What We Devour by Linsey Miller

Author:Linsey Miller [Miller, Linsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781492679264
Google: GyUgEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1492679259
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2021-07-05T23:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

I took off Julian’s coat slowly. Blood drops speckled the sleeves near the wrists, dark red against the pale brown. I laid it across my bed, the wrinkled cloth leaving a smear of dust on my arms, and I changed clothes with tired hands. Each button of the greatcoat calmed my heart. Obscurity was the best armor.

Once I was dressed, I dragged a hand down my face, drew a line across my mouth, and slipped a knife into my sleeve. The old, brown coat I tucked beneath the bed.

“Adler?” Hana knocked once. “I’m coming in.”

“It’s lock—”

She shouldered the door open, and I stared at her. It was attractively competent.

She shrugged. “I’m His Majesty’s guard for a reason. Come. I won’t be late because of you. Today is already odd enough.”

“How so?” I asked as we left.

“He’s never used another guard. They annoy him,” she said. “I know all his specifications and contracts.”

“I imagine he has a lot,” I said.

“The contracts require a knowledge of the sacrificed memories.” She glanced at me. “My parents were guards. He knows many of my memories. That makes the sacrifices easier. A new guard is a hassle.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I said, because I couldn’t say that it would be fine.

Court was held well within the palace grounds. The nearer we got, the more orderly the gardens grew until there were no trees. It was as if I’d walked into a different world. Glittering quarters of stained-glass windows overlooking patches of blue tulips and gold sunflowers speckled the landings dug into the side of the mountain, and the building that housed the court, where peers made and altered the laws of the land, was a great thing of pale marble inlaid with blue stones. I definitely didn’t belong here.

Hana led me into a large room and pressed me against a wall near the door. “Don’t move.”

The courtroom was as wide as a city street and as tall as three stories. A long, low table in the shape of a half-moon carved from a single slab of pure black stone took up the center of the room. The chairs that lined it—the two hundred and something peers that made up the court—had not been set around the table but carved from the stone of the floor, making them as permanent as the peerage. There were gilded wooden chairs along the borders of the room for councilors on days when both groups met. Rich but replaceable.

As if there only being twenty-five allowed on the council wasn’t hint enough.

At the front of the room was a raised platform and a dark throne inlaid with slivers of sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and onyx. Every god who’d abandoned us was represented in those colors.

No one paid me any mind. The peers filtered in over the course of an hour, though I was sure court was supposed to have already started, and they all bent at the waist as Alistair entered. The soldiers, servants, and I dropped to our knees. Alistair didn’t even look at me.

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