Her aunt threw the pages at her face. Zarrah caught several of them, eyes skipping over the spidery script laying out all the tiny damning details. A hundred coincidences that together whispered a truth that only a fool would deny. But for Keris’s sake—and her own—she had to try. “Serin is a liar.”
“Not to me.” Her aunt’s head cocked, her expression making Zarrah want to run. To hide. Because not only was what looked back at her unfamiliar and strange, it was barely human. “We have long been adversaries, and there is a trust that comes in that. What horror that I can put more faith in the words of a Maridrinian spymaster than that of my own flesh and blood. My chosen heir.”
“Auntie—”
“Shh, dear one.” The Empress pressed two fingers to Zarrah’s lips, nails digging in so hard that blood dribbled into her mouth. “I told no one but you my plans for Vencia. Told you to tell no one until you were on the high seas. Yet the princeling delivered my plans to his father in such a manner they could only have come from your lips. You betrayed me. Betrayed Valcotta.”
“I did not betray Valcotta.”
In a flash, a knife was in her aunt’s hand, pressed against Zarrah’s throat. “Lie to me again, dear one, and you will bleed out on this floor. And I’ll feed your corpse to the dogs.”
A traitor’s death.
Denial was pointless. But perhaps the truth might do some good. “I may have betrayed your confidence, but I did not betray Valcotta, Auntie. You sought to escalate a war and pursue an attack that would have seen countless innocents killed. And for what? What had we to gain from attacking Vencia besides the perverse pleasure of slaughter?”
“Revenge.” Her aunt stared at her, unblinking. “They killed your mother, Zarrah. Is the princeling so pleasing between the sheets that you’ve forgotten that? Forgotten how they cut off her head and hung her body up to rot and drip down upon you for days?”
Hearing it still hurt, but not in the way it once had. “I haven’t forgotten. But unlike you, I remember that it was Silas who killed my mother, not Maridrina. And Silas is dead.”
“Not all of him. You dishonor your mother’s memory by not extinguishing his bloodline.”
“Keris is—” She was about to say he was nothing like his father, but that wasn’t entirely true. Silas had left his mark on his son. “He’s not his father. He wants peace, Auntie. The Endless War could end. We could stop the fighting. Could have peace if only you would give up this… this fanatical pursuit of pride and vengeance. Valcotta will be better for it.”
Silence.
Blood dripped down her lips into her mouth, but Zarrah barely felt the sting as she stared into the eyes of the woman who’d saved her life. Who’d brought her back from the edge. Who’d made her strong. For the first time, she saw that there was something wrong with her aunt. Something missing. And its lack ensured the Empress would never understand the future Zarrah dreamed for Valcotta.
“You were supposed to be mine, dear one. Supposed to be the one who’d carry on my legacy. The one who’d ensure I lived on. But you’re still hers. Or worse,” she hissed, “you’re his.”
Zarrah lifted her chin. “I belong to no one but myself.”
And she’d honor herself to the bitter end.
The Empress laughed, and the wildness in it turned Zarrah’s blood to ice.
Then her aunt attacked.
The hilt of her aunt’s knife struck her in the temple, and Zarrah dropped to her knees, stunned. Only for a foot to catch her in the stomach, sending her toppling sideways. The world swam, and Zarrah tried to stand, but another blow caught her in the stomach, flipping her. Then another and another, each one driving deeper into her belly, agony racing through her body.
If you let her kill you, this will never end, a voice whispered from deep in her thoughts. If you let her kill you, she’ll make war on Keris.
She needed to fight.
Zarrah rolled, catching hold of the Empress’s ankle and pulling her down. She landed with a crash, and Zarrah was on top of her in a flash. Though her aunt had experience and skill, youth and strength still counted for something as Zarrah pinned her. “This can’t go on.” She spit blood onto the tile. “It has to stop.”
The Empress laughed. “The war will never stop.”
It was the truth. Under her aunt’s rule, nothing would ever change. And the chance for Zarrah to sway her had been eradicated, if it ever existed at all.
There was only one option left.
While she’d be executed for it, Zarrah had the hope that Bermin would be better, for at least her cousin still possessed his humanity.
Whereas this creature was devoid of the quality entirely.
Zarrah closed her hands over her aunt’s throat and squeezed, silencing the laughter.
And leaving panic in its wake.
Her aunt’s eyes bulged, and she squirmed and struggled beneath Zarrah. But the Empress had taught Zarrah every trick she knew. And Zarrah capitalized on that knowledge even as she squeezed harder.
Her aunt’s face purpled, her eyes wide and frantic, and Zarrah watched as she lost consciousness. Tears flooded down her cheeks, but she didn’t let go.
Then a battering ram struck her in the side.
All the air drove out of Zarrah’s lungs, her head slamming against the tiles, and she vaguely made out Welran’s face above her. Boots pounded against floor as guards poured in, several moving to help her aunt’s bodyguard restrain Zarrah.
The Empress’s voice, soft and strangled, said, “She tried to kill me. She’s a traitor. A cursed traitor in bed with Maridrina. Arrest her! She’s charged with treason.”
The world swam in and out of focus, but Zarrah forced herself to center on the Empress. “Yes, Auntie. Arrest me. Try me for treason and give me a trial.” Because the law demanded it, and Zarrah was prepared to ensure that everyone in Pyrinat, and in Valcotta, heard what she had to say about their ruler.
The Empress was quivering, Welran having moved to support her, but it was false weakness. For the eyes that stared back at Zarrah held nothing but fury. “No, dear one. There will be no trial for you. No execution. For what you’ve done, it must be Devil’s Island.”
Horror filled Zarrah’s chest, and on its heels came terror unlike anything she’d ever known, bile burning up her throat because to be sent to that island was to be sent to hell on earth. “No, Auntie. Please, please don’t send me there!”
“If you couldn’t face the consequences, you shouldn’t have betrayed me.”
But treason meant execution, not that place. “Just kill me now. Please.”
The Empress only gave her a cold smile. “Put her in shackles. And gag her. Leave her traitorous words for those who will greet her on Devil’s Island’s shores.”
88
KERIS
The rumor that he’d killed Serin in cold blood swept across Vencia like a tidal wave, repeated over and over until all swore it was truth. And although no one wept for the loss of Maridrina’s spymaster, the knowledge that their new king had murdered him in cold blood changed things.
There were no more cheers. No more songs. And Keris felt a wariness in their eyes when he passed, his people no longer certain that he was the harbinger of change.