“And yet you still wear my ring.”
I look down at the smooth, white stone. It must seem odd to him that I do. “I can’t explain why, but it feels important to me.” As vague and as close to the truth as I can get.
To that, he says nothing.
We’ve passed the looming inner wall. Beyond it is a narrow street banked with steeply gabled houses, much like I remember from that first night. Only now there are no buildings smoldering, no wagons full of bodies, no children crying over fallen parents. The azure sky is smeared with wispy white clouds, and a warm breeze disturbs the stray hairs around my face.
The procession swerves right where the street splits off to another, and suddenly the vista opens to the broad expanse of water beyond the city’s limits below. On the far horizon, a faint line hints of more land. I try to recall the map in Zander’s circular room. Is that more of Islor? Seacadore? I committed all the names to memory as soon as I returned, and yet I know nothing of them.
I inhale the slight waft of brine from the sea. It’s calming.
“You don’t feel any pull from the water?” Zander asks, and there is genuine curiosity in his voice.
He knows Annika told me. Of course. Wendeline warned me that all my conversations would reach his ears. “I’m not supposed to, am I?” I hold up my arms to show the cuffs. “What could I do if I weren’t wearing them?”
“Besides wreak havoc on my city again?”
“How would I do that?” Other than exploding water fountains, what can this elven body I’ve inhabited do?
“You think I’m going to give you detailed instructions?”
“As if they’d be of any use to me.” I have no interest in attacking Cirilea. I just want to better understand how it all works. “What about you?”
“What about me?” A pause. “Oh, that’s right, I heard you’ve been interrogating anyone who might listen,” he says dryly.
I steal a glance Elisaf’s way and find his focus ahead. Do they all repeat everything I say to Zander?
I change the subject. “Where are we going?”
Zander gives the rein a tug to guide the horse to the right, the move causing his biceps to brush against mine. “To parade the princess of Ybaris around Cirilea. It’s time everyone knows you are alive and well, and the best way to do that quickly is by allowing the people to see you.”
“And why do you want them to know? Why do you care if people think I’m dead?” What use does Zander have of me?
“Because I want people to see that you are still here, within the royal court, and close to me.” I’m acutely aware of him leaning in, his voice dropping an octave. “Few know what happened, and of your memory affliction. Only those I trust with the truth. We’ve heard that Queen Neilina has been frantically searching for proof of your survival, so perhaps your dear mother does love you after all. We are assuming she is ignorant to the fact that you no longer remember who you are.”
“You believe me?”
“I believe Wendeline.”
And she’s mostly right, I feel the urge to say but bite my tongue. She doesn’t have all the details. “And what happens after word spreads that I’m alive?”
“I am expecting those who helped you before will believe you’ve convinced me that you are innocent of any wrongdoing, that you were merely a scapegoat for Queen Neilina.”
It clicks. “You want to draw them out.”
“Eventually, they will find a way to contact you again. When they do, we will punish them accordingly.”
A thought strikes me. “Did your soldiers find anything at Lyndel?”
“Yes. Lord Telor’s army, ready to defend us against Ybaris.”
I feel my shoulders slump.
“Were you hoping for another outcome? Perhaps to find one of my strongest allies had turned on me?” he asks. He senses my disappointment, but he has misread it.
“No, it’s good. I just … with everything I’ve heard about what happened that night, and what Princess Romeria did to you—”
“What you did to me,” he corrects.