Disillusioned (The Birthright Series Book 3), page 31
And oh boy, is this my weakness. I’m too weak, and I have no idea whether good judgment can even be learned. But hiding in here isn’t helping anything. I force myself to square my shoulders and stand up. I will walk out of here, and I will not tell everyone that I ruined everything. I will not proclaim my flaws, but I won’t compound them either. I will delegate, delegate, delegate. Everyone on my Council knows better than me. Everyone in my family could have handled things better.
Fine, then I’ll let them handle it.
When I emerge, Edam, Judica, Inara, and Balthasar are all waiting in my room. Before anyone can ask anything, I hold up my hand. “You will each do your jobs. Balthasar, you will develop, under Judica’s direction, the details of our response to Adika.”
“I’ve begun already,” Balthasar says. “And Marselle provided a lot of invaluable Intel on the region. But we can’t simply defend, not in light of her demands.”
“No, we can’t,” Judica says. “It’s time for Alamecha to finally take its rightful place. We’ve wasted too much time in diplomacy. Playing nice hasn’t helped us. We’ve always been the first family, the strongest, the best. It’s time the others feel the might of our rage. She’s threatening us?” Judica’s smile sends a chill up my spine. “We will destroy her.”
I don’t want to destroy anyone, certainly not an entire family. What will the ramifications of that be for her people? I open my mouth to object, and then I remember.
I shouldn’t be making any decisions. All of mine have been bad. Every single one.
I sit down at my desk and stare out the window while the others talk. My only hope of making the right decision is if I don’t make one at all. My Council has this under control. Armies, strike teams, embargos, the conversation swells all around me. It’s all wrong, so wrong, damaging to the people of Shenoah.
Which is how I know it’s probably right.
Anything that feels totally wrong to me is probably the right move. That should be my new barometer. If I think it’s the right move and everyone disagrees, ignore my gut. Do whatever they say.
“Adika hasn’t left her home base according to our reports,” Balthasar says. “None of this will end until she’s dead.”
“That’s one hundred percent right,” Inara says. “All of the rest of this is simply cover. We need to take her out. Immediately.”
“I’ll call Analessa,” Edam says. “She has a large force outside of Rome. I’m sure she’ll let me lead it, and I’m confident we can breach Adika’s defenses on San Marino. The Piazza del Liberta has always been a joke, tactically. They allow private citizens to tour it, as if that washes away her sins in her other holdings. When I’m done with her, I’ll bring the ring back for Chancery.” He actually smiles at me. “Which is sort of like a human engagement tradition, right?”
Except humans don’t cut the ring off of another woman’s corpse. Do not puke, Chancery, don’t do it. All of this feels so wrong. Human armies. Human collateral damage rising with every leg of this attack plan. Evian strike teams, including my fiancé. All so that I can wrest control from someone who has run her own sovereign holdings for five centuries.
And we’re justifying all of this with words written on an old piece of paper.
Utter destruction.
I should stop this somehow, but I can’t see a single way to do it. And besides that, every single move I’ve made has been wrong, so wrong. It’s not like some magical solution I fabricate will fix anything. It would only make things worse.
“Where’s Noah?” I finally ask. “What did you do with him when we returned?”
Edam’s face blanks.
“He’s under constant guard,” Judica says. “Non-stop line of sight.”
“He can’t even pee alone,” Balthasar says with a grim smile. “Kind of brought that upon himself.”
I suppose he did.
“Has he called. . .” I don’t know who he needs to call. “Whoever it is he meant to call?”
Edam shakes his head. “I wasn’t sure if you really wanted him to do that. He knows a lot, which means he can share a lot of information.”
He does, and that’s all my fault too. How much worse could things get if some kind of rogue evian group begins attacking us too? “This is all such a mess.” My shoulders slump.
Inara, Balthasar, Judica and Edam stare at me.
“What?” I ask.
“This isn’t a mess,” Inara says slowly. “We’re doing quite well. Alamecha has long held far more than one sixth of the power on the globe. And to have Malessa on our side, well, we easily already represent at least half of the power on the grid. Shenoah is small potatoes.”
Even Inara? She doesn’t see the cost of this? She thinks we’re doing well? I blink. Wait. Do any of them realize quite what I’ve done? How much I’ve messed up? “A thousand people died yesterday.” Thanks to me.
“There are almost eight billion people on the earth,” Balthasar says, “if you include all of the humans. And there are close to a million evians.”
“Are we just reciting random facts?” Judica asks.
I shake my head. “Another thousand will die today, if we don’t fix this.”
“We can’t possibly be ready to go before tomorrow,” Edam says, his eyes gentle.
So those people are dead, too. I close my eyes.
Inara pulls a stool up next to me and sits down. “You can’t fault yourself every time someone dies. You’ll go mad that way. And far more than a thousand people die each day. Many of natural causes.”
“I’ve been focused exclusively on the people whose death I’ve caused,” I say. “Should I feel that a thousand deaths a day is reasonable? Does it indicate I’m doing a good job, do you think?”
“Adika caused those deaths,” Judica says. “Not you.”
“Fine,” I say. “Fine. I need to talk to Noah.” I stand up.
