Page 95 of Labyrinthine
I say nothing. The trees blur at the edges of my vision.
And I silently curse myself for leaving the horses behind.
“You think your father didn’t know what was going on?” he presses. “That Mallen didn’t report everything? When he runs your father’s palace guard? The army? When he controls half the informants in Starsfall?”
“I never said he reported anything,” I mutter.
“And why is he the one who selects the daemons for the first trial of the Reaping?”
I stop walking.
The forest stills around us. Not a bird calls. Not a breath moves the leaves.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
Darian’s voice is low. “Because my father has spies. In the capital and major ports. In Varethorne and Nyxford. We’d be foolish not to, as long as your father’s still on the throne. One of them intercepted some reports a month ago. It included details of the daemons Mallen rounded up for the Reaping.”
“You’ve been spying? On Starsfall?” I snap. “Why would I believe anything you say to me now?”
He doesn’t answer.
I stare at the path ahead, remembering. The times Mallen would come back from the forest bloodied, shaking his head when I asked where he’d been. The times he’d refused to answer me when I asked him how he caught the daemons, and ignored the warnings coiling through my gut when he told me it was necessary.
And now I wonder.
Did Mallen tell me the whole truth? Or only what he wanted me to know?
I think of the men who died in the arena. Of their blood and their screams. And of the few who made it out to be slaughtered later.
They’d known this wasn’t fair. They’d known it was about breaking them.
And maybe breaking me.
The trees sway slightly in the hush, and I press my palm to my ribs, as if I can hold myself steady from the inside out.
I turn back to Darian slowly. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you deserve to know the truth.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“I know.”
“Then stop looking at me like you want to.”
His mouth presses into a line, but he doesn’t look away.
I hate him, in this moment. Not because he’s wrong, but because he might be right.
Because he’s saying what I don’t want to say aloud. What I’ve suspected in moments I buried.
Mallen has sat through my father’s late-night councils. He knows about the prisoners who vanished. About the raids on Larksbind’s ships that no one ever punished. He’d told me none of it concerned me. That I should keep my head down. That I wasn’t strong enough yet to change anything.
He’d taught me to fight. Taught me to obey. Taught me to be silent unless I was commanded to act.
And I had thought that was kindness.
That it was love.
