The brown leather cover had two golden symbols upon it—the symbols for water and earth magic.
She opened the book up and held it toward a torch so she could read it easily. It held the accounts of one who was Valoria’s personal scribe when she was in power in Nothern Limeros a thousand years ago, and it held sketches of the goddess Cleo had never seen before.
“The real truth about Valoria?” she mused to herself. “Or just the personal opinions of some lovestruck scribe?”
Despite Valoria’s rumored sadistic nature—rivaling only that of King Gaius’s—she was said to be as eternally beautiful as any immortal who’d ever existed.
Still, this book seemed like one worth reading.
Cleo tucked the book under her arm, deciding to take it back to her chambers to read more. She and Valoria had one important thing in common, something she couldn’t ignore: the water Kindred.
Sleep didn’t tug at her yet, so she continued to explore the library. She found an alcove that held a great surprise. On the wall, flanked by two small lanterns, was a portrait of her mother.
Cleo hadn’t seen this painting in years. She had assumed it had been burned with the rest of the Bellos royal family.
The fact that it hadn’t been destroyed filled her heart with a sudden burst of joy and relief.
Queen Elena Bellos looked so much like Emilia. Cleo wished she’d had a chance to know her.
Beneath the portrait was a glass case, similar to the ones that her father had stuffed with the gifts from royal families from overseas who’d come to visit and brought shining treasures from their kingdoms.
This cabinet held only one piece.
A jeweled dagger.
Cleo moved closer, realizing that there was something on the ground.
A piece of torn parchment.
Unable to stifle her curiosity, she picked up the parchment to find it was a letter written in a feminine hand. Part of it had been ripped away, leaving only a few lines for her to read.
My darling Gaius,
I know you must hate me. It’s always seemed to be that way between us—either love or hate. But know as I enter this marriage that I do so out of my obligation to my family. I can’t turn my back on my mother’s wishes. It would have killed her had I run away with you. But I love you. I love you. I love you. I could repeat it a thousand times and it would never stop being true. If there were any other way, know that I would—
The letter had been torn after that line, and Cleo felt a desperate grief within her at not being able to know more.
Her mother wrote this.
She wrote this to King Gaius.
With a trembling hand, Cleo reached into the case and picked up the dagger.
The hilt was encrusted with precious jewels. A beautiful treasure, one that struck her as oddly familiar.
Aron Lagaris, Cleo’s former betrothed, had owned a jeweled dagger, but it was not nearly as grand as this. Jonas had kept Aron’s dagger for months after the tragedy at the Paelsian market that day, a reminder of losing his brother, a reminder of the vengeance in the rebel’s heart.
Another dagger came to Cleo’s mind then—one that Prince Ashur had given to her on her wedding night.
“This is a Kraeshian wedding dagger,” she breathed.
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Cleo froze at the sound of King Gaius’s voice. She took a deep breath in and straightened her spine. “You’re the one who put it here,” she said.
“I gifted that to your mother upon her marriage to your father.”
It took her a moment to find her voice. “What a strange gift from a Limerian.”
“It is, isn’t it? I wanted her to kill Corvin with it in his sleep.”
Cleo turned to glare at him. The king wore a cloak as black as his hair, as dark as his eyes. For a moment, he looked so much like Magnus that it stole her breath.
“If you gave her such a gift,” she managed to say, “I can see why she hated you.”
“I dropped that letter earlier this evening.” His gaze fell upon it still clutched in Cleo’s hand, and in a single motion he snatched it away from her. “If you read it, you know that hate was only one of the emotions she held for me.” The king’s attention shifted to the portrait above her. “Elena kept the dagger. I saw it again in a treasure cabinet like this when I came to visit your father twelve years ago.”
Cleo’s gaze went to it again. “Is this the same dagger that Magnus saw during that visit? One so beautiful that he wanted to steal it? And you—”
“Cut him with it,” he said bluntly. “Yes. I did. And he bore the scar from that day to remind me of that moment when I lost control of myself, lost in my grief.”
“I can’t believe my mother would have ever . . .” A pain squeezed her heart, both of grief and outrage. “She loved my father.”
Gaius turned his face away so it became shrouded by shadows. “I suppose she did, in her way. Her deeply obedient, devoted to her bloody goddess, myopic family way.” His smile turned into a sneer. He studied the portrait now with disdain rather than reverence. “Elena was a treasure that your father wished to add to his growing collection. Your grandparents were thrilled that the Corso family name—certainly noble, but not important enough to earn the right to a villa in the City of Gold—might become truly royal. They accepted the betrothal without even consulting Elena about it first.”
Cleo was equal parts thirsty to know more and appalled by any slight against her beloved father. “Your mother made it sound like you had fallen for each other much earlier, on the Isle of Lukas. If this was true, why didn’t you marry her? You were a prince.”
“How clever. Why didn’t I think of that?” Such coldness to his tone, such sarcasm. She flinched from it. “Alas, there were rumors about me even then, rumors that met with her parents’ disapproval. I was . . . tainted, you might say. Dark and unpredictable, dangerous and violent. They worried for the safety of their precious daughter.”
“Rightfully so.”
“I would never have harmed Elena. I worshipped her.” His dark eyes glittered as he focused on Cleo. “And she knew it. She nearly ran away with me a month before she married him.”
She would have denied this very possibility if she hadn’t first read the letter. “But she didn’t.”
“No. Instead I received this message. I wasn’t very happy to read it.”
That would explain why it had been torn in half.
Cleo tried to figure it out. “My grandparents intervened . . .”
“My mother intervened.” He scowled. “I see it all now, far more clearly than ever before. How much she controlled when it came to her plans for me. Her control over me.”
“Selia spoke to my grandparents? Warned them?”
“No. After I received this”—his grip on the parchment tightened—“my mother saw how distraught I’d become. How distracted and obsessed. She knew I would never give Elena up. So she had your grandparents murdered.”