“I’ll accompany you,” Edam says.
I shake my head. “No, it’s fine. You should keep planning. You have a lot to do, and you shouldn’t delay any more than we must. Call Analessa, do whatever you need to do. I’m the only one who can decide how to handle Noah.”
I walk through the door and down the hall before I realize I’m not sure quite where they’re holding Noah. It might be the regular cells, or it might not. I stop and turn toward my guards. Luckily, it’s Frederick and Arlington. They’re rapidly becoming my two favorites. “Freddy, do you know where Noah’s being kept?”
He nods. “He’s our only official prisoner at the moment, so he’s below.”
“Official?”
“Melina’s being treated as an enemy of the state, per Judica.” Frederick shrugs.
“What does that mean, exactly?” I ask.
“Around the clock surveillance and tactical teams keeping eyes on her people.”
I can’t fault her for that, seeing as Melina has tried to kill her now, twice. “I’m going to see Noah,” I say. “And I’ll want some privacy for our conversation.”
“Understood.”
I wind around the corner and down the hall toward the holding cells. This is Noah’s second visit to Ni’ihau’s holding cells. I wonder if he finds this one more frustrating, now that we know his secret.
Laughter drifts upward when I round the final corner and I glance at Frederick. He shrugs.
“No, I’m not even kidding,” Noah says. “I’m at the zoo, right? And I’m staring at this poor Tibetan mastiff. The sign on the pen says it’s a lion, and I ask the attendant, ‘Um, is the real lion like on a break or something?’ Like maybe this dog is just filling in. . . But the staff looks at me like they don’t even understand the question.”
Gregory laughs. Voron laughs. Horace and Nina are both laughing so hard tears are leaking from their eyes.
“Uh, hello,” I say. “Am I interrupting something?”
Noah sits up immediately. “Princess. How are you?”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Gregory salutes me. “Nothing, Your Majesty. We’re watching Noah every second, as directed.”
“While he regales you with stories about wacky zoo misadventures?” I raise my right eyebrow.
“There was a zoo that had a bunch of animals mislabeled,” Nina says. “They were passing a mastiff off as a lion to the people who—” She cuts off when she sees my face.
“I need a minute,” I say. “I trust you can entertain yourselves for a few moments while I interrogate the prisoner.”
Frederick ushers the guards, apparently including two of my Motherless, outside and closes the door behind him. I use my palm to open the door to his cell and slip inside, leaving the door cracked so I can leave again without calling for help.
“What’s going on, Noah?”
“I could ask you that. I thought you were going to let me call home.”
I hand him my phone.
“I can’t do it with you standing there, obviously.”
“Why not?” I’m sick of things being obvious to everyone but me.
“Because I can’t speak freely, and you’d be able to hear everything they say.”
“Oh, right. You need to make your call to my enemies in private, so you can decide what details about my plans to share with them and which things you share to relay back to me.” My hands ball into fists. “Lying to me and having completely free rein for the past few weeks wasn’t enough. You need me to knowingly allow you to be a spy.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. I want to ask for permission to tell you everything.”
“Then do it in front of me, Noah.” It occurs to me for the first time that Noah probably isn’t even his real name. “Should I be calling you Fred or, I don’t know, James Bond or something?”
Noah grins. “I do like the idea of being called James Bond. But my family members all call me Noah.”
“Is it your name?” I ask.
He licks his lips.
So it’s not—more like a nickname. Which means I really don’t even know his name. I close my eyes. “Just make the call.”
He takes me in, his eyes traveling from my hair to my face, and down to my feet, and back up to my face again. No one else noticed anything was off, no one else asked if I’m okay, but Noah sees. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”
I slump against the wall and drop to the floor, hugging my knees up against my body. “Everything is wrong.” And telling Noah about any of it is more of the same. I shut my mouth with a click before I can compound my past mistakes.
“You came here to talk,” he says. “So talk.”
I shake my head. “Wouldn’t you just love that? You’re such a good spy that even after I know you’re full of it, I still come crying to you?” In spite of my horror, tears spring to my eyes.
Noah gathers me against him, my head pressed to his chest. “I wouldn’t love anything that has you crying or sad. You should know that, at least.”
I shake my head and push back against him. “Why should I know that? Why? How can I know anything about you? I don’t even know if that’s your real face, and you won’t tell me your real name.”
“My name isn’t spoken, princess, not even by my family, okay? I can’t tell you more than that.” His breath warms my face and my hands.
I want to believe him, but nothing he says makes any sense. “We only have names so they can be spoken. It’s literally the entire point of names. The spoken signal of who we are.”
“The name my family uses when they call me, the only name my family and friends have ever used for me, is Noah, the same as the name you use when you’re talking to or about me.”
I want to scream. I want to shred something or hit something. And I realize, I can hit Noah. He’s not breakable, not anymore. So I do. I smash him in the face, my hand connecting against his nose with a satisfying crunch.
Noah’s eyes widen with shock, but he leaps to his feet with a blood-smeared smile on his face. “You’re upset? That’s fine. I can handle that.” He gestures for me to proceed, to attack him.
