What is he doing? Serafina wondered, panic-stricken. She’s not a Merrovingian. Alítheia will kill her.
Serafina remembered Mahdi saying the Volneros might have collaborated with Traho. Was this Vallerio’s way of punishing them for it? He’d always been hard and uncompromising toward the realm’s enemies, but never vicious. Had he changed?
Surely Portia would stop him. Lucia’s mother wouldn’t allow her child to be led to the slaughter. She would beg Vallerio for Lucia’s life. They’d been in love once, Serafina remembered. Her words would soften him. But Portia didn’t move. She wasn’t distraught. She wasn’t weeping. She was perfectly fine.
Lucia took her place in the center of the Kolisseo, and the burly mermen swam to the iron grille covering Alítheia’s den.
“Release the anarachna!” Vallerio ordered.
The next few minutes felt like a dream to Serafina—a nightmare in which something horrific was happening, but she couldn’t speak or move or do anything at all to stop it. She watched as the terrible bronze spider hissed at Lucia, calling for her blood, for her bones—just as the creature had done to Sera herself only weeks ago.
Sera knew that the spider’s task was to make certain only blood descendants of Merrow ruled Miromara. Legend had it that when Merrow was close to death, she asked Neria, the sea goddess, and Bellogrim, the god of fire, to forge a creature of bronze to protect the throne from pretenders. As the Kobold were smelting the ore for the monster, Neria slashed Merrow’s palm and dripped her blood into molten metal so that the spider would have the blood of Merrow in her veins and know it from imposters’ blood.
“Stop this uncle, please,” Sera whispered. “If she’s guilty of something, she deserves a trial, not cold-blooded murder.”
But Vallerio did nothing and Sera, along with everyone else in the Kolisseo, had to watch as Lucia faced Alítheia.
They watched as the Mehterba?i, leader of the Jani?ari guards, handed her his scimitar.
As Lucia drew the blade across her palm.
And as Alítheia bent to drink from the wound.
And then, Sera couldn’t watch anymore. She bent her head, not wanting to see the spider do her dark work.
“Alítheia!” Vallerio bellowed. “What say you?”
Serafina clenched her hands, waiting for Alítheia to attack.
But the spider didn’t.
Instead, she spoke.
Hail, Lucia, daughter of the blood, rightful heiressssss to the throne of Miromara….
Serafina’s head snapped up. “What?” she said.
She watched in disbelief as the creature scuttled to the royal enclosure, took Merrow’s crown from its dais, and placed it on Lucia’s head—the very same crown that she, Serafina, had worn.
This isn’t happening, she thought. It can’t be happening. Alítheia was made by the gods themselves. She’s infallible.
Vallerio swam to Lucia. He took her by the arms and kissed her forehead.
Then he turned to the crowd and, smiling triumphantly, said, “Good people of Miromara! I give you your new regina…Lucia Volnero…my daughter.”
SERAFINA WAS REELING. It all made sickening sense now. How could she not have seen it? Lucia, with her jet-black hair, deep blue eyes, and silver scales, looked exactly like Vallerio. Like Isabella too, for that matter. She looked more like a true Merrovingian than Serafina did.
No wonder Vallerio had never married, and no wonder Portia had. She’d married a man who looked like Vallerio only weeks after Regina Artemesia, Sera’s grandmother, had forbade their marriage. Because she was carrying Vallerio’s child. That man—Sejanus Adaro—had died soon after Lucia’s birth. Had Portia and Vallerio continued their affair in secret all these years?
The Kobold had once again bullied the crowd into cheering, and Vallerio once again held up his hands to quiet them.
“Yes, it’s true, good people. Lucia Volnero is my daughter, conceived with her mother, the duchessa, nineteen years ago. She is a Merrovingian, as Alítheia has confirmed. Lucia wished to keep the truth of her parentage a secret and to spend her life in quiet service to the realm. But since we have lost our regina and our principessa, and since only a mermaid of Merrovingian blood may sit upon the Miromaran throne, she has bravely and selflessly decided to offer herself as your ruler.”
Exultant beside her father, Lucia smiled her barracuda smile.
Vallerio held up his hands for quiet again. “In accordance with Merrow’s decrees, Lucia will now continue to the casting, the second part of her Dokimí, by performing the required songspell.”