woven Galanthus crowns. There was a small stack of them in Uri's lap. She must have been making them herself, passing them out to the rebel children as they'd come back from school.

Underneath the drawing, Kai had written: Princess Uriel Warwick on her throne.

It was such a simple thing, so unexpectedly pure, that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Was this scene of Uri as real as I knew the others were? Had Kai witness this and been moved to draw it, the way he was so often inspired to draw things? If so, when? I wanted to ask him. I wanted to understand. But all I had was the sketch of Uri.

I turned the page, wanting there to be more. I wished that I could somehow pull the boy I'd known from the sketchbook and force him to tell me everything. I wished that I could go back to being the girl I'd been in that portrait—blissfully naïve and happy.

The girl who had smiled at him was tired but thrilled to see him alive and awake and looking at her again. That girl had been in love. She'd been on the cusp of a rebellion that she'd believed would grant her freedom. She'd imagined a future with him.

She'd been days away from losing everything and she had no idea.

No damn idea.

I'd turned back to the image of Uri, unwilling to look at myself the way I knew Kai had once seen me. I thumbed through the mass of empty pages at the back of the book, looking for whatever it was I'd missed—because certainly there was something to be missed.

Kai was nothing if not intentional.

He thrived off having a reason for the silly things he did. Just like how lighting and dousing the Third Corps fires was a well-disguised training exercise, I knew that there was something to be found within this new forgetfulness. Kai hadn't left this particular sketchbook, with this particular drawing, out for just anyone to find. He'd put it there for me.

Why?

I scanned the image of Uri again—looking for what? I didn't know. I'd just decided to give up and go back to my reading when I saw the code written in the bottom corner. It had been written darkly and then erased, so only the barest shadow of it remained.

I pressed the open book to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart.

It was a clue.

Kai had done something.

I made a mental note of the numbers and letters written there—G894.

G894.

G894.

G894—

The guards straightened as I pushed up from my chair, abandoning Kai's sketchbook in my seat as I walked towards the isle of the library that held the Gs. Since many of the library books were older than Erydia, some older than the cities or goddess-given marks, they didn't all have known authors. For this reason, the library had been organized into topics—and I found that the books in section G, numbered 880-1298, were reserved for gardening.

I stopped in front of the shelf holding 890-927. My fingertip ran along the spines of the books, breezing past numbers until I reached the spot where G894 should be. Missing. The book wasn't in its place.

I exhaled louder than I meant to, drawing the attention of one of the keepers. The older man peered at me through dirty glasses, his brow furrowed in annoyance. I dipped my head in apology and receded back towards my chair, Igell and Ross at my heels.

I went back to Kai's sketchbook, double-checked the number he'd written, then went to the table where he'd initially left it. But none of the other books on the table were from the G section.

I fell into one of the chairs, frustrated and feeling silly. Maybe, there was nothing to it. Or maybe Caine had found the book first and taken G894 before I could.

I closed my eyes and ran a scarred hand over my face. Good goddess, I was tired. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept soundly; couldn't remember the last time I'd been completely unafraid. Safety was a foreign thing. It was beyond my grasp—beyond my frame of understanding. I wondered if the word had ever even belonged to me. Had I ever really been safe? Even once?

Not before the Culling and certainly not now.

Igell crossed his arms over his chest and raised a brow at me. "Having a breakdown, Benson?"

I shook my head and turned my face away from him, out towards the large oak doors that lead back into the palace. One of the keepers stood towards the front of the library. She was thin as a rail and her salt and pepper hair fell in thick braids that trailed down her back. While her expression was stern, her brown eyes seemed kind. In some odd way, she reminded me of my mother.

I stood up from the table and walked to where she stood. As I approached, her brows rose, expectant.

I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry to bother you..." I hesitated, entirely unsure how I was supposed to ask about a specific book when all I knew about it was its shelving number. It wasn't like I could ask her for it by title. Kai hadn't given me that, only the number.

And it was weird of me to know the number and nothing else.

