“You couldn’t stop me.”
“Perhaps not, but I would have to try. And she is . . .” Mace took a deep breath. “She is not worth it.”
Kelsea looked down at her mother, who had shrunken into her chair and was staring up at her with wide, surprised eyes. Worse than surprised—bewildered, as though she could not imagine what she had done wrong. Kelsea wondered if a much younger Elyssa had looked just this way as the assassination attempts began, shipments rolling beneath her windows each month, a woman unable to understand why she wasn’t loved by all the world . . .
“Don’t do it, Lady,” Mace repeated, his voice pleading, and now Kelsea saw that he was right, though not for the reasons he believed. No matter what Kelsea did here, she would not have what she wanted. She longed for revenge, but the woman she wanted to unleash her fury upon was not this one. This woman-child could never comprehend the magnitude of her mistakes. There would be no explanation, no accountability. There would be no catharsis.
No one for me to hate.
In a book, the thought would perhaps have been liberating, would have healed something deep inside Kelsea. In reality, it was the loneliest idea she could have imagined. All of the strength faded from her arms, and she backed away.
“There, that’s sorted,” said Elyssa, her face brightening. “Are we all done with the past now?”
“All done,” Kelsea replied, though her voice sounded ghastly to her own ears. They would never be done with the past, but her mother wasn’t one to understand that. Elyssa stood up from her own chair, her arms outstretched, and Kelsea saw, horrified, that her mother meant to embrace her. She scooted backward, stumbling over the uneven stones.
“What is it?” her mother asked, her voice bewildered again and, worse, a little hurt. “There are no more secrets now. We can finally get to know each other.”
“No.”
“What? Why not?” Elyssa stared at her, that faint hint of a pout back at the corners of her mouth. “You’re my daughter. I wasn’t a perfect mother, certainly, but you’re grown now. Surely we can put the past behind us.”
“No, we can’t.” Kelsea paused, choosing her words very carefully, for she never planned to speak to this woman again. “You are a selfish woman, and careless, and stupid. You should never have had the fate of others in your hands. I believe that I am a better person for having been raised by Barty and Carlin, for never having known you. I want no part of you at all.”
Her mother’s mouth fell open. She began to protest, but Kelsea turned away. Elyssa tried to follow, but Mace moved to block her way.
“Where is your door?” he demanded.
“What door?”
“Your door,” Mace repeated patiently. “How did you get in here?”
“It’s here.” Elyssa tapped the wall, and a door opened to reveal a black rectangle in the stone. Another secret passage; was no building in this kingdom just as it appeared?
“Go.”
“But she doesn’t understand! She—”
“The Queen has spoken.”
Elyssa’s lips rounded in outrage. “I’m the Queen!”
“No. You traded your crown for safety, long ago.”
“But—”
“Will you go? Or must I escort you?”
“You used to be my best guard, Mace!” Her mother sounded as though she were on the verge of tears. “What happened?”
Mace’s jaw tightened. Without another word, he guided her through the doorway and yanked the door shut behind her. For a long minute, fists slammed against the other side, and then there was silence.
“Does the Guard know?” Kelsea asked Mace. “The rest of them?”
“Only Carroll. He always used me for the jobs no one else would do. I often think it’s why he recruited me.”
“She could always come back,” said Kelsea. “She could just come right down the hall, and show herself to the whole guard.”
“She won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her I would kill her if she did.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I don’t know.”
Kelsea sat on her bed. She wanted to lie down, go back to sleep and forget all of this. But she sensed that if she and Mace didn’t have this conversation now, they never would. Kelsea would lose her nerve, and they would fall back into their easy, sometimes acerbic friendship, a still pond that both of them would want to leave undisturbed.
“I killed my father,” she told Mace. “I didn’t know, but I did it, all the same.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If you hadn’t put Mhurn out of his misery, Lady, we would have. It was the right thing to do. He was broken, and at the time, it seemed unlikely that you would ever find out who he was. Certainly none of us would ever have told you, not after that.”
“You should have told me.”