The Mirror King (Orphan Queen) (33 page)

Tobiah’s expression flattened. “What do you mean?”

“I think you know.”

As curious as I was, this was starting to sound like something I shouldn’t witness. “I’ll leave.”

“No.” James’s eyes cut to me. “I’d like for you to stay.”

Oh. Great. I glanced at Tobiah, but his face was hard and revealed nothing. “All right.”

James squared his shoulders and seemed to gather his thoughts. “The night I got shot, after Wil created Chrysalis, I shouldn’t have lived. I know my wound was as bad as yours. But I healed on my own. Mysteriously. Miraculously.”

“It was a miracle.”

“Wil said you called her to wake me. Her power doesn’t work that way, though. It only awakens inanimate objects. But when she touched my hand—I awakened.”

Tobiah’s dark eyes darted toward me, like I’d promised to keep a secret and failed him.

“What’s wrong with me?” A pleading note touched James’s words, though he tried to hide it. “Why did you refuse to investigate?”

Tobiah’s hard expression cracked. “Oh, James. Can this wait for another time?”

“No.” I moved next to James. “He deserves to know.”

James shot me a grateful look. I just hoped the answers were worth it.

“All right.” Tobiah glanced at the desk, as though tempted to sink into the chair, but he remained standing. “I need a moment to figure out how to say this.”

That sounded ominous.

The desktop clock ticked, and people in the hallway laughed as they walked by. Tobiah let out a long breath. “Maybe we should start with you telling me how much you remember of our childhood.”

James shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about what I remember. I want answers.”

“Please. I’ll tell you everything. I just . . . want to know.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” I said. “James just wants to know, too.”

“It’s all right.” James sighed. “When we were nine, we got in trouble for swimming in the Saint Shumway fountain. Your idea, of course. And when we were ten—”

“What about before that? Before the One-Night War?”

“That’s hazier. But we were young.” James frowned, focusing inward. “I remember your seventh birthday party when Lord Roth gave you the pre-wraith spyglass, and we hung out the windows to get a good view of Indigo Order training. I fell and broke my leg. I vaguely remember lessons, before I went to the Academy. Hours and hours of tutors talking about history and mathematics. We were always sleepy from our sword training.”

“What about any memories without me?”

After a brief hesitation, James shook his head. “No. But we were together so much then. We always have been.”

“You’re right,” said Tobiah. “We have. But there were times you visited your mother’s holdings without me. Do you remember that at all? Before the One-Night War.”

“No. I just know I went there.”

Tobiah’s face was tight with discomfort. “You don’t remember because I wasn’t there. Because I couldn’t tell you what happened.”

James and I waited, and finally it came:

“I made the bridge earlier today.” Tobiah gestured at the window, a fluttering, fleeting motion. “And ten years ago, I made James.”

“I CAN EXPLAIN.”
Tobiah’s voice was rough.

“I hope so.” Muscles tightened around James’s jaw, and he never looked away from Tobiah. He hardly blinked. “Because right now it sounds like I’m a piece of a bridge. Something you can make appear and disappear.”

“No, that isn’t it at all.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, all the way to the back of his neck, which he massaged for a moment. “This isn’t the way I meant to tell you.”

“It sounds like you meant to
never
tell,” James said. “Saints, Tobiah. The wraith boy knew. He told me months ago that I wasn’t human, that I wasn’t what I claimed to be. The
wraith boy
told me the truth, but you’ve been hiding it for a decade.”

Silence.

“What am I?” James whispered.

“You’re my cousin. My best friend.” Tobiah sat on the edge of the desk and kept his voice soft. “That will never change.”

“Maybe you should start from the beginning.” I pulled out the desk chair and offered it to James. He stared at it for a heartbeat, like he might refuse, but then he collapsed into it. I rested a hand on his shoulder.

“I need to preface it by saying this was the worst point in my life. Even with everything that’s happened recently, this is the worst.” Tobiah slumped and stared at the ceiling. “The night I was abducted, James, you and I were spying on my father’s meeting with Aecorian diplomats, and a man in a red uniform caught us. General Lien.” He glanced at me, but there was nothing to say. I already knew General Lien had kidnapped Tobiah and brought him to Aecor to use as leverage.

“What then?” James asked.

“You knew something was wrong when we saw General Lien in the hall. You didn’t trust him, so you stayed in my room that night. To protect me.” Tobiah’s voice caught. “When the general came for me, you were there, armed with one of our wooden practice swords. It didn’t stop the general. He crashed into my room and threw you aside. You were unconscious. I fought, but I was so worried about you I couldn’t defend myself.”

James sat straight and tall, eyes never leaving Tobiah.

