Finally, impatient with worry and fear, Ruti departs from her room and wanders through the palace, searching for Dekala. The rooms where she studies with tutors are empty, and Tembo’s training room is silent. The gardens are quiet too, and guards look oddly at her when she asks if they’ve seen Dekala.
“I imagine she’s with her suitor,” one says at last. “I saw them this morning. They looked cozy.”
Ruti resists the urge to scream. Instead, she goes back inside, dragging her feet as she gives the front hall one sullen glance. Dekala is gone, disappeared with an evil prince, and she won’t be able to warn her until after dinner.
She sinks down onto the stairs, defeated, when she hears a smooth voice that has her straightening and twisting around. “I do think our borders are too sealed,” Prince Torhvin says, and Ruti peers through the rail of the staircase to see him walk through the main entrance of the palace. “I urged my father to reopen them, but he thought we would be safer without intruders. It is such a terrible waste to keep our peoples separated. We have so much to learn from each other.”
To her surprise, he isn’t walking with Dekala. Instead, he strolls beside the Regent, his eyes intent on the Regent’s face. There is something youthful and attentive about his expression when he walks with the Regent, feeding into the older man’s ego.
The Regent pats Torhvin’s back. “You have wise ideas for someone so young,” he remarks. “Rurana could have used your insight after the last blight.” They walk to the left, off toward the inner throne room and the war room where the Regent governs with the king’s advisors, and Ruti follows them.
She hums a little melody, a call to the spirits to conceal her. She isn’t quite invisible, but when she looks for herself in a large mirror on the wall, her own eyes seem to slide over her reflection. Carefully, she steals after the Regent and Torhvin, sliding through the open door of the Regent’s war room just moments before he closes it.
He turns, eyes on Torhvin, and says, “But that is hardly relevant any longer. Our peoples have had much friction in the past, and King Jaquil seemed determined to continue the hostilities between us when he prepared to take the throne. Our messengers and well-wishers were rebuffed.”
“Jaquil was—is—” Torhvin amends, looking chagrined. “He is a man who cares deeply for his people. But he can be short-sighted as well. Like Father, he had little faith in outsiders. I admit that I have not always been so open-minded, either. Dekala has changed me.”
The Regent’s smile widens, but his eyes do not smile with him. Ruti sidles over to a closet, aware that her magic is going to fade now that she can no longer sing, and slips into it when Torhvin’s and the Regent’s backs are turned. Now in a crouch on the floor, she watches the royals from an opening in the door. “Such is her power,” says the Regent. “She would be a formidable queen for you.”
“If she would only bond with me,” Torhvin says with a deep sigh. “I know she is my soulbond. I could feel our connection from the moment I saw her. And I know she can feel it, too, or she wouldn’t be so afraid of our hands touching. Perhaps if you would speak to her—”
“She is headstrong,” the Regent says, sitting down heavily at the table. “And she seeks control more than anything else.”
“I would give her power,” Torhvin argues, and Ruti narrows her eyes at him, at these two men who plan Dekala’s future without consulting her. “I would give her a queenship of Rurana and of Zidesh. And together we would rule my kingdom.” He looks at the Regent, a slow smile spreading across his face. “You, of course, would have full command over Zidesh. That is what you want, is it not?”
“I want my niece to have her throne,” the Regent deflects, and Ruti mouths Liar silently. The Regent has done nothing but foil Dekala’s quest for the throne from the start, and he has the audacity to claim now that this hasn’t been his goal all along. “I will abide by what she wishes.” The Regent tilts his head, staring down at Torhvin with sharp eyes not unlike Dekala’s. “And if you wish to persuade her to bond with you, then you will be served best by more time with her and less time with me.”
His voice is hard now, the same uncompromising tone that has always infuriated Dekala at their dinner arguments. “Win her heart,” he says. “Ply her with gifts and promises. Tell her of your plan to join our kingdoms and for her to have dominion over two lands instead of one. She will not fold to your charms, nor will I. You know what it is we want.”
Torhvin nods gravely. “Our souls are bonded,” he agrees. “There is a space inside each of us that can only be filled by the other. She will see reason.” The Regent doesn’t respond. Satisfied, Torhvin walks to the door and says, “Zidesh will be yours.”
“Yes,” the Regent says, and Ruti stares at him, at the traitorous smile that curls onto his face, and despises them both. “It will.”
Torhvin exits the room, and the Regent pours himself a drink from a cabinet near Ruti’s hiding spot and then sits down. As he sits, he says, “Show yourself, girl.”
Ruti startles violently, her head banging against the wall of the closet. The Regent heaves a deep sigh. “Now,” he commands. “I know you’re in there. Did you think me enchanted by your songs?”
There is no malice in his voice, only irritation, and Ruti dares to venture from the closet, the magic hiding her all but gone. “How did you …?”
“When I discovered that Dekala had brought a Markless witch into the palace, I took the necessary precautions,” the Regent says, fixing her with a stern glare. “I would not have a witch singing us all into puppets. I take a draught every morning made to protect myself from witchcraft.” He swallows his drink, grimacing at its taste. “A useful habit once Torhvin brought in three more witches.”
