Page 82 of Sky’s Edge

“Mom was murdered too, baby,” he whispered, pain permeating his expression that corresponded with the pain that spiked into my heart.

“Are you okay to talk about that?” I asked carefully.

Another chin jerk and he began.

“She was frozen when Manny found her. Dressed to be outside. He didn’t know what happened, but to get her in that state, he knew it had to be an accident. A fall. Something like that. But in her state, the time she’d spent outside, and him not being a physician, he couldn’t know what the marks he saw were. There was also dried blood on her face, but we suspected that was also from the fall, and this was confirmed by the autopsy. Also, she did have a broken ankle. She further had a broken wrist, five broken ribs, a broken cheekbone and orbital bone. They say it’s possible she did die of hypothermia, but they aren’t sure because she could also have died from the cerebral hemorrhage she had from taking a beating.”

I sat immobile as he took in a deep breath.

“This means there’s a good possibility my mother was beaten to death.”

I let his hand go and caught him at the neck again, this time with both of mine, moaning, “Oh, Tanyn.”

“It’s only conjecture now, but we have a theory that somehow my father realized he was being drugged. Or he’d been given it so long, his body was accommodating to metabolize it faster, so the effects of it were wearing off. One thing they do know, the dosage was very high in the end, because they didn’t find traces of it in his system. They found a lot. Whatever the reason, somehow, he’d come to be considered a threat to Arnaud’s reign, actually Tatra’s, and before he could come back to himself, expose Tatra, remove Arnaud from succession, he was eliminated.”

“But…how was your mother a threat?”

He shook his head. “We don’t know that.”

I didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said. However, I figured he already knew it.

“You were the more viable threat, Tanyn.”

“I was.” He focused intensely on me. “I am. And you are.”

“Me?”

“The future queen and mother of the future monarch that would not be Tatra or Tatra’s progeny? Yes.”

Well, shit.

I was going to have to stay protected, maybe not in Berg Castle, but definitely protected, and for Tanyn’s peace of mind, that would have to be in Berg Castle.

Oh yes.

Shit.

“Have you contacted her? What does Tatra have to say about all of this?” I asked.

“Tatra has disappeared from Snowy Ridge. No one knows where she is.”

I let him go and scooted away from him, such was my surprise.

“Are you serious?”

“I am, sweetheart, and”—he hooked me around the waist to pull me close again—“I didn’t trust her. She was being watched. Not imprisoned, but watched. Monitored. Ingoing and outgoing comms. I receive daily reports on what she does, who she sees, who comes to visit. She went to bed last night and was nowhere to be found this morning. And no one saw how she managed to escape.”

“This would infer she knew we’d been warned of the threat,” I stated.

“It infers just that,” he replied.

“So not only is this further evidence she’s either involved, or the ringleader, it indicates she has resources,” I presumed.

“She has to. I didn’t send benchwarmers to look after her. She had undercover Red Watch agents on her detail.”

The Red Watch was Sky’s Edge espionage wing.

“Nothing slips past them. Except Tatra,” he concluded.