eyes on her the whole time. Crier’s gaze not cold, but warm, a patch of sunlight on Ayla’s skin.)
11:55.
(That kiss. The way her entire body had lit up, everything inside her coming awake.)
Ayla’s knuckles were white like raw bone. The knife was quivering, catching the moonlight. She had to do this; Crier’s chime had to go off. The second distraction. Somewhere else in the bowels of the palace, at this moment, Benjy must be searching Kinok’s study for the safe.
11:55.
(That night inside the cliffs, sharing the story of the hare and the princess, the way Crier told it with such intimacy, told it knowing how terribly the story would end, but changing it—promising Ayla happiness and peace, pretty lies, kind lies, because it had never been written that way. Because some things were just impossible. How the whole time Crier spoke, her words like honey in the darkness, Ayla had wanted to taste that voice forever.)
A flash of gold. For a horrible moment, Ayla thought Crier had woken up. But no, it wasn’t her eyes. It was something in her hand, tucked into the hollow of her throat. Gold.
The necklace.
Crier was holding Ayla’s necklace. The chain was twisted around her fingers, the pendant held between finger and thumb. The same way Ayla held it. So carefully, Crier held everything so carefully—books and maps and teacups. It was infuriating. Ayla wanted to see her break things, wanted to see her broken, wanted to watch her break apart, wanted to be the cause of it, wanted to make her shudder again, make her breaths come fast.
She’d gone to sleep holding Ayla’s necklace.
11:56.
The knife slipped from Ayla’s fingers and clattered to the floor.
Crier’s eyes snapped open.
No. Ayla gasped a curse and scrambled to pick up the knife. She held it up again, her entire body trembling, poised to strike, to slash the knife across Crier’s throat, stab her in the chest, the belly, wherever, but she was shaking, she couldn’t—Crier was just staring up at her, lips parted in shock, and the worst part was that she didn’t even look afraid, she just looked confused.
“Ayla?” Crier breathed.
And Ayla ran.
23
Crier was on her feet in an instant, adrenaline shrieking through her veins. “Ayla!” she half screamed, the name strangled out of her, but Ayla was already gone, Crier was alone, and then she wasn’t—a dozen guards burst through the door of her bedchamber, half of them immediately spreading out to search the room, the other half forming a protective circle around Crier.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, gasping when one of the guards put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her down onto the bed. “Don’t touch me! What’s going on?”
“We need you to stay put,” said the guard who had grabbed her. “The palace is not secure.”
Crier shoved his hand off her shoulder. There was a loud noise over by the window and she leaped to her feet again only to see two of the guards sweeping all the books off her bookshelves and desk, maps and loose papers drifting through the air, a jar of quills upended, a pot of black ink hitting the floor and shattering, ink spilling everywhere. “Stop!” she ordered, almost hysterical. Her books, her maps, some of them ancient and priceless and precious, years of her life spent tracking them down and bargaining for them. “Stop, please stop! What are you doing?”
But the guards ignored her. Another ripped the tapestry of Kiera off the wall as if he thought a human rebel might be lurking behind it.
“We don’t know how long they’ve been planning this attack, my lady,” said one of the guards. “They might have planted weapons, firebombs.”
“On my bookshelf?”
Nobody responded. Crier sank to the bed and pressed both hands over her mouth, trying to calm down, but it was impossible. Ayla. Ayla, standing over her, that terrible look on her face, the knife.
She was going to kill you. Crier curled over her knees, squeezing her eyes shut. No, Ayla wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, but what other explanation was there? Slipping into Crier’s room in the middle of the night, a silent shadow, the knife glinting in her hand. Ayla was going to kill you.
She’d read about heartbreak in a hundred different human stories. Had always thought it was a metaphor, poetry about pain. But as she sat there in the dark, the guards destroying her books and her own mind torturing her with the image of the knife in Ayla’s hand, Crier felt like she was actually breaking.