Page 71 of The Nymph King

Meira studied her, searching for something deeper than the glare Imani was leveling at her. “You’re here for him. Not me.”

Her sister always did know her better than anyone. At least until Kiran.

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation, a queen's command. “You have to get me out of here.”

Imani glared harder. “I don’t.”

Tears fell freely down Meira’s face, despite her attempts to stay strong. “You’re leaving me here?”

“For now. After your betrayal, I haven’t decided what to do with you.”

“You think this ends with you taking the throne?” Meira said, her voice going slightly shrill. “With him gone?”

Imani didn’t answer. She could feel the truth of Meira’s words through the bond, through the Crown of Life, through the fact that her sister stood in front of her as a queen she hadn’t expected.

“Tanyl first,” Imani said to Esa, who nodded back.

Meira wrung her hands together again. “And then what?”

“Then we deal with you.”

For a moment, their bond seemed almost tangible, a taut and unbroken link that neither relinquished nor weakened. Then Imani turned, and the spell was broken. Walking back toward the door, Imani tried to ignore the roiling sickness still in her gut.

Esa came up next to her without question. Behind them, Meira neither called out nor tried to stop them. But she didn’t fade either.

They closed and locked the door again, because the heist needed to move forward.

Still, Meira wasn’t just a complication likely to fade. Her sister was tethered too tightly to Imani for her to ignore, and her magic was powerful. Killing Meira might also trigger the Crown of Life to grow on someone else, someone worse. Imani couldn’t risk an unknown second monarch vying for Essenheim. Better the one she knew than the one she didn’t.

Whatever bond had formed between them would need resolution, and it wouldn’t be tidy. But this wasn’t the time. Not here.

Esa and Imani resumed striding through the corridors, quickly reacquainting themselves with the palace’s rhythm as if the disruption had never occurred—yet Meira’s significance persisted, tugging at Imani’s thoughts. Tanyl was growing more perilous by the minute. Each turn grew more vital, and every hallway seemed shrouded in malevolent intent as they delved deeper into the building.

They didn’t slow. They couldn’t.

But there were two queens now.

And only one throne.

CHAPTER 21

The sudden change in plans had left Imani’s palms slick. She wiped them against her dress.

“He’s moved everything around. The rooms, the patrol routes, the very rhythm of the palace, and it’s making us blind,” Imani whispered, her eyes tracking the corridor, sorting the faces ahead into weapons and obstacles.

Esa adjusted her apron, her mouth a tight line. “The old plan relied on the predictability of him getting ready in his rooms and being taken by surprise, which is clearly gone. What now?”

“He wants us moving through his shadows, reacting to his changes,” Imani mused, her gaze cutting to Esa before fixing forward again. “So, we stop reacting. We go straight to him.”

The words were out before she could pretend this was anything other than improvisation.

Ellisar had been explicit. Once they entered the palace, they followed the plan. No deviations, no unnecessary risks, no clever revisions invented because circumstances became inconvenient.

And their plan was dead. They had come to find Tanyl privately, separate him from the Drasil before he understood what was happening, and get him out of the palace before the court knew a transfer of power had begun. Walking into the Yule Ball would destroy every advantage that strategy had given them. Tanyl would see her coming. So would his guards, his allies, Kiran, and several hundred witnesses.

Worse, Ellisar and Lore were positioned for the contingency they had all hoped never to use. If Imani triggered open violence inside the palace and lost control of the situation, the soldiers waiting beyond the immediate operation might have to move. Their swift removal of one ruler could become the bloody coup they had spent three weeks trying to avoid.