Ruti stares at him, mouth agape. “You … you know who I am?” she finally stutters. The Regent has paid her little attention since her first day in the palace, and he’d never let on that he knew she was the witch he’d once put on trial. “But you never.…”
The Regent takes another long drink, swallowing and exhaling. “I have long kept my own spies among the princess’s attendants. When they reported the unexpected arrival of a Markless girl just as my guards reported that the only witch in the slums had disappeared.…” His lip curls. “And I have been forced to host a Markless at my table. What a disrespect to the crown.”
Ruti recovers quickly, her eyes narrowing. “You’re one to talk about disrespect to the crown,” she fires back, “while you sell your niece to Torhvin. Did you know that he’s been kidnapping Markless and selling them as slaves to make coin for his kingdom? He’s a monster. And you’re going to hand Dekala over to him?” She whirls around, overcome with fury. “Is this all some grand plot to take her crown? Force Dekala to marry against her will and then seize the throne?”
She has to stop, breathless with outrage, and she glowers at the Regent. To her surprise, he begins to laugh. “Is that what she believes?” he asks, and laughs again. “Has she cast me as a villain to you?”
“Well, what else are you?” Ruti demands. “You’ve been—”
“I’ve been trying to find her humanity.” The Regent shakes his head. “Haven’t you seen her?” Ruti stares at him, dislike still creeping through her. “Since the day she woke up beside her dead father, Dekala has been … well, you know her as well as anyone by now,” he says, and he is no longer laughing. His words are heavy. “It’s as though she’s lost every bit of her compassion. All she thinks about is power and control and how she can wrest them from others. A piece of her broke when she was seven.”
Ruti laughs harshly. “Is that what you think of her? You don’t know her at all.” She has seen Dekala as compassionate, as caring, as willing to risk her life to save Kimya or Ruti or even Orrin. She remembers Dekala walking through the slums with coin out for the Markless, and she remembers Dekala’s fingers tracing her palm by the fire. Dekala is more than the Regent will ever grasp.
“I have spent thirteen years raising that girl,” the Regent says, unbothered by Ruti’s tone. “And I can tell you that she is broken. Wrong, somehow. Nothing like my brother and his wife. And when my own wife suggested—well,” he says, and drums his fingers against the table thoughtfully. “A soulbond is meant to heal all those incomplete parts of a person. I feared she never would have that opportunity when she fled Somanchi.” He looks, for a moment, pensive with what might be grief. “We hoped that if Dekala found her soulbond, she could become the queen Zidesh needs instead of a.…” He shakes his head. “Instead of whatever it is that she’s become. Cold. Uncompromising. Broken.”
“She is not broken,” Ruti insists, her voice harsh and gravelly. Her heart is still pounding with anger, straining against her chest. “She doesn’t trust you, so you don’t see the side of her that I have.”
The Regent laughs darkly. “You see what she wants you to see. Are you in love with her?” His eyes are sharp as they assess Ruti and find what they are looking for. Ruti feels suddenly naïve for underestimating the Regent, for seeing him as incompetent instead of as the man who has maintained Zidesh’s prosperity and power among the kingdoms for thirteen years. “A Markless witch who has nowhere else to go. Don’t you see how it serves her for you to be utterly devoted to her?”
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” The Regent leans forward. “Now that you’ve become her loyal servant, how kind has she been to you? How much of this secret side of her have you seen?”
Ruti trembles, furious at his claims, at the possibility they are correct. “You’re wrong,” she says. He has to be wrong. Ruti knows what she’s seen, knows that it can’t be an act. Dekala is smart, but she hasn’t been manipulating Ruti. She’s been genuine, vulnerable, and afraid, and she’s only shut Ruti out because of that.
“If I’m wrong,” the Regent says, his words silky, “then why is her soulbond—the one person in the universe destined to be her equal—a power-hungry slaver?” He closes his eyes, and when he opens them there is simple humanity within them, emotion beyond the challenge that had been in his gaze. “I can’t tell you how much sorrow it brings me to know this about her. I love that girl, and I wanted nothing more than to guide her to the throne.” He is genuine in his sadness, which infuriates Ruti too. “I have no children but Dekala, who has rejected me as a parent. I have been clinging for so long to the idea that becoming Bonded would give her the stability and love that she lacks. But destiny is unchanging, I suppose. This is Zidesh’s future.”
Ruti turns and flees.
She runs to the gardens, to the idyllic solitude that they bring her. The Regent is wrong. He has always underestimated Dekala, and he continues to do so now. Dekala had been transformed when away from this repressive palace, from the Regent who sees her as inhuman. She is so much more.…
Unless, a voice creeps into her mind to remind her, it is because she wanted you to believe that.
Ruti shudders. She has to hear it from Dekala herself. Just a few words with Dekala will dispel every doubt the Regent planted into Ruti’s mind. Forget Torhvin. Forget the Regent. Dekala is good, and Ruti returns to the palace in a rush of determination. Orrin is standing outside Dekala’s quarters, a sign that she is inside, and she bursts past him, ignoring his questions, and makes a mad dash for Dekala’s private rooms.
“Dekala!” she calls from outside the door, ignoring the scandalized looks of the attendants. “Dekala, I must speak with you. Dekala!”
