“Okay,” said Kyrie. “Then how did you survive when you fell out of the Hall of Records? Why didn’t Dracon or his men find you?”
“I got lucky,” Jaysynn said. “I landed in a weird place. Like this place right here: nobody can see us unless they come close. Or maybe Dracon kept them away so they wouldn’t know what he’d done.”
“Jaysynn,” Kyrie wrapped her fingers around a link in the fence. “You landed on the sidewalk. Nobody could have ordered them not to see you. You were safe because there was magic. I could feel it.”
“What—so you were lying in bed thinking about me and you got some magic feeling?” Jaysynn stood. “That’s not a miracle,” he said. “That’s just a dreamy little girl.”
Kyrie did not stand with Jaysynn. She was still squatting in the pasture, and her head was low. “I was there,” she said. “I was at the Hall of Records. I saw you fall.”
“How did you know I was there?”
“You told me that’s where you were going. So I went as quick as I could. When I heard the window break and I saw the body falling, I knew it was you. When you hit the ground, you put a crack in the pavement. I thought you were dead. But in an instant I knew that some miracle had protected you. The guards saw it too, and they rushed to the place where you’d landed, and they stood right over the top of you, but they couldn’t find you. Dracon was yelling from the window, ‘Where did he go? Find him!’ And I could see you plain as day—from twenty or thirty yards away. And then I knew that if I left, they would be able to see you. So I stayed until morning. I stood over you and watched you– and the guards wandered past, yelling for me to tell them where you crawled off to, unable to see. I was hiding you. But it wasn’t me. It was a power bigger than me. And the women in the camp say that it’s Elethem.”
“I don’t know what happened that night,” said Jaysynn. “All I know is that the whole order of nature that made magic possible is gone.”
“It’s not—it’s right in front of us.”
Jaysynn went on, “And the whole order that made me Emperor is gone—and that made it possible for me to be the Watchman. It’s a world without bread. A world without medicine. This has been a tough pill for me to swallow.” Jaysynn smiled at her. “It’s been kind of humbling, you know. To see how powerless I am to change the world.”
“Jaysynn, true humility is in acknowledging the truth that’s right in front of your face. It’s in accepting your destiny rather than denying it.”
“I never had a destiny,” Jaysynn said. “Even when I was prince. My father knew it and Dracon knew it.”
Kyrie shook her head.
“But listen,” Jaysynn went on, not giving her a chance to speak up. “I’m exhausted after spending most of last night running into Falcon Point and back. We both need to get some sleep to keep our strength up. You’ve got a lot of weeds to pull in the morning and I’ve got a lot of manure to haul.”
Kyrie gave him a disappointed look.
“Things will get better,” he consoled her.
“Wow,” she said, standing at last. “It didn’t take you long to start parroting the boss man. Forget the fact that you’re the emperor of Thyrion. Forget the fact that some miracle or some act of destiny for some reason kept you alive. And just have a good night and have a good time carting manure around in the morning.”
She walked away.
“Now hold on,” Jaysynn said, but she didn’t turn back. A chain link fence and a row of razor wire gleamed in the moonlight, and the cicadas made a terrible racket.
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