“Thinking.” She shooed me off her branch. “Meeting you was nice. Don’t ruin it.”
“See you in the after.” I grasped her wrist and bowed my head. “Or not. However they do it.”
I passed two guard patrols before reaching the greenhouse. I picked the lock and slipped inside, inhaling deep, damp air. The deadly blooms nodded with each step, the wooden boards beneath my feet bending, and I sat next to the cleared table in the back. The dirt was soft and wet, smearing over my fingers. A bee landed on the sunny blooms of a poisonous shrub.
I couldn’t fight the urge to move, and every bee and butterfly except the bravest fled to the other side of the greenhouse. I tapped holes into the dirt.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to be here”—Emerald drifted before me, trailing her fingers along the petals of twining primroses—“and I distinctly remember locking the door.”
“It was open, and no one told me I couldn’t come here.” I shook a butterfly from my boot. Best it was gone if she attacked. “It’s nicer than anything we’ve got in Kursk. And quiet.”
She tilted her head, surely arching an eyebrow and scowling behind her mask. “And full of poisonous plants.”
“It’s my weakest area.” I shrugged. “Not like I’ll get a chance to apprentice with an apothecary.”
She snorted softly, such a common sound for Our Queen’s Emerald to make. “I’d say you’re weaker at archery.”
She gestured for me to stand and led me to the back of the garden. She pulled a hidden bow wrapped in oiled leather with a small bundle of arrows from behind a trellis, glancing to make sure I followed her. We ended up outside, off to the left of the building. She handed me the bow.
“I don’t think quiet suits you.” She pointed to a tree. “Practice.”
I sucked in a breath and pulled back the string without an arrow—stomach in, arms up. A breeze ruffled my collar.
Emerald was gone. Figured. But she was right, and I’d never hold a bow so fine unless I stole one.
“Shoulder to the target and one finger above the arrow,” I muttered.
My side burned holding this position. Maybe Two had the right idea, spending the last few moments tucked away where no one could find you. This was it.
North Star. Deadfall. Riparian. Caldera. Winter.
My first true shot went wide. Another three shots barely corrected the misfire, and I shuffled my feet and took aim. The arrow thwacked against the tree’s neighbor. I fired another.
Wide again. I repeated this monotony of misses and barely-there hits a dozen more times till I reached down and the quiver was empty. The frantic panic in my chest eased with each shot, and I collected the lost arrows from the little forest she’d me shooting into.
My aim got better with time. I fired, missed, fired, hit, fired, and collected arrows till my muscles burned, my arms ached, and I’d no desire to run anywhere. I just wanted to know.
“Stomach in, shoulders perpendicular to your target.” Emerald’s brass fingers pressed my spine straighter, twisted me back, and pulled me into place. Her breath tickled my ear. “I already taught you this.”
My arrow burrowed into the trunk—not center but closer than before.
“Your stance is still shaky.” Emerald lifted a recurve bow from her back and held three arrows in her hand. “Bad practice, bad forever.”
She shot three arrows faster than I could see, each striking the tree in a neat line.
“We’ve come to a decision.” Emerald tapped my instep with an arrow. “Feet farther apart.”
“Two is calm, followed the rules, got her fair share of kills.” I let loose another shot, striking the tree closer to Emerald’s shots. “Five’s good but a risk.”
“Yes, those were certainly things we discussed.” She stared at me and fired another shot. “Your body directs the arrow, not your eyes.”
I fired my last one. Emerald cocked her head to the side, green mask casting sickly light around our feet. She shrugged at my off-center shot.
“Still too tense.”
“It’s been a tense day.” I moved to collect my arrows.
“Stand there. Don’t move.” She raised her bow and final arrow. “Trust me.”
I froze, then faced her.
“Watch the arrow and don’t turn your head. Tell me how it moves.” She fired. The arrow, a blur of brown wider than the shaft, hit the branch behind my head. “See?”
I shook my head. “It wobbles?”
“But stays true to where you shoot unless it’s windy or raining,” said Emerald. “If you want to be better, you’ll have to learn more than the stance.”
“I will.” I stopped next to her and raised the bow again. A wavering pain that had nothing to do with my exhaustion burned up my chest to my eyes. “Army’ll beat proper everything into my head.”
She hummed.
“There will be a more formal announcement at dinner.” Emerald placed my feet in the dirt and ran her hands up my side till she was content with the line of my shoulders. She pulled my elbow up. “You are our new Opal.”
I struck the tree dead center between her shots.
Forty-Five
The Left Hand met me at the final door separating me from the nobles. The path there had been littered with guards, all wide-eyed and at attention, taking in everything before them. The sharp lines of my white outfit hung heavy over the knives at my waist and fading ink still clinging to my skin. No guards waited here.
A waiting room for only the Left Hand of Our Queen.
“And so we are four again.” Ruby beckoned me forward, a bright slice of light cutting across the shadow of his outstretched hands, and pulled me into a tight, uncomfortable hug.
“No hard feelings?” I asked.
Emerald laughed. “He’s too fickle for feelings.”
“Your probation was the most interesting thing to happen to me in ages. But no more back talk.” He let me go and patted my cheek. “Come. I cannot call you Opal until after the ceremony, and I’m not calling you Twenty-Three one more time. Such a mouthful.”
“How do you feel?” Amethyst asked softly. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not.” There were no words to explain the settled feeling of accomplishment and anticipation coursing through my veins.
“Good.” Ruby grinned, his ears shifting with the hidden expression. “You are to be our Opal, and we are to be your new family.”
Family. I’d never even tried to form a new one, but if I was to kill beside these three and trust them, I’d have to think of them as more than accomplices. A bond as deep as the blood we’d spilled.
“Ignore him. Poetry runs in his blood, and I’ve never been able to drain enough of it to spare us.” Emerald pulled a thin, wide box from the folds of her green skirts and opened the lid. A bone-white mask with vertical slits for eyes and a crooked smile stared back at me. “Our previous Opal’s mask will serve you until yours is made. What would you like it to be?”
“Nothing.” A new life, a clean slate. I could be anyone and everyone. “Solid white, no eyes and no mouth.”
Amethyst nodded. “The crafter will meet with you tomorrow.”