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“Yes.” He hesitated. “Very much so.”
She gave a slow nod, and then words poured from her lips. “It’s not Zarrah who should be asking for forgiveness, it’s me. The Empress ordered her not to see you any longer, but I encouraged it. And when Zarrah didn’t return, I told the Empress that I believed she’d crossed the Anriot to see her lover. I hoped she’d allow us to move across in force to search, but I was wrong. She ordered us to stand down, and when word came that you were taking Zarrah to Vencia, she told us that Zarrah had earned her fate.”
Keris clenched his teeth, panic rising in his chest. “If she refuses to negotiate, my father will kill Zarrah.”
“Then you must find another way to get her out.” She pressed his knife into his hand. “And you must silence the truths that both of us have revealed.”
Yrina’s death would crush Valcotta. The knowledge her friend had died trying to save her would be a weight upon her soul, dragging her down. And it was because of him.
Because he’d turned back that night at the dam.
Because he’d pursued her.
Seduced her.
Lied to her.
Failed her.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do that to her.”
“Leaving me alive will do far worse to her,” Yrina answered, lifting his hand so that the knife pressed against her jugular. “I can’t take any more of Serin’s torture. I’ll break and bring you both down with me.”
Think of a way to get her out, his conscience whispered.Save this woman!
“I—”
Yrina jerked sideways, the tip of his knife sliding into her flesh like a hot blade through butter. Blood splashed over his hands, sprayed him in the face, and Yrina slumped in his arms.
“Tell Zarrah that I love her,” she whispered, and then she went still.
A tremor ran through him, and Keris sucked in breath after breath, but it didn’t feel as though any air reached his lungs. He lowered Yrina to the cell floor and clambered to his feet, falling against the door. “Open it!”
He waited for the sound of the bolt opening, for motion, for voices, but there was nothing. His father was going to leave him in here. Leave him in here to stare at the corpse of yet another woman he’d gotten killed. Panic raced through his veins, and he hammered his fists against the wood, screaming, “Open the fucking door!”
It opened.
His father stood in the opening, blocking Keris’s route to escape. Panting for breath, he tried to get past, but his father didn’t move. “She’s dead. Let me out.”
“Very dead, from the look of it.” His father’s shoulders began to shake, and he laughed. Not a chuckle, but a great belly laugh of delight, tears running down his face. “God strike me down, I didn’t think you had it in you, Keris. But it appears I underestimated your desire to survive.”
Keris’s hand tightened around the dagger he still clutched, his fingers sticky with blood, and all he could think of was how good it would feel to plunge it into his father’s chest. Not once but over and over until thatlaughwas silenced. Until those awful eyes glazed to lifelessness.
A shiver ran through him, because as much as he denied that violence was in his blood, it was still there. Still a part of him. And if he unleashed it, he’d be more than capable of slaughtering his father where he stood.
But then what?
He’d be executed for patricide, and Otis would become king. Though he loved his brother dearly, Keris knew that Otis would execute Valcotta without hesitation and that things would carry on as they always had, never changing.
Find another way.
Keris forced his fingers open, the knife falling to the stone at his feet with a clatter. “Was there something else you required of me, Your Grace?”
He swore he saw a flash of disappointment in his father’s eyes. “No, Keris. You can go back tonegotiatingwith the Empress.”
44
ZARRAH
