“So tell me, how are they different from you?”
She looked at me like I had slapped her face. “I wouldn’t have killed you, Jase. I wouldn’t have butchered your family. Can you say the same for them?”
“You intended to poison my family! You thought you were putting birchwings in our food!”
“It’s not a poison and you know it! It’s only a sedative.”
“Nash and Lydia are children! I don’t care what it is!”
“We didn’t put it in their food!”
“And yet, Beaufort and his men never even did that much to us.”
“Yet.”
“We’re an independent realm, the first country, and you violated our sovereignty. Who am I supposed to believe? A Rahtan soldier who dishonored my family’s trust? Who mocked me? Or the word of a queen I’ve never met who seized land that was ours?”
“You have no borders, Jase. The land was in the Cam Lanteux. She chose it based on what the king told her. How was she to know?”
“So that excuse works for her, but not for me? I didn’t know what Beaufort’s crimes were beyond a tattered bill that he refuted.”
“All you had to do was ask.”
“We did! My father asked the king’s magistrate, who said he had no information about him.”
“Then you should have asked the queen!”
“The queen who doesn’t answer our letters? The queen who doesn’t even know we exist?”
“You hid him, Jase. That says everything.” She paused, her eyes drilling into mine. “You hid a lot of things.”
“Which crime am I really here for, Kazi? Hiding Beaufort, or hiding Zane?”
Her lip quivered. She turned and walked away, saying over her shoulder, “Wren and Synové will come back to get you.” I strained against the ropes, crazy thoughts running through my head, thoughts that made no sense.
“Kazi, wait!” I called.
She stopped and for long seconds looked down at the ground.
“I was going to tell you about Zane,” I said. “I swear I was.”
She spun to face me. “When, Jase? When I took your ring, I gave it back to you when it mattered. When it helped you save everything you cared about. You had the chance to tell me about Zane—when it mattered to me. But you didn’t.”
She left, and I wished there had been anger in her voice or misery in her eyes or something. Instead, there was nothing, vast empty plains of nothing, and it hit me harder than if she had struck me in the jaw again.
The wind, time,
They circle, repeat,
Teaching us to be ever watchful,
For freedoms are never won,
Once and for all,
But must be won over and over again.
—Song of Jezelia