The king doesn’t send for me to continue the inquiry, other things clearly taking up his plate right now—Lucien, the witchfire, the war. I pace back and forth over the carpet in Varia’s room, the urge to find Malachite and demand to know if the prince is recovering well gnawing greater than the hunger. The briefest flicker of possibility from the other timeline of my life flashes through my mind—visiting Lucien’s bedside, holding his hand. Bursting into tears with relief, and his soft smile as he embraces me and tells me not to worry.

fourteen days of lies and fourteen men, and still you expect a happy end—

I snatch up the nearest wine decanter and down the glass I pour in one swallow.

The hunger blurs into a smooth river, but guilt is the sharp rocks waiting at the foot of the waterfall.

14

14

The Name
of the Wolf

Princess Varia doesn’t return to her apartments until the early hours of the dim melon-pink morning, when the sunbirds first start to screech. I jolt awake from my wine-induced slumber to see her standing at the shelf of porcelain dolls, stroking the ribbon hat of one absently. Somehow, using that witchy awareness Nightsinger had, too, she knows I’m awake and speaks without turning around.

“No one died in the fire, but several dozen were injured. A great amount of property was lost.” She pauses, her languid sheet of dark hair quivering, and then, “My father has drawn up a formal declaration of war. It was announced at midnight.”

My insides sink down to my knees. War. The war the witches and Y’shennria and I dreaded for so long. Part of me knew it was inevitable after the fire, but I never thought Vetrisian bureaucracy could move so fast.

People will die now. Maybe not because of me, but neither did I do anything to fulfill the witches’ plans to stop the war. I try to put the guilt behind me, slowly, like a freshly whetted knife—always aware of its ability to harm, always aware of its usefulness as a tool.

“Was it real witchfire?” I finally ask.

“Yes,” she says.

“You didn’t do it. You wouldn’t. That would sabotage all your plans to lay low. So who did?”

Varia picks up the doll, and my memory of her breaking the other one has me instinctually leaning away.

“Whoever the poor fool was,” she mutters. “They let their magic spiral completely out of control.”

“What?” I blink.

“The bulk of the soldiers currently gathered will be deployed to raze the forests east and west of Vetris.” She continues, voice clear this time. “That’s first protocol—destroy any hiding places they may have close to the city.”

My unheart leaps and stumbles. But that means—

“Nightsinger,” I start. “She lives in those woods. Crav and Peligli and…” I jump up off the couch. “I have to warn them.”