My guards stepped up to my sides and the woman tipped her head in acknowledgment, as if she'd only just realized I was goddess-touched by their presence. Her mouth formed a thin, no-nonsense line as she asked, "Yes, how may I be of service?"

"I was wondering..." I glanced sideways at my guards, unsure. "I was wondering if you—if there were any books about—If—"

Next to me, Ross snickered.

I pushed forward, wishing away the sudden anxiety in my chest. "Are there any books about Galanthus flowers?"

I didn't know why I decided to ask for that specifically—but as soon as the question left my mouth, I felt certain that the book I was looking for had to do with those flowers. Kai had always been deliberate, after all. He'd make sure the code and the drawing were connected.

The keeper blinked at me, surprised. "Galanthus flowers?"

"Yes. They grow in the cold. Even in the snow. They're white and the flowers sort of droop like water drops from the stem—" I gestured, trying to mimic the way the flowers sort of hung. "They grow in Vayelle. Maybe some places here too—I don't know..." I was rambling.

The keeper winced as if she realized that too. "Yes, child. I know what a Galanthus flower looks like."

I chewed my bottom lip. "But are there any books about them in the library?"

"Did you check the section on Gardening?"

I sucked in a shallow breath, trying to bolster myself for the lie. "Yes, but book G894 is missing. I wondered if maybe it might have a section on Galanthus?"

She hummed in response, her expression turning thoughtful.

My guards exchanged a glance.

"Why the sudden interest in plants?" Ross asked.

The keeper only gestured me towards the granite counter a few feet away. She shuffled through the books lining a small metal cart, her tongue clicking softly as she searched. After a long moment, her finger landed on the spine of an emerald green book. She pulled it out from the cart and held the spine closer to the flickering glass lamp on the wall behind the counter.

"Here it is. Book G894. Galanthus Nivalis: The Snow Flower. What luck." She handed it over to me. "If you'll just reshelve it when you're through—?"

"Yes, ma'am." I stepped away from the counter, bumping into Igell in my haste to get back to my chair. She said nothing else to me so I turned and made to leave the counter, but Igell caught hold of my upper arm. He pulled me away from the keeper and behind one of the taller shelves, blocking us from view.

"What's this all about, Benson?" I tried to turn away, working to shield the book from them, but Ross was now on my other side. He grabbed the book from my arms and held it above my head.

"Maybe we ought to skip the questions and take this right to Caine," Igell said.

"And have him flay you alive for tattling about my interest in gardening?" I said. "I'm reading about flowers. That's all. Give it back. Now."

Ross shook his head. "Nah, I don't think so."

Igell nodded in agreement. "You've been reading smut for weeks. Why the change in topic?"

I rolled my eyes at the mention of smut and said, "I'm about to have to fight Kinsley in the Culling. I'm just trying to prepare."

I am a girl made of lies.

Clever lies.

Igell laughed at this. "By studying damn flowers?"

I reached for the book, but Ross was too tall. "Please, just give it back. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just trying to pass the time. I have a right to be here. Caine said I could come to the library. I'm not breaking any rules."

"Yeah, but he also said we were to report any suspicious activity. And this shit is suspicious."

"May I help the three of you find something?"

At the sound of a new voice, Igell whirled, his mouth turning into a sneer as he took in the priestess standing there. The girl straightened under his gaze, her brown eyes seeming to glitter with challenge as she nodded to the book Ross held. The silver beads in her hair glinted in the lamplight as she stepped forward, moving to stand closer to me.

Igell and Ross exchanged a look before the former muttered a quick, "We've got it under control, thanks."

The priestess, who couldn't have been much older than I was, straightened. "Are you certain? I couldn't help but notice how loud you were being just now. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the library is considered a place of respite for our acolytes. We house many of our holy texts here and they spend hours studying and meditating before they take their vows. I would hate for you to be a distraction to them." Her gaze flitted to the book Ross still held out of my reach. Her nose wrinkled as she said, "There are plenty of books on flowers in the gardening section. All very interesting. Unfortunately, the keeper gave that book to the goddess-touched girl. Maybe I could help you find another?"