“Other men came into the room, just two or three. The general said to take both of us so it would look like we’d run away or were playing a game. Our parents wouldn’t know we were missing until morning. I think there was some kind of explosion in Greenstone that night, something that distracted the Indigo Order and police. We were put in a wagon and taken from the city. I don’t remember much of that. Just that there weren’t many people with us. General Lien wanted to move quickly.”

A knock sounded on the door. We all paused and looked over, but no one moved until Oscar’s voice came, sending the person away.

“Once we were out of the city, General Lien bound us to a horse. We were gagged, but I could hear you breathing in my ear. You were still unconscious. We rode for hours like that, mostly at a gallop. The general wanted to be as far from Skyvale as possible before dawn.”

I barely breathed myself as I looked between the boys. James was ashen, his eyes wide and afraid.

Tobiah blinked away tears. “It wasn’t quite light out when I felt your body go slack. You’d stopped breathing.”

My skin prickled with a surge of horror. “No.”

James looked as though he was struggling to stay upright, and I squeezed his shoulder in a pale measure of support.

There was a pause, like we were all thinking about small James, hurt and kidnapped. And small Tobiah, unable to help his best friend.

“I started screaming around the gag.” Tobiah raked his fingers through his hair until it stood on end. “No one heard me over the horse hooves. There were birds chirping and everything was waking up—except for you. After an hour, maybe, they noticed us. We stopped and they took you off the horse. You were pale, bruised. But still limp. They said you were cold, except for the front where you’d been leaning against me. You didn’t have a pulse.”

Horror crawled over my skin.

“The general had his men throw your body over a cliff.”

I pressed my fists to my mouth, but I couldn’t look away
from the boys, couldn’t stop listening as the story grew worse.

“What happened?” James spoke in a whisper, as though anything more would shatter the spell of memory. “Because I’m not dead.”

“A lot of that is a blur now. I know we changed horses. We stopped for a few hours so the soldiers could rest. I was in and out for most of that. The next thing I really remember is waking up in an office, and a girl freeing me from where I’d been tied to a chair.”

Tobiah’s eyes locked on mine, haunted and dark. “You showed me your magic,” he said. “And after my father’s people came to rescue me, I remembered it.”

“But I can’t”—I glanced at James—“bring things back to life. I tried once. There was a stillborn kitten when I was a girl. Nothing happened.”

“I know.” Tobiah swallowed hard and looked down. “Saints. I wish I could stop there.”

“I deserve to know,” said James.

Tobiah smoothed his hair down with both hands, and linked his fingers behind his neck. He let out a strained sigh. “Wil, do you remember the trip to the Indigo Kingdom?”

“Not really.” Was he about to tell me how I’d died, too? “Some of it, I guess. The way the wagon jumped over rocks. The other children crying. Trying to calm the babies. I don’t remember much until the orphanage.” I’d just seen my parents slaughtered in the courtyard, cut open by one of Tobiah’s rescuers. Everything after that was a wash of nausea and terror.

“The journey back to the Indigo Kingdom was slower.” Tobiah turned back to James. “I kept getting questions about
you—whether you’d been with me. But I couldn’t answer. On the second night, when I was alone in my tent and wishing I didn’t have to tell your mother what happened. Or my own. Or anyone. I wished so hard that you were still with me, and then—”

Silence rang through the study as Tobiah caught his breath. He couldn’t even say it. So I did. “You wished so hard, and then he was there.”

Tobiah closed his eyes and hung his head. He seemed to deflate. “Yes.”

“You’re a flasher,” James whispered.

“Yes.” Tobiah crossed his arms, shoulders hunching. “You were just there. I wondered if I’d somehow transported your body from the cliff, but you weren’t scratched up or broken.”

A new James. He’d made a new James.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I went to find the only person I knew who might be able to help. The girl who could bring things to life, and make them do what she said. The animator.”

Me.

More voices sounded in the hall, some raised, but Oscar held them off. When it was quiet again, Tobiah continued.

“Wil, I sneaked through the camp to find you. You didn’t want to use magic, but I insisted it was an emergency. I was exhausted from using my power. That must have convinced you.” Tobiah licked his lips and looked at me like he was waiting for me to remember, but I couldn’t. I didn’t remember that at all. “You said you couldn’t wake the dead, so I wasn’t sure if it would work—whether I’d made something new or transported something to me—but I asked you to try anyway. You did. You
said, ‘
Wake up. Be Tobiah’s friend and cousin. He is the one who commands you
.’ And that was it. You’d transferred control to me, just like that, and James was awake. Alive. After that, Wil, I took you back to the wagon and never saw you again. Not that I realized anyway.”

James spoke quietly. “I’m not real.”

“You are.” Tobiah’s attention snapped to James. “You
are
real. You’re my best friend. You always were.”

