Page 35 of The Crown’s Temptation

The guards leave.

The seer leaves.

The room empties until it is just Nox in the chair and the girl on the bed and me against the wall and the silence that follows something that should not have happened.

Someone unlocks the cuffs.

Nox sits where she is for a long time. Then she stands. She crosses to the bed and looks at the girl and whatever she sees there I cannot read from her face. Her face has gone somewhere I cannot reach.

She does not call for anyone. She just stands there.

Then her father comes back.

Clothed. Glamoured. Smooth-faced and handsome and entirely at ease. He offers her his hand.

"Come walk in the gardens with me, my Ivy."

Nox is pale. "Sadie--"

"Sadie has failed. She will be cared for if there is anything left." He smiles cruelly. "But I cannot care for her if I am upset or displeased, as I am sure you understand."

She stares at him, then she accepts his hand.

I follow them. I do not want to, yet my body does it anyway.

Through the palace and out into the gardens where the air is cold and the lanterns are lit and everything looks ordinary if you do not know what just happened inside. I walk beside them through the dark and I listen to everything he says and I watch Nox's face while he says it and I watch her ask if Sadie will live and I watch the relief go through her when he says yes she is in the north tower and I want to tell her what I know about the north tower, about the yellow room and the deathmages and the screaming women with swollen bellies. But I cannot reach her and she cannot hear me.

They walk until the north tower stands over them.

He points.

"There. She is sleeping, and her wounds are being tended."

I look at the tower and watch as they carry Sadie inside. Her body looks lifeless. Limp. I look at what I know is inside it and something cold and absolute moves through me.

"Today you taught me something, sweet Ivy,"

"I wish to see my sister."

He points to the north tower.

"She is right there. Your other sisters are in there as well." He says it kindly.

"The Key is still out there. I have daughters being born to me every day, sweet child, and I will go on looking. But there are two I cannot account for." He said it without any change in his voice, as though he were listing debts. "The seer tells me you are powerful. She also tells me you are not the Key. That another strong daughter of mine is."

He tucked her hair back from her face.

"She tells me you are the hand that delivers it to me."

"Aunt Ryaran's daughter is dead," Nox whispered.

"Yes. But there was another who went missing. She may be living. She may be in the ground. You will find out which, and you will bring me what is left of her either way."

"Morrath and the blind gate are in Rathmor keeping." He leaned down and put his mouth against her ear. "Find them. Marry their king, he can access Morrath. Bring me my daughter. Open the Blind Gate."

A pause.

"That is the only way you will ever escape me."