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“This is madness, Auntie.” She couldn’t keep the shake from her voice. “Who is telling you these lies?”
“It is you who lies!”
The blow came hard and fast, her aunt’s fist striking her in the cheek and knocking her back. Zarrah staggered, catching herself against a table.
“You were Keris Veliant’s lover.” The Empress stalked toward her. “Not just while you were hisprisonerbut before.After.”
“I ask again”—Zarrah lifted her chin—“who has told you these lies?”
“The Magpie.”
Her aunt threw the pages at her face. Zarrah caught several of them, eyes skipping over the spidery script laying out all the tiny damning details. A hundred coincidences that together whispered a truth that only a fool would deny. But for Keris’s sake—and her own—she had to try. “Serin is a liar.”
“Not to me.” Her aunt’s head cocked, her expression making Zarrah want to run. To hide. Because not only was what looked back at her unfamiliar and strange, it was barely human. “We have long been adversaries, and there is a trust that comes in that. What horror that I can put more faith in the words of a Maridrinian spymaster than that of my own flesh and blood. My chosen heir.”
“Auntie—”
“Shh, dear one.” The Empress pressed two fingers to Zarrah’s lips, nails digging in so hard that blood dribbled into her mouth. “I told no one but you my plans for Vencia. Told you to tell no one until you were on the high seas. Yet the princeling delivered my plans to his father in such a manner they couldonlyhave come from your lips. You betrayed me. Betrayed Valcotta.”
“I did not betray Valcotta.”
In a flash, a knife was in her aunt’s hand, pressed against Zarrah’s throat. “Lie to me again, dear one, and you will bleed out on this floor. And I’ll feed your corpse to the dogs.”
A traitor’s death.
Denial was pointless. But perhaps the truth might do some good. “I may have betrayed your confidence, but I did not betray Valcotta, Auntie. You sought to escalate a war and pursue an attack that would have seen countless innocents killed. And for what? What had we to gain from attacking Vencia besides the perverse pleasure of slaughter?”
“Revenge.” Her aunt stared at her, unblinking. “They killed your mother, Zarrah. Is the princeling so pleasing between the sheets that you’ve forgotten that? Forgotten how they cut off her head and hung her body up to rot and drip down upon you for days?”
Hearing it still hurt, but not in the way it once had. “I haven’t forgotten. But unlike you, I remember that it was Silas who killed my mother, not Maridrina. And Silas is dead.”
“Not all of him. You dishonor your mother’s memory by not extinguishing his bloodline.”
“Keris is—” She was about to say he was nothing like his father, but that wasn’t entirely true. Silas had left his mark on his son. “He’s not his father. He wants peace, Auntie. The Endless War could end. We could stop the fighting. Could have peace if only you would give up this… this fanatical pursuit of pride and vengeance. Valcotta will be better for it.”
Silence.
Blood dripped down her lips into her mouth, but Zarrah barely felt the sting as she stared into the eyes of the woman who’d saved her life. Who’d brought her back from the edge. Who’d made her strong. For the first time, she saw that there was somethingwrongwith her aunt. Something missing. And its lack ensured the Empress would never understand the future Zarrah dreamed for Valcotta.
“You were supposed to be mine, dear one. Supposed to be the one who’d carry on my legacy. The one who’d ensure I lived on. But you’re still hers. Or worse,” she hissed, “you’rehis.”
Zarrah lifted her chin. “I belong to no one but myself.”
And she’d honor herself to the bitter end.
The Empress laughed, and the wildness in it turned Zarrah’s blood to ice.
Then her aunt attacked.
The hilt of her aunt’s knife struck her in the temple, and Zarrah dropped to her knees, stunned. Only for a foot to catch her in the stomach, sending her toppling sideways. The world swam, and Zarrah tried to stand, but another blow caught her in the stomach, flipping her. Then another and another, each one driving deeper into her belly, agony racing through her body.
If you let her kill you, this will never end,a voice whispered from deep in her thoughts.If you let her kill you, she’ll make war on Keris.
She needed to fight.
Zarrah rolled, catching hold of the Empress’s ankle and pulling her down. She landed with a crash, and Zarrah was on top of her in a flash. Though her aunt had experience and skill, youth and strength still counted for something as Zarrah pinned her. “This can’t go on.” She spit blood onto the tile. “It has to stop.”
The Empress laughed. “The war will never stop.”