“No, he was.
He
was your best friend, that boy General Lien threw over the cliff. I—I don’t know what I am.” James surged to his feet, blinking rapidly. “Do I even make my own decisions, or do I do everything you say, like Wil’s notebooks or the cathedral? Am I any different from the wraith boy? Just a little more tame. More useful.”

“You’re my friend. My best friend.”

“No, I’m not.” James strode out the door without a backward glance.

Tobiah started after his cousin, one long stride and his hands curled like claws.

“Don’t.” I reached, but didn’t touch him. “Let him go.”

“I need to explain.” He faced me, looking desperate and haggard. Red rimmed his eyes.

“You’ve already said everything. Now let him absorb it.”

Tobiah dropped his gaze. “I never wanted to hurt him. I didn’t want him to feel like a replacement.”

“Give him time. One day he’ll understand that nothing has changed. He’ll forgive you.” He would. There was no one James loved more than his cousin. They’d work it out.

“Will it be his choice? His question was legitimate: has
anything been his choice? What if I’ve been unconsciously commanding him all this time?”

Like the wraith boy sensed my wants. It was a fair question. “Maybe if he doesn’t forgive you and you really want him to, that’ll be proof enough.”

“Or because I know I don’t deserve it.” He lifted his eyes to watch me through his lashes. “What about you? I took advantage of your power. I hunted you and other radiants. All along, I had a secret of my own.”

It would have been so
easy
to condemn him for his hypocrisy, but I wasn’t angry with him. Curious, concerned, and confused: yes. But not angry. “I don’t want to fight.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Me neither.”

“I want to hear all about it. Your power.”

A weak smile warmed his face. “It’s funny. I’ve seen you struggle so hard to suppress yours. It’s like tying a hand behind your back. You have it. Your natural inclination is to use it, even though you know how dangerous it is. You accept it as part of you.”

“Sometimes I wish I could change that,” I said.

“But for me, magic is the opposite. I learned to suppress it early. After James—” He glanced at the door. “I wouldn’t make James go away, but I didn’t want to admit that I’m a flasher, too. That’s probably why I fought so hard against magic in Skyvale.”

“Sometimes we hate others for the things we hate in ourselves.”

He nodded. “Once, you accused me of going after radiants. You were right.”

“Such is the curse of being me.” I watched him from the corner
of my eye. “So that’s your power? You make things appear?”

“Appear and disappear. I’ve only done it a few times, and rarely anything big.”

Same as I usually animated only small things. “James and the bridge are exceptions, then? You let go of the bridge pretty quickly.”

“Too many things, or too big, and it takes a toll.”

Oh, how I understood that. “A boy who makes things appear and disappear, and a girl who brings things to life.”

“What a pair we make,” he said. “I don’t know how you’ve managed. James, the wraith boy, plus all the things you’ve animated in addition to that. You must be incredibly strong.”

I didn’t know about strong, but I’d definitely grown accustomed to the stress of magic. “Keeping him alive.” I shook my head. “That’s not how my power is supposed to work. But James
is
alive. Chrysalis, too.”

Slowly, the puzzle pieces began to fit together.

“But maybe magic things are different,” I mused. “Maybe I brought Chrysalis to life because he’s made of wraith. James because he’s made of magic.”

“The Cathedral of the Solemn Hour was made with magic.”

“
With
. Not
of
. The materials were mined and shaped with magic, not conjured from nothing.”

“But James was.” Tobiah glanced at the door, anguish heavy in his eyes. “I wanted to ask for so long, but that would have meant admitting the truth about James and myself.” He leaned his weight onto the desk and hung his head. Strands of hair fell over his eyes, and he heaved a long sigh. “That was cowardly of me.”

“It was,” I allowed. “But also completely understandable. Saints, Tobiah. You know the things I’ve done—or not done—because of fear.”

A cold, uncomfortable silence followed, like the memory of Meredith’s lifeless body on the chapel floor.

“I need to talk to James.” He looked up at me, eyes red with stress and exhaustion and grief. “He’s my best friend. Magic or no magic, that never changed.”

“You’re a good man, Tobiah Pierce.”

“I want to be.” He touched my hand, a faint brush of his knuckles over mine that warmed deep into my stomach. “I’ll find you later.”

I lingered in the study for a few more minutes, wondering if I actually needed to return to the ball. But how would it look if I abandoned it completely? Tobiah had avoided dozens of social events so he could go out as Black Knife, which left his people believing he was lazy and unfriendly.

No matter what I
wanted
to do, I
needed
to fulfill my duty as queen. Which meant dances and dinners, in addition to the real work of running a limping kingdom.

Grudgingly, I started toward the ballroom again, Oscar at my heels.

“Your Majesty!” Sergeant Ferris raced toward me from the opposite end of the hall.

“What is it?”

“Prince Colin,” he said, gasping. “He’s attacking Aecor City.”