“Though you’ve always tried to raise yourself above your station, haven’t you?” The Vicereine’s laughter tickledCassandra’s cheek. “Thinking yourself worthy of the Exiled Prince. Though I can hardly blame you for trying.” Her lips brushed Cassandra’s ear. “Sometimes evenImiss the feeling of him moving inside me. The pleasure he conjured with those skillful hands and that glorious tongue.”
Cassandra’s restraint snapped. She snarled, jerking forward to smash her forehead into Lykan’s face. The Vicereine pulled back before she could manage it, her low chuckle boiling Cassandra’s blood. She couldn’t stop the question that ripped up her throat. “What has Eamon done with him?”
The sting of the Vicereine’s slap did nothing to quell Cassandra’s rage. “Tristan will be punished for his insolence. And do notdarespeak of your Emperor so casually.”
The Vicereine’s eye twitched. The smallest of tells.
And the words she’d chosen.
Will bepunished. Nothas beenpunished.
The Vicereine grabbed Cassandra’s upper arm, and the memory took over instantaneously.
Eamon Erabis, black wings askew and roaring in frustration as he tore apart an ornate, gilded room—decor Cassandra recognized from the Vicereine’s palace. Lykan watched on helplessly, unable to soothe his anger.
Had Tristan escaped?
Hope blazed through Cassandra’s chest, bright enough to dim the mists curling around the stone gate.
But before she could think on it further, or question how she was able to view the memory from touch alone and without Lykan noticing, the Vicereine ripped off Cassandra’s shirt and tossed it into the dirt. Cassandra dipped her eyes to the bare space above her collarbone where Tristan’s mark was still hidden by the veiling potion.
“Cassandra Fortin,” the Vicereine intoned, “you are hereby sentenced, by order of his Imperial Majesty Eamon Erabis, todeathfor your crimes.”
Cassandra barely had a second to breathe before the red light bolted from the wards and seared her chest. Her legs buckled, and the two Vasilikans gripped her arms tighter to keep her upright.
A scream sawed past her lips. She didn’t want to give the Vicereine the satisfaction, but she couldn’t help it. Fire tore through her chest and for a moment, she was worried she might pass out from the pain.
The light sucked back into the wards, and Cassandra glanced down at her pink, smoldering skin. At the letter inside the circle bubbling and blistering her flesh.
T. ForThan.
Death.
The irony of her impending death—announced seconds after that vision that suggested Tristan might be free—was suddenly the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard.
Peals of uproarious laughter tore up her throat as the Vicereine snatched her chin. “Yes,girl, it is funny, isn’t it? You’ll find out exactly how funny very, very shortly.”
The Vicereine shoved Cassandra toward the gate, and the stone doors groaned open, leaking clouds of night-dark mist.
“Give your executioner my regards,” the Vicereine crooned.
Cassandra snatched up her shirt, then struggled back into it as she joined Ronin and Reena.
“Don’t worry, Cass.” Reena said, her face tight with fear as she looped an arm around Cassandra’s shoulders. SeeingReenaafraid—one of the bravest females with the mostI-couldn’t-give-less-of-a-shitattitudes Cassandra had ever known—chilled her to the bone. “We’ll figure it out.”
Cassandra looked to Ronin, who wore a similarly horrified expression, but did his best to affirm Reena’s statement with a stiff nod.
Cassandra tossed a glance over her shoulder, back toward the Vicereine and the Vasilikans. The Vicereine murmured something into the wards before the entire group vanished.
The obsidian gate fully opened, and several prisoners jumped at the boom that echoed across the yard.
While the others hesitated, Cassandra, Reena, and Ronin stepped forward.
They held hands as they crossed the threshold, swallowed by the swirling mists.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The blown-out crater before Tristan smoldered, the smoke stinging eyes already prickling with furious tears.
