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The fear of death was rarely enough to dissuade her.
“I know it’s against your nature to sit idle, Valcotta. Butpleaseallow me the opportunity to try to get you free of this place via negotiationbeforeyou consign yourself to death.”
She needed time to regain her strength, so it was easy enough to shrug. “Who wouldn’t like to be pampered like a harem wife for a handful of weeks?”
“You.” He leaned against the bars. “And be wary of the wives. I put you in this building rather than elsewhere in the palace because nothing happens in here without Coralyn’s say, and because she refuses to allow Serin in her house. But the harem is just as dangerous as you, albeit in a different fashion. Their lives arehard, but they protect them fiercely even as they hunt for ways to increase their power. If you cross them, they’ll be just as quick to see you dead as my father or Serin.”
She’d been raised to hold Maridrinian women in contempt, but already she’d seen that the notions put into her head were far from accurate. “Fine.”
Keris was silent for a long moment, then said, “I’m sorry for this, Valcotta. I should never have let it go as far as it did between us, should have walked away that night on the dam and never looked back, because everyone who gets close to me ends up hurt. It was a mistake.”
He regrets you.A sharp pain radiated through Zarrah’s chest, and though she silently berated herself for being an idiot, it refused to fade. “I made my own decisions, not you. I’ll not have you take responsibility for that which I chose freely.”
“A choice you wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t deceived you about my identity.”
“What deceit?” Her anger flared, though she wasn’t sure if it was at him or at herself. “Neither of us confessed who we were, Keris. We agreed to it.”
He hesitated, then said, “Maybe so. But a hundred times over, I thought of what it would mean to tell you the truth. And every time, I knew that if I told you my name, the best I could hope for was a knife in the heart. So like a coward, I kept it to myself. And in doing so, caused you worse hurt than all the blows my soldiers rained down upon you.” He moved his arm, reaching for her, then hesitated and withdrew it to the far side of the bars. “I hate having caused you so much suffering.”
Emotion flooded her chest, making it hard to breathe, much less speak. “The same could have happened to you when you ventured to my side of the Anriot. We both took risks. Both engaged in the same deception. And if blame is to be cast for the current situation, it should be cast at my feet for losing my head when presented with the truth and getting myself caught.”
“Anyone in your position would have reacted the same.”
“You didn’t.” No, when presented with her identity, he’d instantly come up with a plan to save her life.
Keris tilted his head, seeming to consider her words. “It’s not the same. I was raised to believe Valcotta my enemy and to despise your people, but such political animosity is a product of the head, not the heart. Whereas your hatred is born of a personal loss, and therefore rooted in the heart. Matters of the heart do not bow to logic or reason. Anyone who does not understand that has either never lived or is devoid of a heart themselves.” He was silent, then added, “On that note, I should go.”
Without waiting for her response, he started to descend.
Zarrah reached through the bars, wanting to pull him back, the wordwaitrising to her lips.
But he was already lost to the darkness.
Zarrah wokeat dawn little more rested than she’d been the prior night. Her dreams were plagued, and she’d lost count of the number of times she jerked awake, soaked with sweat and Silas’s laugh ringing in her ears.
But exhausted or not, her days to accomplish her ends were numbered, so lazing about in bed was not an option.
You need to get strong again,she told herself.Strong enough to fight. Strong enough to kill.
Strong enough to win.
So she drew upon the exercises Yrina had taught her when she’d been chosen as Zarrah’s close guard, the other girl as fit as a person could be, whereas at fourteen, Zarrah had been as soft as a harem wife. Exercises to make her heart and lungs capable of enduring lengthy battles, muscles tough enough to cut through flesh and bone, and reflexes sharp enough to compensate for her smaller size.You will never be the strongest, her friend’s voice echoed through her thoughts.So be the fastest. The smartest. The fiercest!
God, but she missed Yrina. Missed having someone she could trust, not only to guard her back, but to confess her worries to without fear of judgment or betrayal.
The last words you had with her were in anger,a voice whispered.You threatened to cut out her tongue for confessing her own worries.
Her skin turned cold, her stomach hollowing with shame for having behaved so.
You brought your own fate down upon you,her conscience whispered viciously right as the door to her room opened, Coralyn stepping inside. The woman looked her up and down, Zarrah all red-faced and sweaty, then shook her head. “You’ll make a very fit corpse.” Then she snapped her fingers, and two servants came in with a platter of food. Fruits and cheese and cured meats, along with tiny pots with contents Zarrah couldn’t identify, the scents strange.
“Your new clothes will be brought in shortly. Though you’ll need to be bathed before they can be tried on. Then you’ll be escorted for a walk in the garden.”
“May I run in the garden instead?” Given no one was likely to run alongside her, it might give her more opportunities to see things that would otherwise be hidden from her. Like a way to get close to Silas Veliant.
“Absolutely not. What you do in here while you are alone is your own business, but you will act the part of a lady when eyes are upon you.”
Taking orders from a Maridrinian matriarch in a fuchsia brocade gown and jeweled slippers ground her nerves, but Zarrah remembered Keris’s warning. These women were dangerous, and this one perhaps most of all.
