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Go after him,a voice inside his head whispered.Apologize. Promise to change.But his body didn’t move, and as seconds turned to minutes, his heart ceased its pounding, and the angry sweat that had risen to his skin slowly cooled.
Stepping out of the open door, he nodded at the servants before exiting the room, heading down two flights of stairs to the floor containing Otis’s room. The corridor was empty, so there were no eyes to see him pick the lock on the door and swiftly shut it behind him. His brother had clearly not had an opportunity to come back, his uniform jacket still slung over the chair as it had been the night before.
Smoothing the sheets, Keris then extracted the package of letters from his pocket, examining them in the sunlight to ensure there was no obvious damage. He’d seen them in Otis’s hands enough times to know them well, and in his mind’s eye, he could see his brother’s thumb running over the edges of the twelve precious letters that were all he had left of his wife. His eyes skipped over an official missive from his father, which was likely what had inspired Valcotta to steal the package in the first place. Yet as Keris ran his own thumb over the edges of the love letters, counting, his stomach dropped when he reached only eleven. He swiftly recounted, but the number was the same.
One of them was missing.
“Shit!” he snarled. “She kept one!”
Then the memory of the Valcottan woman’s voice filled his ears.All of them. On my honor!
And there was nothing more important to a Valcottan than her word. Which meant one thing for certain: Keris hadn’t seen the last of the beautiful thief.
14
ZARRAH
Just after dawn, Zarrah limped inside the gates of the Valcottan palace, several of her soldiers racing to her side.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “A bar fight that I found myself in the middle of.” Then she made her way up to her rooms and collapsed on her bed in exhaustion.
A second later, the door opened.
“I’m feeling hurt, Zar,” Yrina said. “It appears as though you went out for a bit of fun without me.”
“It wasn’t fun.” Zarrah kept her eyes closed, feeling the press of the Maridrinian’s chest against her back. The heat of his breath against her cheek. “A good reminder of why I don’t go drinking with soldiers.”
Her friend made a noise that was simultaneously pity and amusement, then Zarrah felt the bed sink and heard Yrina’s soft intake of breath. “God, woman. Did you run through a field of broken glass?”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s not good. Where is your other boot?”
Probably in a gator’s bellywas the answer, but Zarrah said, “Lost it in the fight.”
Yrina whistled between her teeth. “You really were out for some fun.”
The bed shifted. Water splashed. Zarrah clenched her teeth as Yrina immersed her battered foot in a basin, washing it clean before she began picking debris out of Zarrah’s flesh with a pair of tweezers. The smell of alcohol filled the air, and Zarrah had only a second to bury her face in her pillow to muffle her scream as Yrina doused her foot, cleaning the rest of the Nerastis filth from the wounds.
“You going to tell me what you were doing on the other side of the Anriot when the Empress specifically ordered otherwise?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t lie. You reek like river water.” She paused, then asked, “Did it have something to do with the fire at the Maridrinian palace?”
Yrina was sworn to her and had always kept her confidence. But more than that, Zarrah hated lying to her friend. “Fine. Yes.” Zarrah kept her face buried in her pillow to hide the heat burning across her cheeks. Never mind that her actions were in deliberate violation of the Empress’s orders, what she’d done had been nothing short of a total disaster. She felt a fool and had nothing to show for it but a shredded foot and a stomach full of shame.
Yrina was uncharacteristically quiet as she wrapped a bandage around Zarrah’s foot. Then she murmured, “Don’t let Bermin goad you, Zar. Remember, it is in his best interest to see you make mistakes. The Empress is fickle, and that which she giveth, she can easily taketh away. For you to remain as general of this garrison, you must be perfection in her eyes.”
And to the Empress, perfection meant obedience.
“I’ll leave you to get some rest,” Yrina said. “And I’ll start a rumor that you lost your boot beating the woman who looked too longingly at your lover.”
Zarrah groaned into the pillow. “Don’t you dare.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Yrina said thoughtfully. “That’s not something you’d do. You’dbeat yourloverwith the boot for inviting temptation, right?”
“I don’t have a lover.”