Ross lowered the book to his side. The priestess held out her hand for it—her countenance that of a scolding parent. After a long moment, he passed it to her. Without a word, she turned and pressed it into my hands. It was then, with her gaze finally aimed at me, that I recognized her.

The videra from Varos.

I'd seen her once before, on the platform of Demarti Station. Just before the last checkpoint. Just before I'd stolen my freedom. Or, failed to steal my freedom.

The girl seemed to recognize me too, because she tilted her head in acknowledgment as she left the book in my hands and stepped back. Her lips quirked as she said, "It's interesting that books contain just a bit of power. Power that is not so unlike the sort you already possess. Wouldn't you agree?"

I nodded. "Yes. Thank you."

She folded her hands in front of her. "Consider it a long-due apology."

My throat burned at her words and it felt like I was back there—standing next to my brother as we waited to get onto a train that I'd never be able to board. I remembered the way she'd told the guards to be gentle with me. I remembered the shining of her eyes, how she'd turned to the soldier with her, almost pleading.

Looking at her now, months later, I wondered if her gift of sensing goddess-given abilities was as much of a curse as possessing one.

She broke through my thoughts. "I'm Dahlia. I'm the apprentice bookkeeper and videra to the quee—to the king." I didn't miss the wince that passed over her features at her own mistake. Her hand touched my wrist and I fell into step next to her, not even bothering to look if Ross and Igell were coming with us. "You know, I've been following your story for months."

I blinked at her, surprised. "But why?"

Dahlia shrugged. "Guilt maybe. Or curiosity. Probably a bit of both, if I'm being honest. At the train station—" she lowered her voice. "At the train station, I didn't know if you'd survive. I worried I'd sent you to your death. We're taught that the girls who run often have weaker gifts. But your gift wasn't weak. I knew that when I first saw you. I'm happy to see you've realized it for yourself."

I clutched the Galanthus book to my chest. "Would you have let me run, if you'd been able to?"

She hesitated. "Sometimes I think I would have. Other times..." She shrugged. "Other times I think it would have happened just as it did no matter what. Many of my sisters believe you're destined to be here. Maybe they're right. It's amazing to consider that the goddess has brought you to the Culling, not once, but twice." Dahlia gestured to the palace around us. "Don't you think this was all meant to be?"

Yes. No.

I didn't want to think about it.

I'd once told Cohen that I thought we could change our fate. Now, trapped in this place, only days away from entering the arena again, I wasn't sure I'd been right. Maybe the goddess wanted me here and I couldn't fight it. Maybe I was meant to die in the arena.

I glanced down at the dress I'd put on this morning—the vow I'd made to myself and to Uri. Maybe I was meant for something else—something more. I lifted my chin, trying to channel even the barest ember of Uriel Warwick.

Maybe I was meant to be queen.

The last queen of Erydia.

As we reached my corner of the library, I hoped I was right. But more than that, I hoped Dahlia was right as she said, "It seems to me that you're destined to be our queen. And if that's the case, then the other priestesses and videras would consider me blessed to have played a role in that—even if it was a small one."

If she was right—the priestess and videras would grow to call me cursed. If she was right—then they would spit on her grave. One day they might spit on mine.

But if she were right—if I were right—then it wouldn't all be for nothing. If I could take the throne, then maybe I could dismantle the kingdom from the inside. I'd done it once. Maybe I could do it again.

Dahlia was quiet as we made our way back to my forgotten seat.

The silence between us was heavy. It made me uneasy to know the name of the girl who had sent my life into a spiral. I'd nearly forgotten her—the videra who had seen me when I'd wanted to be invisible. Did she still sense my ability, even buried by tacet? Did the drug suppress her goddess-given power too?

I wondered what she saw when she looked at me.

When I looked at Dahlia, I remembered the way my brother had yelled my name, the way he'd screamed for me—how he'd promised to find a way to save me. And Ambrose had done what he could. He'd given me a key to my freedom just as certainly as Cohen had. But my brother hadn't saved me. I think I'd done that myself. And I knew, as I nodded my thanks to Dahlia and settled into my chair, that I would do whatever it took to save myself again.

***

You got a long chapter today.

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