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 that laugh was 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 to negotiating with the Empress.”
44
ZARRAH
The balance of her day was a maddening combination of stilted conversation or being outright ignored by the harem, and Zarrah used her time to watch and listen. Yet as the day progressed into evening, she found herself thinking more about what Sara’s mother had said, wondering what secrets hid in the tapestry in her room, her mind conjuring thoughts of weapons woven into the threads or instructions for some secret route of escape.
By the time she’d forced another over-salted dinner down her throat, Zarrah was vibrating with anticipation, pleading exhaustion until Coralyn allowed her guards to escort her back to her room.
The second Zarrah pulled off the cursed heels that were murdering her feet, she ran silently to the tapestry, which hung floor to ceiling behind the headboard. Old and faded, it depicted two women weaving, the work mediocre and the subject dull. Frowning, Zarrah glanced at the door, then knelt next to the bed. The area where the fabric was tacked to the wall showed wear, as though it had been refastened many times. Yet it was dusty enough that she doubted it had been removed for cleaning in years.
Unfastening the corner, Zarrah pulled it away from the wall as much as the bed would allow, peering into the dark space. But she could see nothing in the dim light, so she shoved her hand behind the tapestry, the stone wall cold against her overheated skin. She was nearly at the limit her arm could reach when her fingers brushed a deep groove. Her heart racing, she traced along the groove, realizing that someone had carved away the mortar around one of the large stone blocks in the wall.
And left behind their tool.
Withdrawing her hand, Zarrah stared at the small nail, the tip dull from endless chiseling. Easing the bed away from the wall, she crawled behind it, lifting the tapestry to stare at the block, seeing a dozen names carved into the surface. A dozen women who, over the years, had all worked to create an escape from this place.
And they’d very nearly made it. Beneath the block and around the sides, the mortar was gone, and sunlight shone through. There was only the mortar along the top still holding the block in place.
Zarrah scratched her name on the block. Set the nail back in its groove. Fixed the tapestry into place. Tonight, she’d pick up work where the other women had left off, and when she succeeded where they had failed, she’d have the first step in her plan.
Going to the window, she looked up at the tower where Silas slept.
And she smiled.
45
KERIS
He was drunk.
Which, contrary to the rumors about him, was something Keris never allowed himself to become. It lowered his guard, loosened his lips, and risked sleep so deep that he’d never hear the assassin coming. But tonight, that was the oblivion he sought. To escape the endlessly replaying sensation of his knife siding into Yrina’s throat, hot blood spraying him in the face, and her words in his ears.
Find another way.
Except there was no other way. The sanctum was locked down, even trusted servants forbidden from exiting the inner gates, and the inner walls were thick with guards whose attention never wavered. Not with the Ithicanians ceaseless in their attempts to reach their king. And not with Yrina having killed four of their own in an effort to reach Valcotta.
Coralyn had come to see him at some point during the afternoon. She’d eyed the empty wine bottles with disapproval before moving books aside to sit on a chair. “I saw the blood. Who did your father kill?”
“He didn’t kill anyone.” Keris drained his cup and promptly uncorked another bottle. “I did.”
The silence that stretched made him sick, the anticipation of what his aunt would say making him want to shout at her to get on with it. To say what she needed to say.
“What did you think would happen, Keris? The moment you arrived in Vencia with Zarrah Anaphora in tow, you stepped into the arena. Now you have a choice: you can fight for the crown, or you can lie down and die.”
“I never wanted to be king,” he answered, staring blindly into the distance. “Ran from it all my life, because I knew I was ill-suited for the role.”
“I’m aware.” Coralyn sat on the sofa next to him. “And I’ve long done my best to support you in your flight from duty, even if I didn’t agree with it. If you’d kept your head down, you might have outlived your father and inherited, then abdicated to one of your brothers. But in showing a willingness to play the game, you’ve removed that option. Your father’s eyes are on you, but worse, the Magpie’s eyes are on you. Which means you must either bend to their power or take it from them.”
“I’d gladly carve out both their hearts, if I could manage it.”
Coralyn snorted. “I didn’t raise you to be a drunken fool, boy. You cannot murder your father, nor can you be seen as complicit in his death. The former would see you executed, and the latter would have the people label you a coward. You must find another way.”
“What other way?” he shouted, those cursed words triggering him. “There is no other way!”