“He will come to me,” the emperor declared.
“Oh?” I worked to understand him, but panic gripped me. I felt closer to finding a deep connection with him, but it kept faltering, like I was trying to light a match in the wind. I had to work harder. I couldn’t lose ground now. I focused on my fierce desire to rescue Pia and frantically tried to produce thoughts that might give me empathy for Valko.
How intolerable it must be to know a guard who had been trusted and privileged to attend him—the grand ruler of all Riaznin—and even bunk right beside his room, had also betrayed him in order to follow after a lowly poet. An example should be made of Yuri in front of the common people before their insufferable ideas of entitlement got out of hand.
“Why will Yuri come to you?” I asked and tried to weed inside myself for an opening to grant Valko full purchase of me. I needed to manifest the nearly impossible feat of perfect understanding with him in order to grasp my hidden power of curbing his emotions.
He stroked the shell of my ear. “You have much to learn about men, Sonya. We like to be gallant. It’s hard to watch a lady in distress. And gallantry turns swiftly to vengeance.” He nuzzled closer. “Vengeance is a powerful tool—powerful and dangerous. But I needn’t fear, for I have you. When Yuri returns, you will warn me.”
I wasn’t sure I was following. “You think he will attempt to rescue Pia?” I strove to tamp down my hope and stay aligned with my forced empathy.
“Not rescue. Yuri will come back for revenge.”
Everything around me seemed to slow. The flicker of the candles. The rustling curtains at the windows. I shrank back. My heart pounded. All my efforts for persuading the emperor scattered like ashes. “Valko, what have you done?”
He broadened his shoulders. “Nothing any monarch would blink an eye at. I’ve simply executed a person guilty of treason.”
I stared at him. His words cut off all my sensation. I had no lungs to breathe, no pulse at my throat, no blood pumping past my absent heart. The world itself stopped moving, stopped revolving, stopped existing. There was nothing but an inconceivable truth. “Pia is dead?”
Valko was unable to hold my gaze. “Yes.”
“But . . . that isn’t possible. I saw her today. She . . . she was only just imprisoned and . . .” I couldn’t think clearly. An avalanche of thoughts crowded my mind, but only left me in a stupor. How could Pia be gone? Had I really said the word dead aloud? That couldn’t be right. I hadn’t had time to free her. I was going to. I’d been trying. I . . .
My gaze fixed upon the pattern of an embroidered pillow until it seared spots into my vision. My ears rang with the silence of the room. The emperor wasn’t looking at me. Why? He always looked at me.
Pia.
The truth gutted me again.
Pia is dead.
A painful whimper tore from my throat. I choked it back with my stubbornness. I refused to accept Pia’s fate, refused to acknowledge the absence of her aura, the missing glow I felt when she was in the palace, that faint surge in my blood that was present when blood flowed through her veins. And yet how easy it was to believe Valko would have her killed.
A horrified breath purged from my chest. Another tumbled after it. They quickly escalated into dry sobs. Each heartbeat struck my rib cage like an iron mallet. I shook my head again and again, unable to contain my tormenting emotions. I was nothing but pain now, nothing but feeling.
“She was innocent,” I whispered, my tongue tasting of bile.
“She was guilty, Sonya.” Valko finally met my eyes. “After her arrest, we had her belongings searched.” He pointed to the volume of poetry in my hand. “That was found in her room, not Yuri’s.”
A wave of coldness flooded over me. The book slipped through my fingers and thudded to the ground. My hand flew to my mouth as a violent cramp of nausea made my shoulders rack.
This was my fault. I gave her that book.
Pia was dead because of me.
“You’ve made the worst of mistakes,” I said. Tremors of shock chased through my body. “Pia could barely read. I was . . . I was teaching her . . .” Past my wild panic and grief, I knew I had to protect myself from blame. For Dasha, for Tola. For Anton and his dream of liberating Riaznin. “Yuri must have left the book in her safekeeping, knowing she wouldn’t understand what it was.” I dug my hands through my hair as the horror of her death crashed over me again, a wave that wouldn’t recede. “How could you have done this, Valko?”
He reached for me as if to offer comfort, but I wrenched away in disgust. “Did you truly think your kisses and your twisted affection could make me forget her? She was my friend!” I shouted and held back none of my rage and sorrow. “She was nearly your lover!”
His eyes flew wide at my outburst. “She was a maid.”
“Do you hear yourself?” My eyes stung with bitter tears. “I am also your servant. Does my life mean so little to you?”