The Rebel Assassin

Chapter 18: What's in a Name

The way Nemia saw it, no good could come of this. If Morie was really a descendant of the royal family... then so what? What could it change, besides the royals wanting to capture her that much more? This diluted royal blood in Morie's veins could only make her more dangerous. It had to be so, or why would the record of her family be hidden away so shamefully?

The ragged pamphlet tucked under her jacket seemed burn her side as she shivered. No, she'd forgotten something... the royals must already know about Morane's lineage. After all, someone had updated the record as recently as her younger brother's birth.

So many ideas and options flickered through her mind she could barely keep track. Forcing herself into quiet focus, she made her way through the night-dark city, refusing to let herself drown in every half-formed thought. She needed her notes on Morie's dreams. She needed to do this methodically, or she'd get lost in the strangeness of it all.

The sun was starting to think about rising by the time she returned to her room, practically shaking. She had never been good at staving off emotional breakdowns, those times when too many possibilities overwhelmed her and she either needed to scream or cry — neither of those options were helpful, she told herself sternly, or appropriate to learning your best friend might be some kind of lost quasi-princess. Oh, Morie would hate this.

That thought made her smile, pushing back the panic somewhat. Morie, related to Magali and all those royals she hated. The look on her face would be priceless.

She took off her jacket, set the Laerhard record on the table-turned-desk for her dream deciphering work. She had to start from the beginning and spin outwards, or she'd end up in a downward spiral instead.

Her original idea had been confirmed, technically. Trying to figure out how Therese's mother could have been in a position to betray the Laerharts, she had theorized that the Verivains and Laerharts could be related, and they were.

Therese's mother had been a Laerhart, before marrying above her station and passing her husband's Verivain name down to her daughter. Meanwhile Morie and her siblings kept the name of their mother, who had married a man from a lesser family. Despite their names being different, however, it was safe to say that Rutharia Verivain, née Laerhart, had stayed in touch with her sister, Morane's mother.

In other words, she would have known when Morie was born, with a Guardian Mark on her shoulder.

But why betray her sister? Why give Morie to the king? As the leader of the Cycla, there was no reason for Rutharia Verivain to do such a thing out of loyalty. In fact, it would have been more loyal of her to keep Morie out of the king's reach.

Nemia slammed her hands on the desk and then flinched at her own noise. Crap. There it was. Rifling through her papers, she found the list of Morie's dreams and her notes.

Therese had given her the answer already. Rutharia's first instinct hadn't been to give Morie up. It had been to poison the goddamn king.

It simply hadn't worked.

And how could Rutharia have come out of that alive, since everyone seemed to know she was the one who attempted who kill him? She must have bargained for her life somehow. Must have given the king something he wanted more than to punish an attempted poisoner.

She'd given them the location of Magali's missing Guardian. Not because she didn't care about her niece — no, she'd tried to protect Morie as best she could. But when she failed and her own life was in danger, she'd been willing to trade Morane's life for hers.

Nemia would have hated Rutharia then, but it was too clear how much the woman had tried to help Morie as best she could. It would have taken a powerful noble's influence to convince the Sage to let Morie have a childhood with her family before taking her to the palace.