“I definitely plan on taking revenge, Silas. On all my enemies, whoever they might be.”

His hand on her face stilled, and he gazed back at her in arrested silence. Was she agreeing with him? Or was that a threat? She confused him even more with what she said next.

“Thank you for what you did with Caesar this morning. He might have killed me. It kills me to admit it, but…you were right about him.”

Now she sounded truly grateful, indebted even. “Eliana,” he murmured.

“And you’re also right about children being blind. But I’m not a child anymore. Whatever the truth is, I’ll find it. Because real power doesn’t come from hatred. It comes from truth.”

Silas almost laughed out loud at that. He had to bite his tongue to silence it.

Power didn’t come from truth. Power came from the ability to manipulate outcomes to one’s own favor. Just as he had now done.

She’d find out the truth about her father, and though she wouldn’t like it, he’d gain even more of her trust. Yes, killers did enjoy creating diversions. They did indeed.

Poor, sweet Eliana. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

He nodded solemnly, allowing his hand to fall from her face. Without another word she turned and walked slowly away, winding through the graves, dry leaves crunching like broken bones beneath her feet.

It was something Mel said earlier that day that had done it. A simple story, awful but undoubtedly true, had made a tiny grain of doubt take root and push up an evil leaf.

They were in the room where she slept—she didn’t refer to it as her bedroom, though there was a cot; it was more like a hotel room in purgatory, anonymous and cold—and Mel had been helping her into a new set of clothes after her bath. She’d napped for a while, but she was still exhausted, and her body was sore all over. Her ribs, they’d determined, weren’t broken from Caesar’s kicks, merely bruised. The bullet wounds on her hip and leg had already begun to heal.

Eliana had recounted in unwavering detail all that had happened from the moment she was shot in the museum, and Mel had listened, unusually silent. When she’d finished with her story and sat staring at the old stone wall across from the cot on which they sat side by side, the last thing she’d said had been, “I keep coming back to something Gregor said, before we had to escape from his building.”

“Which is?”

“Assassins generally don’t have to perform surgery in order to get their marks to divulge information.” Eliana glanced at Mel. “Why would Demetrius take the time to do that? And why, when the rest of the Bellatorum showed up, did he let me go?”

It was a long, long time before Mel answered. In the dim blue shadows of the room—there was no electricity in the building—her elfin face was very serious, almost austere. Finally she let out a small sigh, as if she’d come to some bleak, unwanted conclusion.

“Do you remember the day we met?”

This startled Eliana, it was so out of left field. She tried to think back, but couldn’t precisely recall. “Um…”

“It was two days after the Christmas Purgare,” Mel continued, gazing around the room. “My twenty-first birthday.”

“Birthday? I…I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

She shrugged. “Why would you? You were the king’s daughter. I was a servant. A lowly handmaiden. It wasn’t important.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both feeling the resounding truth of that simple statement. It wasn’t important. How things had changed.

“I was terrified.” Mel laughed softly. “You were like this alien creature, so perfect and pampered”—she shot Ana an apologetic look—“and unlike anyone I knew. Six years apart in age, and worlds apart in every other way.”

“You were very skinny,” Eliana gently teased, poking a finger into the firm, well-developed muscles of Mel’s thigh. “All knees and elbows.”

“We were both skinny,” she agreed, nodding. “Skinny and innocent. Little skinny ducklings with our heads shoved so far up our asses we thought our shit was the stars.”

Eliana laughed, a sound that seemed jarring in the cold, dusty room. “You really have a way with words, Mel.”

She smiled. “It’s a gift.” She glanced sideways at Eliana, and her face grew serious again. “But I remember that day more for something else.”

“What?”

Mel looked at Eliana for a long, searching moment and then turned away, swallowing. She took a breath and in a low voice said, “It was the day my husband died.”

Eliana started, shocked. “Husband? What—Mel, I never knew you were married! Why didn’t you ever tell me—”

“No one knew. He was a half-Blood. Handsome as hell, with a great laugh and dimples you could get lost in. We weren’t supposed to be together, of course. I was a servant, and he was one of the best of the Legiones, being personally groomed by your father to enter the Bellatorum if he survived…” She trailed off into silence.

“Oh no,” said Eliana quietly. “Oh, Mel. I’m so sorry.”

“We had the same birthday. We never talked about it, the fact that I was full-Blooded and didn’t have to worry about the Transition, and he had a gnat’s chance in hell of making it through. We went ahead and got secretly married, both of us knowing we didn’t have long.” Melliane looked down at her lap. “I prayed so hard my Fever would come so I might get pregnant. So I’d have something to remember him by…” She swallowed and bit her lower lip. “But it never happened. At least we were together at the end, though. He said he wanted me to be holding his hand when…when…”

She suddenly covered her face with both hands, and Eliana wrapped her arms around her shoulders. They sat like that for a moment, silent, still.

“I never knew,” whispered Eliana. “You were so…composed when we met. You didn’t even cry. I never guessed you were going through that.” After a moment, Mel sat straighter and swiped at her eyes while Eliana crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Her face, always so lovely, hardened. She looked away. “Because your father ordered me not to.”

Eliana gaped at her, astonished, but Mel just went on in this dead tone, avoiding her eyes. “He found out we’d gotten married. Of course he would, wouldn’t he? Never missed a thing, your father.” An edge of bitterness snuck into her voice, which Eliana didn’t miss. “He found me with Emil—that was his name, Emiliano—and made us swear to never tell a soul. He said we could stay together until…until the day came when Fate would decide if we should stay together or not. Afterward, only one thing kept me from killing myself.”

Eliana’s voice trembled. “What?”

Mel turned and regarded Eliana with haunted eyes. “Demetrius.”

The blood drained from her face. She stood abruptly from the bed.

“Not like that,” said Mel, guessing what her shocked expression meant; D was known to be a womanizer of the first order. Back in their old colony, he’d chewed through women like a termite chews through wood: relentlessly. “We were only ever friends. I know Emil never told anyone we’d gotten married because he knew the trouble it would cause, but somehow Demetrius got wind of it, or figured it out…I really don’t know. But after Emil died, he came to me every single day and held me while I cried. Just…held me. He never said a word the entire time, but knowing someone else knew how I’d felt about Emil helped in a way I can’t explain. He’d come to my chamber, and I’d cry on his shoulder, and when I calmed down a little, he’d leave. After weeks and weeks of that, I began to feel like I owed it to him to keep on living, like he’d invested so much time and effort in me it would be the lowest kind of selfishness if I repaid his kindness by slitting my wrists.

“So I lived. And once he saw I was past the worst of it, Demetrius stopped his visits and never said a word about any of it, just nodded as he passed me in the corridors, like nothing had ever happened. But every year on the anniversary of Emil’s death I’d find a single white rose on my pillow, and I knew it was from him.”