went straight to his skin, every time. His King.
Kelpie stumbled, weaker than expected, and he gave her his arm as they made it down the stairs together.
Velody stood in the kitchen, red-faced and yelling like a fishwife. At Rhian. ‘How could you do it? You knew all this about the Creature Court, about me, and I have to hear it from Garnet of all people?’
‘You don’t belong to the Court now,’ Rhian said, and it didn’t sound like her voice, it honestly didn’t. She was cold and remote and broken in all new ways. What the feck had Garnet done to that lovely lass? ‘You walked away.’
‘I was carried away bleeding,’ Velody spat. ‘Are you honestly saying you owe him greater allegiance than me? After everything we’ve done for you?’
‘What have you done?’ Rhian retorted. ‘Could you protect me? Could you stop this happening to me? This was always going to happen. It’s not about you any more, Velody. It was never about you.’
‘Mac,’ said Kelpie in a low, warning voice.
He saw it. A flicker of light running along Rhian’s shoulders and arms. Not animor. Something else. He could smell smoke in the air.
‘You can’t trust him, Rhian. That man will use you and spit you out. Look at what he did to the sentinels.’
‘Don’t bring them into it,’ Rhian said impatiently. ‘You’re just annoyed that Garnet knew something before you. Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?’
‘He said you have their voices in your head. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t you ask? The world moved on while you were gone, Velody. We had to live without you. It’s not fair to complain that we got good at it.’
Velody was silent for a moment and then reached out a hand to Rhian. ‘I’m still the same —’
‘Don’t touch me,’ Rhian barked, stepping back against the cupboards, making them shake. ‘Stay away.’
‘I’m listening now. Tell me what’s happening to you.’
‘What was always happening,’ said Rhian, her voice breaking on the words.
The kitchen door banged open and Delphine and Crane barged in, arms laden with shopping baskets. Whatever the lad had been up to since he and Macready had lost their swords, he seemed to have no qualms about playing footman to her ladyship.
‘What’s going on here?’ Delphine asked, the laugh still in her voice.
Macready had missed that sound. It was a long time since she’d been so merry around him. Hardly a surprise, miserable bastard that you are.
‘You might as well all hear,’ Velody said sharply. ‘Mac, Kelpie, please join us.’
Slightly shamefaced, the two sentinels entered the kitchen.
‘What’s up?’ Macready asked with false jollity.
Rhian was hugging herself. The odd light had gone from her, but the smell of smoke still hung in the air.
‘Garnet wants to marry me,’ announced Velody in a grim voice. ‘And now I think we all need a drink.’
PART VII
Oathbreaker
19
Tasha let me fight the sky properly when I was ten. It scared the cack out of me, but I did it. The thing that kept me going was that I had killed Saturn and that made me as wicked as the rest of them. Most of the time I tried to forget that I was the one who’d done that, the worst of the monsters, but in the sky it was an odd comfort. It meant I could take care of myself. I could be something, someone who mattered.
Things were different with the cubs. With Garnet. After Saturn, he fell apart, drinking hard and taking every potion and powder he could get his hands on. It was like he had given up. Total despair. Ashiol and Lysandor were run off their paws trying to keep it from Tasha: how bad things were, how far he had fallen. It was my fault, and I knew it. I was sick about it. Something about me and what I had done to Saturn was killing Garnet slowly, from the inside.
Liv and I tried to help the others cover for him, but we weren’t much help.
Livilla had decided she was in love with Ashiol, but whenever Garnet crooked his finger at her, she went to him instead, kissing and making up to him. She was trying to make Heliora, Ash’s pet sentinel, jealous, I think. Everyone knew Heliora was after Ash. The cubs were all of age now, but they still acted like boys.
One nox something changed. Ashiol found Garnet off his face in the middle of a skybattle and sent him home. Somewhere between the Forum