I jump to my feet. Because I do want to hit him again, badly. My general self-pity transforms somehow, in a slippery way I don’t comprehend, into rage. I rain blows against him, and he blocks them all. Infuriating. I pull a nasty eight inch knife from my boot and toss it to him, and then I pull my sword.
Noah grins wider than I’ve ever seen. “Oh, now we’re talking,” he says.
I slash at him without fear, knowing he won’t die from any injury I inflict, knowing he can take it. And he does. He blocks with the dagger, spinning my hacks into wide blows. He even manages to slice my thigh once before I halt him.
“Enough.” I collapse back into the corner, but this time I’m not huddling. And I decide that like always, I can talk to Noah. He’ll understand. “I’ve ruined everything.”
He slides down to the floor next to me. “You’ve ruined nothing.”
“You’re wrong. You wouldn’t know yet, but Adika has declared active war on us, thanks to Vela’s misguided loss.” I close my eyes. “She wants me to kill every Motherless. She wants me to surrender my demands. And for every day that I don’t, she’s going to kill a thousand people.”
“Okay,” Noah says.
“Okay?” I’m sick of people acting like it’s not a big deal. “You may be evian now, but I thought you’d still care about humans. And she’s killing some evians, too.”
“It’s a temper tantrum,” Noah says. “A terrorist threat, by someone who can’t hope to actually defeat you.”
“She’s defeating me every time she kills one of my people. I can’t save them, not without killing others. I’m not sure how many it will take to stop her. Maybe hundreds of thousands. And in taking her ring, by stealing her sovereignty, I’m still failing, Noah. I hoped that you might see it, even though no one else does.”
He shakes his head. “You think it’s a failure, but you had to know when you sent out a video of you blasting a fireball out of thin air that you’d face opposition. You had to know that you can’t prevent utter destruction without some messiness.”
“There isn’t even a threat right now,” I say. “Which means I’m creating ‘messiness’ for no reason other than my own greed for power.”
“You’re not responsible for the evil things Adika does.”
My laughter sounds a little unhinged, even to me. “Of course I am. She wasn’t killing anyone before I issued my demands.”
“But you didn’t attack her—not yet anyway—and you aren’t attacking her now. This killing, this unprompted cavalier attitude with human life, this is what makes her an unsuitable ruler across the board. I’d have encouraged you to remove her, even before the proclamation, for actions like this.”
“Edam and Balthasar and Judica are ensconced in my bedroom, devising a plan of attack right now,” I say. “They’re basically plotting world domination.”
“Isn’t that what you want them to do?” he asks. “I mean, it’s kind of what you demanded.”
He’s right. Which is why this is all my fault. “I have no idea who might die in their attacks.” Including my sisters, my fiancé, and all of my mom’s oldest supporters.
“It’s a risk they’re all willing to take,” Noah says. “I know we aren’t sure yet what the utter destruction refers to, but there’s a reason for the prophecy, you know. Something is coming. Something that we’ll need you to protect us from.”
“You believe it?” I ask. “That I’m the Eldest, that there’s something coming?”
Noah’s jaw locks and he won’t meet my eye, and I realize that he knows. He knows exactly what’s coming.
“Call your boss, your dad, whoever. Do it now.”
Noah swallows and nods. He picks up my phone and dials a number, and then enters a long sequence of numbers.
“Son,” the voice says. He glances my way and shakes his head.
“Father.”
“This isn’t a scheduled check in, and it’s not your typical phone.” The voice pauses. “She knows, doesn’t she?”
“She knows what I can do, yes.”
Silence. An exhalation of pure disgust.
“I had no other choice,” Noah says.
“There’s always a choice. We told you not to share that information.”
“I didn’t share it. She figured it out.”
“She’s in the room with you right now.”
Noah gulps and straightens his shoulders like somehow his dad might see it. “She is.”
“You’ve handled this all wrong. I should bring you home immediately.”
“I won’t go.” Noah juts his chin outward. “I won’t leave her.”
“You’re a fool.”
“I request permission to tell her everything.”
“Permission denied,” Noah’s father says. “Flatly denied. Do you hear me? You will not tell her a single thing. Unlike you, I was not impressed with her.”
“I will not return,” Noah says. “You can’t forcibly recall me. Not from here, not in her home base. And I’d rather serve her than you. She may not know everything, but that isn’t her fault. I did what you told me to do, and I gave you my evaluation ages ago. She’s the Eldest. She’ll do what needs to be done. You can trust her.”
“We took your evaluation under consideration, but we believe your assessment is compromised.”
Noah gulps again.
“You will come home immediately and make a full report. You must be tried for the decisions you’ve made. They’ve gone far beyond the approved scope.”
“I will not come home, Father, not until you allow me to tell her everything.”
“You love her.”
“I do.”
“You’re a fool.”
“You’ve said that.”
“You do not have permission to share anything,” Noah’s father says. “Do you hear me?”
“I do.”
“And if you refuse to return, I’ll remove you. Permanently.”
Noah’s face blanks.
I snatch the phone from his hand. “You’re a horrible father. And that means something coming from me, because I didn’t have a father at all.”
“We all have fathers, young woman, whether we know them or not.”
