Reaching down, Zarrah held out a hand. The Empress stared at it for a long moment, expression unreadable, then she smiled and took it. “That’s my girl.”
Zarrah pulled her upright, her aunt slipping her arm in hers and leading her toward the tallest tower. Though the structures were nothing alike in appearance, she found herself struck by the similarities to Silas’s tower in Vencia. The thought sent a prickle of unease across her skin, but she ignored it.
“Bermin tells me that you were on the north side of the Anriot spying, and that was how the Maridrinians caught you. Is this true?”
Bermin must have sent a courier the moment she left his office, and whoever it was must have ridden day and night, switching horses, to have beat her ship to Pyrinat. Not unexpected, but still irritating. “Yes. I was caught by a dawn patrol.”
“So you weren’t seeing a man as Yrina suggested?”
Shit. “No. I told her that only so she wouldn’t follow me.”
Her aunt snorted in disgust. “It was her duty to protect you. Perhaps if you’d allowed her to do so, you’d not have suffered the shame of capture, and Yrina would be alive.” The look she gave Zarrah was pointed. “She is dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Her tongue felt thick. “Or so I was told.”
“The Veliants might have killed her, but Yrina’s death is on your hands.” Her aunt spit on the grass. “A waste of a good soldier, but at least she died with honor, fulfilling her oath.”
The pain of Yrina’s death welled hot and fresh, but Zarrah only nodded.
“The Harendellians say you were treated well. Is that true?” Her aunt stopped in her tracks, twisting to grip Zarrah’s shoulders. “Did they touch you?”
She blinked, it taking a heartbeat for her to understand the meaning. “No. I was kept within the harem, surrounded by women. No one… touched me.”
The Empress’s dark eyes searched hers, her grip tight enough that it would leave bruises, spikes of pain running down Zarrah’s arms. “Better to die than to live having been befouled by one of those vermin, do you understand me?”
It was a struggle not to jerk out of her aunt’s grip as revulsion coursed through Zarrah’s body. Not at the suggestion of being forced against her will, as awful as that was, but at the suggestion that it would be better to die than to survive it. “The only time Silas Veliant touched me was to punch me in the face the night I escaped.”
“It’s not Silas who concerns me. He’s loyal to the harem, so if he wants a woman, he marries her first.” She laughed. “And the Maridrinians would rip him apart if he married a Valcottan. But what of the others? What about his sons?”
Too close to home. Far too close for comfort, and a bead of sweat ran down Zarrah’s temple. She prayed her aunt would attribute it to the pain she was causing as she said, “Beyond being beaten when I was captured and nearly dying from the poison on one of the princeling’s blades, no harm was done to me, Auntie.”
“A mercy.” Her aunt eased her grip, then smiled, though her gaze remained flat. Then she pulled Zarrah against her. “It was the worst form of torture knowing he had you, dear one. Every instinct in my heart demanded that I lead my armies north and take you back by force, but I had to think of the good of Valcotta.”
You could have freed me by agreeing to drop the blockade, Zarrah thought, but said, “I understood your choice—knew you were acting in what you believed was the best interest of Valcotta.”
Her aunt stiffened, pushing back from her. “What I knew was in the best interest for Valcotta. Our blockades are starving Maridrina of both coin and food, which renders them weak. To drop them would concede that advantage.”
“Bermin tells me you intend to take back the other half of Nerastis and then press north.”
“Does he now? And what say you of such a venture?”
Zarrah had walked away from the chance of a life with Keris so that she might stop such a war. So that she might use what influence she had with the Empress to pursue peace, in some form. Wise strategy would suggest that she ingratiate herself once more with her aunt before pursuing her goals, but Zarrah was afraid that if she didn’t take a step now, she never would. “The Harendellian ambassador shared with me the losses that Valcotta has taken from the Tempest Seas for the sake of bypassing the bridge, and I think those will not be regained by taking Nerastis and a few extra miles of coast. It’s not a big enough prize for the sacrifice you are making, Auntie.”
This time the smile reached her aunt’s eyes. “I agree, Zarrah. It isn’t.”
Armed guards swung open the doors to the Empress’s tower, which were made of twisted metal inset with glass of a thousand different colors to create the image of a woman with her hands held up to a blue sky. But before they could enter, the steward rushed toward them, breathless. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he said. “King Aren Kertell is here. And the Maridrinian woman is with him.”
They were here.
Her aunt let out a soft hiss, then said, “You’re sure it’s them?”
The steward lowered his head. “A—”
“I know their faces,” Zarrah interjected. “Allow me to go to ensure they are who they say they are.”
The Empress waved a hand at the steward. “Keep them entertained for the time being. Food. Drink. Tell him I’ll see him when I’ve concluded my business.”
When the man had departed, her aunt rounded on her. “What did you promise him in exchange for your freedom? Because if it is Valcotta’s assistance in his war—”
“I committed you to nothing,” Zarrah interrupted, earning herself a cold glare. “And my debt to Aren Kertell is my own. If he’s come here to ask something of you, it has nothing to do with me. I believed his intent was to return to Ithicana.”
The Empress’s lip curled. “He knows he can’t win back his kingdom alone. Yet he brings that woman with him to negotiate. Delia must be turning in her grave to see what ruin her son has brought to her kingdom—the fool thinks with his cock, not his brains.”
“What bigger blow can you strike against Silas than to help Ithicana take back the bridge he fought so hard to possess?” Not that she wished Valcotta to go to war, but if it was between liberating Ithicana and invading Maridrina, Zarrah would push the former.
Her aunt only smiled and then flicked her fingers. “Go, darling. Retrieve them, and let us see how he who once spit upon our friendship now begs for favor.”
Zarrah chewed on the insides of her cheeks as she walked away, her mind racing as she considered, firstly, how to warn Aren to keep his goddamned mouth shut about Keris, and two, what her aunt was planning. She had no intention of assisting Aren; that much was obvious. And while Bermin believed her intent was to retake Nerastis and much of the land north of the city, that goal seemed shallow on ambition to account for the gleam in the Empress’s eyes.