Page 71 of Queen of War and Ruin

She meets my gaze in the soft light before the dawn. My hand tightens in the fabric of her dress as I open my mouth.

“I— I love you,” I whisper.

Shit.

A heavy boom shakes the room. Lilias jumps. The boom comes again, a fist against wood.

And then the door flies open. The huge guard who took me to the reception hall earlier tonight in my failed attempt to get my wife out of this poisonous trap steps into the room. If he’s surprised to find the two of us huddled on the floor next to the window, he doesn’t show it.

“Come on,” he growls. “The kings are ready to see you.”

Chapter 37

Lilias

PRAYERS

What?

Even after the guard kicks his way into our room growling about how the kings want to see us, I don’t move. I can’t. I’m frozen in place, stuck on the floor, staring at Zarek with my mouth wide open.

I thought he was dying. When he collapsed in front of me, I almost screamed. I saw a horse die once, when his heart gave out, and all I could think of was the way his beautiful dark legs kicked at the empty sky as his eyes rolled back in his head. I couldn’t save that horse, even as I held his head in my lap and sobbed as foam bubbled out between his lips.

So I did the only thing I could imagine.

I prayed.

I grabbed Zarek and held him like I could personally stop his soul from leaving his body, and then I sang the songs Anura’s mother taught me when I was a child. I don’t even know what the words mean, not anymore, and the gods know I don’t exactly have the world’s loveliest singing voice.

But I did it anyway. And that dream-memory floated back to me, sunset painting the sky through the branches, Zarek’s face in the golden light, his voice singing prayers I didn’t recognize to gods I didn’t know. The memory that couldn’t have happened.

Except, apparently, it did. When he thought I was dying, and he came to the same desperate conclusion. He told me he sang the prayers he must have learned as a child, before he was forced to become a prince.

And then—he said that.

A rough hand closes around my arm. I’m still staring at Zarek as the guard hauls me to my feet.

“Excuse me—” I snap.

The guard drags me toward the door, and my voice fades. Right. We’re basically prisoners here in Ethiria. This large, heavily armed man is not going to respond well to my argument that my husband and I were in the middle of a discussion when he barged in. Or a conversation? Confession?

Love?

I turn and watch Zarek come to his feet. He looks very pale in the thin light of the early morning, but he moves with his usual elegance. He walks over the dark stain on the rug, the place where he had me kneel so he could take me from behind, and something twists deep inside my body.

Love.

Oh, gods.

I glance down the hallway; panic flutters in my chest. Zarek stands next to me, his face calm and unreadable. I think about the mess of cloth in the deep cave that wasn’t a mine. The folds I pushed aside looking for the key to the chains binding my husband to a chair. The white robes that weren’t laundry.

Panic pulses again, sharp and hot.

Malrik was ready to sacrifice my husband for some dark magic beneath the Dragon Mine. And then I remember Syvan looming in the darkness, his blade against Zarek’s chest. Fear and anger churn together, burning and bitter in the back of my throat.

Syvan’s laugh echoes through my skull. I remember the weight of his arm against my throat, the scent of his perfume choking me. The way Zarek screamed when Syvan threated to rape me.

“Come on,” the guard growls.