AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The boy trips and falls onto his knees. I have a flash of an image of his small body swallowed up and trampled by his fellow civilians, and my heart lurches alongside my magic.
I detach my necklace with the concealment charm and shove it in my pocket. “I need to help someone,” I gasp out in Rheave’s direction, and leap down onto the jutting store sign below before he can answer.
I don’t need my riven power for this. With another hop, my feet hit the ground. I throw myself through the weaving bodies, searching for the pale beige of the boy’s tunic.
There. He’s just yanking his hand away from being stomped on.
I spring across the last short distance and grasp his elbow to haul him upright—and backward into shelter between two abandoned stalls.
The boy spares me a puzzled glance and then darts forward again with a hoarse holler. “The king is gone! We need someone real!”
Gods help me, has Lothar already managed to muddle even the city’s children?
I snatch at the boy’s arm again to hold him back. “Why are you talking like that? She’s real even if you haven’t met her properly yet.”
He glares back at me with eyes so hostile I restrain a flinch. “If she’s got anything to do with the old king, I don’t want her.”
“Why not?”
The boy snorts as if the answer should be obvious. “What did King Konram do for any of us who didn’t matter enough to wear fancy clothes and go to his parties? Where was he when my dad broke his leg last year and some shoddy medic left him with a limp? If the royals can’t help us, we’ve got to fight for ourselves!”
He jerks his arm free and dashes away into the crowd, leaving me staring after him with a sinking sensation in my gut.
Eleven
Ivy
Isprawl across the bough of the oak, careful not to disturb the leaves that would rustle no matter how concealed my body is. My head dips to take in the voices below more clearly.
The rough bark grazes my cheek and digs into my hands. It’s a familiar sensation, and yet my nerves remain on edge.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This place used to be where I felt most at home in the world, and now I can’t shake the sense that I’m an intruder.
Beneath me in the tiny garden that holds a few sparse vegetables and a beehive, Ewalin and Frida have been puttering around and murmuring to each other for the past several minutes. Maybe it’s their own attitude that’s kept me in the alert. The daughter and mother I’ve so often visited in the outer wards are clearly nervous about being overheard in a way I never encountered before.
The atmosphere has shifted similarly all through Slaughterwell. This is only the last of a couple dozen shabby houses I’ve stopped at in my survey of the neighborhood. The usual strident shouts and bellows of laughter have been replaced by hushed voices and hesitant giggles.
The change in atmosphere isn’t the only thing affecting my own mood, though. The days when I used to watch Ewalin and Frida and long to slip into their family alongside them have faded into distant memory.
I do have a family now, as odd as these two women might find it. And I don’t know that I’d fit all that well with these two anymore regardless.
“I wish I could have been there to see it myself,” Ewalin is saying as she stops to tug up a weed. “Prince Dunstam—or whatever her new name is—come back from the dead?”
Her mother exhales roughly. “I’d think something got mixed with the ale in the local pub if there weren’t so many people talking about it. Would a king hold a false funeral out of some idea of keeping his child safe?”
She shakes her head and rests an affectionate hand on Ewalin’s hair. “I can’t imagine putting myself apart from my daughter for years. But who can say what goes on in the heads of royals?”
Ewalin gives a soft huff as she straightens up. “Better if he’d spent more time worrying about the safety of the rest of us. How many children of Slaughterwell died while he and his Crown’s Watch rarely stepped past the middle wards?”
Frida sketches her hand down her front in the gesture of the divinities. Her voice drops even lower. “There’s been far too much death all around just now, if you ask me.”
Her daughter grimaces. “Yes. But at least this Order is spreading it around a little more fairly instead of it all landing on us and our neighbors. We’ll just keep our heads down and see what comes of it.”
As they drift back toward the house, a lump fills my throat. I’ve caught similar sentiments all across Slaughterwell, but hearing it from these two hits a little harder.
Before this afternoon’s ruckus in the square, I thought most of the ordinary folk of Silana would be happy to have real order restored. But I’ve obviously spent too much time among royals and nobles in the past few months, absorbing their ideals and letting them kindle my good will.
I used to feel the exact same way Ewalin does about King Konram. I roamed through these streets seeing the desperation and suffering and silently ranted about how he neglected his most needy people.
