Shadowforged (Light & Shadow) by Moira Katson Page A

head up, and she smiled to herself, but she did not speak to me. She was cherishing a secret and when I could not bear wondering anymore, I said,
    “So?” She looked towards her bedroom, and I waited until we could hear one of Anna’s predictable snores. “She’s asleep.” I said. “Tell me.”
    She shook her head. “Tomorrow. I need to think first.”
    But she did not tell me. As I slept, her excitement had turned to a melancholy such as I had never seen from her. The days passed and she spoke little, she hardly took the time to brush her hair or preen in the mirror, the life went out of her as soon as she returned to her rooms. I helped Anna undress her, and when we had gotten her into her nightgown and robe, she would go sit in a chair by the fire, holding a book but seeing nothing.
    “Please tell me what has happened,” I said finally. She shook her head.
    “It is nothing to us,” she said, and I felt a flicker of hope. She was no t forgetting our alliance.
    “You could use my help,” I said persuasively.
    “No.” She shook her head again. “You’d ruin it.” She cut off my retort with a sad smile. “Not like that. You would learn the truth of it. And I can’t know the truth, Catwin, I really can’t.”
    “It’s always better to know,” I said, quoting Roine. Miriel was as curious as I was, I could not think what she might not want to know.
    “You don’t understand.” She closed her book and looked at me unsmiling. “You know as well as I do that Garad won’t hear me, he won’t listen, he wouldn’t ever favor the rebels. Yet, anyway. Am I right?”
    “Yes,” I agreed cautiously.
    “And we need his favor to survive, don’t we?” She waited for my acknowledgement.
    “Yes.”
    “So, until I am safe, I cannot speak to him of it. I cannot plead for them as I would wish to. Every day I swallow down my words and my thoughts, and I do nothing for the rebels and their cause, and it sickens me to my very heart, Catwin.” I would have jested at her melodramatic language, but she looked so sad that I did not dare. Unable to find words, I nodded.
    “Every day at services, I pray for the rebellion. I pray and I pray, and that is all that I can do. I try not to hear of it, I can’t know anything about it—because if I know of it, I will want to speak for them. Do you understand? Yes. And so I can’t know this, I cannot know of this thing I suspect. What if I’m right?”
    “You think you know who Jacces is,” I said slowly, and Miriel gave a little cry, a breathy sort of scream. I blinked at her.
    “ That’s all you heard?” she demanded. “I tell you all of that, and all you can say is that you think I know something?” I stared at her in surprise, and she picked up a china ornament and hurled it at the wall; I flinched as it shattered. She had barely moved for days, now she was violent in her anger, she threw herself out of her chair to stand before me.
    “Do you not hear me?” she cried. “I am close to breaking, and what then?”
    “You said you wanted to survive.” I was pressed up against the back of my chair. “You said we would have our revenge later, but we needed to survive. You said it was all we could do.”
    “I didn’t know how it would be! So don’t throw that in my face.”
    “Don’t—“ I snapped. I pushed myself out of the chair to stare her in the eyes. “You throw my vows in my face every day! You’re quick enough to remind me of my duty!”
    “It’s not the same,” she hissed at me. “You don’t give up what you are for your duty. You don’t know what it’s like to wear a mask every day.”
    “I don’t know?” I plucked at my black tunic. “What d’you think this is? Why do you think I’m here? Do you remember when we first came here, and the Duke told me what I was to be? Do you remember what he said? He said I wasn’t a person anymore, he said I had no soul any longer.”
    “Oh, you didn’t believe that,” she said scornfully.
    “I