right. “While you were gone, I thought about how to get our hands on the safe. If someone can create a distraction on one of the upper levels of the palace, it would be possible to break into the study and at least steal the entire safe—we can always crack it open afterward.”
“A distraction,” Ayla repeated.
“Yeah. Only problem is—what kind of distraction?” He sniffed, rubbed his nose. “I was thinking maybe a fire or something . . . we just need to distract the guards for a few minutes, just for long enough to get into the study. . . . Something that would guarantee they’d all come running.”
They fell silent, both thinking.
“I know what we have to do,” Ayla heard herself say. “Her chime.” It felt like it wasn’t her speaking, like it was someone else, someone stronger. The girl who wanted revenge. The girl who would do anything for it. The girl Rowan had found on the streets of Kalla-den, starving and frozen. The girl who had lost everything. “If we set off Crier’s chime, every guard in the palace will come running straight for her. If it’s at night, she’ll be in her bedchamber in the north wing. Far away from Kinok’s study.”
“That—that could work,” Benjy said, voice still thick with tears.
“And I have to do it.” The realization landed like a stone in her belly, a hollow thud. “I’m her handmaiden. I can—I can visit her bedchamber, even in the middle of the night, and no one will stop me.” She turned to look at Benjy. “It has to be me.”
His mouth twisted. “Ayla . . .”
“Benjy. Do you remember what I’ve been working toward? What I’ve wanted for so long?”
They stared at each other. Ayla knew they were both thinking the same thing.
“You’re not just going to set off Crier’s chime,” Benjy said slowly. “You’re going to kill her. Ayla, are you insane? The guards will capture you, or kill you on sight.”
“No,” she said.
She looked to the east.
Out there, past the orchards and the palace and the gardens, the Steorran Sea was crashing, as it always had and always would, against the rocks. Ayla pictured it: seething black water, pale-green froth. The cliffs. The spot where Crier had fallen. Where Ayla had moved without thinking, lunged forward, grabbed Crier’s wrist. Saved her life. Set this whole thing in motion. “I’m finally in my right mind,” she said carefully, the words feeling once again as if they were coming from outside her, from the Ayla of the past.
“I’ve been—I’ve grown soft, I’ve grown weak, I lost sight of the only thing I’ve wanted this entire time, the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I want to kill them all, Benjy, but the daughter of the sovereign most of all. Hesod must pay for what he’s done. This is my chance, don’t you get that? I won’t miss it. I can’t.”
Something dark flitted across his face. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do it?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You said it yourself,” he muttered, looking out over the ocean. “You’ve spent so long at her side. You’ve grown soft—for her.”
For a minute, she was silent. No matter what, she couldn’t say it wasn’t true.
Finally, she swallowed, hard. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is revenge. I’ve never once forgotten that.”
“I know you haven’t,” he said. “But things have changed, haven’t they? I’ve seen the way she keeps you close. The way she looks at you.”
Ayla felt the blood drain from her face. She wanted to cry again, to be sick, or . . . “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was weak, too, this attempt to deny it.
“But I do,” he said, and there was something lurking in his voice now, something more than bitterness or even jealousy, something young and pained and almost scared. “I do, Ayla, gods, how do you not—” He broke off, letting out a shaky breath.
“Benjy—”
“I know what it’s like,” he said over her. “Loving someone who’s . . . who’s impossible to have. I know what that’s like more than anything.”
Ayla was stunned speechless.
“But you just do what you think is right, Ayla. It was never really a choice, was it? Wanting her. Killing her.”
Ayla pushed herself to her feet, unable to handle this conversation any longer. Right before she left Benjy alone in the orchard, she looked down at him. Forced her voice into something cold and hard. “If a spider weaves her web to