Chapter 7 - Acantha
Acantha had never felt this angry in her life. As she strode back and forth down the hallway of the empty prison, she was genuinely concerned that something inside her body was going to burst like a rotten piece of fruit. There was nowhere for any of it to go, not unless she started screaming and never stopped.
What the hell had happened? How had he knocked her out like that? He’d been standing three feet away from her on the other side of the bars, and then darkness, and then she’d been waking up on the prison floor, the cell door swinging wide open and her prisoner long gone. To add insult to injury, he’d even left the pillow from his bed under her head. Mocking her. Mocking her! She kept seizing the handle of her sword as though if she drew quickly enough, she might somehow be able to catch him…
Magic, she thought dully as she strode out of the prison. Well, she’d wanted some proof, and now she had it. She had to report this to the Queen immediately. There was no telling how long she’d been unconscious, how long the prisoner had been missing, and there was absolutely no time for her to wallow in her feelings. She’d failed, plain and simple. She’d been given a job to do, and she’d failed. She’d known he was a trickster, and she’d stupidly allowed herself to get tricked. Time to own up to that.
Mercifully, the Throne Room was mostly empty when Acantha arrived, with just the Queen and the Prince sitting together at the high table discussing some matter of state or other. She was grateful for the small audience, but it didn’t make it any easier to describe what had happened, and to her disgust, she could hear her voice shaking even as she tried to conceal her frustration and sadness and give an objective report of what happened.
Maybe it was the lingering effects of the magic that Cato had used to knock her out, maybe it was her emotional state, or maybe it was something else entirely, but she found herself omitting the kiss from the story. Whether she’d intended to go back and mention it later or it was a deliberate, calculated omission, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that it only added to her guilt and shame later, when the Queen had dismissed her. Lana had been kind. Of course she had. She’d told her it wasn’t her fault, that she shouldn’t beat herself up, that a magic user’s abilities were of course going to be impossible for her to predict—but none of that made her feel any better as she strode down the hallway towards her own chambers.
No matter what anyone said, she knew the truth. And the truth was that she’d failed. She’d failed her Queen, she’d failed the Palace, and she’d failed herself.
She let herself into her quarters, surprised to see that Morgan was home. The sisters had been sharing her quarters for the past year or so, ever since they’d been reunited after Morgan had gone missing in the Fog. There was plenty of space. The Palace Guard’s quarters had been designed with a family in mind, not just a solitary dragon, so they each had their own room and plenty of space when they needed it. Right now, though, Morgan seemed to sense that space was the last thing her sister needed.
“What happened?” she said automatically, setting down the ornate old book she’d been reading and gesturing for Acantha to join her on the couch. “Interrogation stuff?”
“He escaped,” Acantha said through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to scream it. “The sneaky bastard escaped. Tricked me, knocked me out, escaped.”
Morgan listened, wide-eyed, to the whole story, which Acantha let herself tell in a decidedly less objective way than the report she’d made to the Queen and Prince. By the time she’d finished, there were hot tears prickling at the backs of her eyes and she felt like a volcano in the midst of erupting. Morgan, though, was calm as ever, sitting cross-legged on the couch as she took in the whole sorry story.
“Did he take anything with him?” she asked, once Acantha had caught her breath a little. She shook her head.
“Only his staff and his armor. The things he tried to steal from the Archives had already been returned.”
“That’s good. He failed in his mission, then. And you got a lot of information from him, didn’t you?”
“Not enough,” Acantha grumbled. “And nothing I can trust. I’d barely started disentangling his old lies from his new lies… impossible to say how much of what he told me is actually true. He just—ugh!”
Morgan opened her mouth, then closed it again. Acantha looked up from her balled fists, suspicious. It was very unlike her little sister to hesitate before speaking.
“What?”
“Just—the way he surprised you,” she said carefully, and Acantha felt her shoulders tense. She’d omitted the kiss from the report she’d made to the Queen, but she’d never been any good at lying to Morgan, even by leaving details out. She’d rushed over it as quickly as she could, but trust Morgan to zero in on it anyway.
“What about it?”
“Just wondering if that’s part of why you’re so upset.”
“I’m upset because I screwed up and let a thief escape,” she snapped, knowing it wasn’t fair to be angry with Morgan, but trusting at the same time that her sister wouldn’t take it personally. “I’m upset because I did my job badly. I let him trick me, I let him lie to me! The amount of absolute nonsense I let him get away with during the interrogation…” She was grinding her teeth again. She forced herself to stop. “I’ve never met a more infuriating person in my life, and what’s worse, I let him beat me.”
“You feel very strongly about him, don’t you?”
“Yes, because—” Acantha stopped mid-sentence, narrowing her eyes with sudden suspicion. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. Just making an observation.”
“No, you’re not, you’re doing that thing I hate where you look at my aura then refuse to tell me what you’ve seen.” Acantha folded her arms across her chest, thoroughly aggrieved. Like many water signs, her little sister’s attunement to the emotions of others went deeper than just empathy. She’d been honing her ability to read auras since she’d learned that the odd shimmers she’d often seen around her friends and loved ones weren’t vision problems, but something much more interesting. Acantha was always mystified by the whole thing, which Morgan had confessed was notoriously difficult to describe, but she knew her little sister was always right about how the people around her were feeling.
Or at least, she wasusuallyright. Right now, if she was getting at what Acantha thought she was getting at… well, her perfect record was in danger, that was for sure. “You caught me,” Morgan said with a rueful smile. “I don’t really know what I’m seeing, though, which is…” She frowned a little, her eyes going out of focus as she studied something invisible. “Something’s different, though. Something connected to him.”
“He knocked me out with magic, that’s probably what you’re seeing.”
“No, it’s been for the past week. Ever since you caught him.”
“And you didn’t mention it?”
“Like I said, I don’t know what I’m seeing. It’s… it’s got something to do with connection, that’s as specific I can be. Words,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “So inadequate. But—something like connection, and something like fate. See?” she added as she took in Acantha’s expression. “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”