The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

Author:Marie Rutkoski [Rutkoski, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2021-07-22T17:00:00+00:00

“Hey, Nirrim!” someone calls through the dark.

I halt, despite myself, immediately giving myself away, though I have changed my finery for simple Middling clothes and covered my hair with a modest scarf. Although I now have a palace fit for my stature, I could not sleep, and wanted to walk alone, unseen and unbothered.

One last time, I thought. I will visit Sid’s house one last time.

Now I am doubly angry: at being so rudely hailed, and thwarted in my wish. A queen can have everything she wants except, it seems, privacy. I turn around to find the culprit.

It is Sid’s Middling boy, her young informant, the one who spied for her. “The art of spying requires constant replication,” she once explained. “The spymaster has her spies, and those spies have yet more spies. The boy who works for me probably has a little brother working for him.” I remember—of course I do—that he kept my secrets, and that he, too, yearned for more than life gave him: the fate to be a soldier, or some High Kith’s servant, the only occupations allowed to Middlings. I soften a little as he runs up to me, breathless, but arrange my face into a stern expression. He stops, scanning my eyes, and then says, tentatively, “I mean … ‘Hey, Queen’?”

“My queen will do,” I say, very nicely. He tips his head, studying me in a puzzled way, with a half smile, his black hair sticking up all over like spiders’ legs, his eyes lively. He will grow into a young man soon, but still has the face of a child. Like Mere, he recognized something valuable in me even when I was Other Nirrim, and for that wisdom he shall be rewarded. “Tell me your name,” I say, deciding to forgive him for intruding upon my evening. Queens must inspire awe, but it is good if they are also beloved, the stories of their generosity trickling among the common people so that they hope to one day be blessed by the queen’s grace.

He does not, however, look either properly awed or grateful. “Killian,” he says, still examining me.

“And who are your parents?” Do all Middlings raise their children to be this unimpressed by authority?

“Who says I have parents?”

I lose my patience with his stare. “What is so interesting?”

“You’re just so different.”

“Thank you,” I say, pleased.

“How do you know you’re a god?”

“Because I met a god, and he told me I was one.” Well, he said that god-blood ran in my veins, which is surely close enough, and I am obviously more powerful than any Half Kith of my acquaintance. “And because of my gift.”

“Are you faking it?”

“Would you like me to try it on you, so you may see for yourself?”

“No, thanks!”

“I thought so.”

“Did you plot all this—overthrowing the High Kith and becoming queen—with Sid?”

“Killian,” I say, making sure my smile is just right—friendly, easy, and not too interested, “I would like for you to pay me a call at the palace tomorrow, and tell me all you know about Sidarine of Herran.

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