SENT, NOT CHOSEN

Riley

The stable loft was dark and the candle stub burned low on the wooden crate beside me.

I sat alone with a folded letter tucked inside a potion wrapper, the same way every order from the Voice had reached me for the last two years. The wrapper was thin and it smelled faintly of herbs.

"I have never seen the Voice's face and I have never asked," I said out loud to the empty loft. My voice sounded rough in the cold air. "That was the agreement from the start. I do not ask who the Voice is."

The horse below me shifted in its stall and I heard its hooves against the straw.

"I tell myself I am a soldier for the starving and that the palace deserves every knife the rebels send," I said. "I tell myself that every night when I read these letters. I tell myself the palace took everything from us, so we have a right to take something back."

But tonight the words felt empty.

"The loft meeting unsettled me," I admitted. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. "I did not expect it to unsettle me like that."

"Isabella held my gaze without flinching," I said. "She looked straight at me and she did not look down. She was steadier than the frightened girl I left in Silver Creek."

In Silver Creek she always spoke with her eyes on the floor. She always said thank you even when I brought too little. She never argued.

"Now she argues," I said. "Now she stands firm. What changed her?"

When her collar slipped in the loft, I glimpsed a curling mark on her collarbone, and something in it nagged me without giving up its meaning.

"I saw a mark on her collarbone," I said. "It curled like a small vine. It was silver in the dark. I have seen that shape before, but I cannot place where."

Her claim that James's finger had moved provoked an angry flash in me that I had to smooth over, because if the prince wakes, the Voice will blame me.

"His finger did not move," I told her in the loft. My voice had been sharper than I intended.

"It moved," she said. "I saw it move when I sang."

"You imagined it," I said. "The prince has not moved in two months."

"I did not imagine it," she said. "Why would I lie about that?"

"Because you want him to wake," I said.

"I do not want anything," she said. "I only told you what I saw."

I had to smooth over my anger quickly because I was afraid she would see my fear.

"If the prince wakes, the Voice will blame me," I told myself now in the loft. "The Voice ordered me to keep him weak. If he wakes, the Voice will say I failed my post. The Voice will say I let the girl get too close to him."

I was also careful about what I did not know. I had learned to be careful about that.

"The tea and the falling chandelier were not my doing," I said clearly. "I have never touched her food. I have never been inside the palace kitchen. I have never been near the great hall when the chandelier fell."

I remembered asking the Voice about it in my last coded report.

"I wrote to the Voice," I said. "I wrote, did you order the tea? Did you order the chandelier?"

"And what did the Voice reply?" I asked myself, and then I answered. "When the Voice replied to my question, it denied ordering them too. The letter said, I did not order the tea and I did not order the chandelier. Those were not my orders."

"Then who ordered them?" I said out loud. "If the Voice did not order them, then someone else inside the palace wants her harmed. Someone else wants her dead for their own reason."

That thought scared me more than the Voice ever did.

"Riley never asks about Noah's medicine either," I said, speaking about myself as if I were another person. "Because the bottles arrive already prepared from the north and he suspects that asking would force him to choose."

"The bottles arrive sealed," I said. "They come wrapped in cloth from the north. I only carry them to Silver Creek. I hand them to the tavern keeper and he gives them to Isabella."

"Do you know what is inside them?" I asked myself.

"I do not know what is inside them," I said. "I never opened one. I never asked what is inside them, because I suspect that asking would force me to choose between my duty to the Voice and my promise to Isabella's family. I do not want to choose."

I unfolded tonight's letter again and read it under the candle stub. The handwriting was small and sharp, as always.

"Tonight's letter tells me to stop threatening the potion supply and to make certain Isabella survives the Rite whatever it costs," I read out loud.

"Stop threatening the potion supply," I repeated. "For months I was told to remind her that the potions could stop if she disobeyed. Now I am told to stop threatening it. Now I am told to make certain she survives the Rite whatever it costs."

"What changed?" I asked. "Why does the Voice now care if she survives? For two years the Voice only cared about the prince."

I folded the letter again and then I studied the wax seal I had pressed my thumb against for two years. I held it close to the candle.

"It is a crescent wound with a vine," I said, looking at the shape in the wax. "The crescent is thin and the vine curls around it twice. I have always assumed it was a symbol of the old kingdom, and now I see that it is the exact shape on Isabella's collarbone."

I felt my stomach drop.

"It is the exact shape," I said. "The mark I saw on her collarbone when her collar slipped is the same as this seal. The curve is the same. The curl is the same."

"Every banner the rebels march under is her mother's mark," I said, and my voice shook. "I have carried this mark on every letter. I have seen it on every banner in the north camp. I thought it was just history. I thought it was just a symbol of the old bloodline."

I put the seal down and opened my notebook where I kept my posting dates.

"I need to count the dates," I said. "I need to be honest about the dates."

"When did the Voice order me posted to Silver Creek?" I asked, and I found the page. "Two years ago, in early spring. Posted to Silver Creek for observation duty. That was two years ago."

"When was the border battle?" I asked, and I flipped forward. "The border battle was eighteen months ago. That was before the curse. The curse happened three nights after the battle."

"When did the palace need a surrogate?" I asked, and I flipped forward again. "The palace needed a surrogate ten months ago, after the first girl failed the Rite and died."

I closed the notebook.

"The Voice ordered me posted to Silver Creek two years ago, months before the border battle, before the curse, and before anyone at the palace needed a surrogate," I said slowly. "I was in Silver Creek long before anyone knew the palace would need a girl from the border."

"So I did not find her by accident," I said. "I did not meet her because I was patrolling near the tavern. I did not meet her because the tavern was on my way."

I stared at the candle stub until it burned down to nothing.

"I was placed there," I said. "I was placed in Silver Creek to watch her. I was placed there before she was ever supposed to matter to the palace. Someone knew who she was before the palace did."

I didn’t just stumble into Isabella's life.

I was sent.