The thought was a whisper in the back of Irina’s mind, and she nearly dropped the bones in shock.
It wasn’t her sister’s voice. It couldn’t be. The dead were dead. Nothing could bring them back to life to speak new thoughts, new words. It wasn’t her sister’s voice.
It was Irina’s own.
Her eyes stung, and she glared down at the bones she held. She wouldn’t have had to kill Tatiyana if her sister had been less desirable, less lovable, just . . . less. Instead, she’d taken their father’s love, their uncle’s favor, and the kingdom that should’ve been Irina’s—and she’d done it all without once acknowledging that she was leaving her older sister out in the cold.
That she was a thief. A selfish thief who deserved her fate.
Irina clung to the knowledge that she’d done what had to be done to right the wrongs stacked against her, but her throat didn’t ease. Her eyes still stung.
And her heart ached in a way that had nothing to do with the toll of magic.
The bones seemed to burn her palms as she forced herself to say, “Zna`uch. Reveal to me the secret of Lorelai’s power.”
For a moment, it seemed her sister’s heart would fight hers, but Irina was desperate, and Tatiyana had no will to exert. The queen blinked the tears from her eyes and raised her voice. “Zna`uch. Reveal the secret of Lorelai’s power.”
Images struck, faded and blurry at the edges. The ebony carriage entering Morcant. The evergreen crashing into Tatiyana and slicing her to pieces. Blood pouring into the pristine snow and carrying splinters of the carriage with it.
Tatiyana, lying on the ground and looking into the forest, where she locked eyes with her sister.
An understanding of what Irina was now capable of. Of what Irina would do.
A handful of ebony cradled in her sister’s blood. A whispered incantor.
The heart of the carriage’s ebony bowing before the power in Tatiyana’s blood and sending that power, that magic, into the ground, where it raced away from Morcant like a streak of light that pulsed brighter and brighter as her sister struggled for air.
The light reaching Ravenspire’s castle, burrowing into the stone, and searching for the one with lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow.
Lorelai, asleep and unaware. The light leaping from the stone, pouring over Lorelai’s skin like a blanket, and then sinking into the princess’s blood as Tatiyana breathed her last.
Irina dropped the bones, her hands shaking as rage obliterated the thickness in her throat and dried the last of her tears.
Even in death, her sister had managed to steal what Irina most wanted. Even in death, Tatiyana had corrupted Irina’s chance at a happily ever after.
Lorelai, the untrained half-Morcantian girl, possessed her own magic and every last drop of her mother’s as well.
Irina couldn’t fight that. Not with the Ravenspire ground turning against her. Not when her heart stumbled and burned every time she did the simplest spell.
Lorelai was coming for her, the Eldrian king by her side, and there was nothing Irina could do about it unless she found another source of power to bolster her own.
Another heart to bend to hers and give her its strength, its will.
A heart that wouldn’t poison her blood as the hearts of those in Ravenspire all seemed to do.
She climbed to her feet and left her sister’s bones lying scattered on her open grave. Tatiyana may have thought she could finish Irina by giving her daughter more power than any mardushka had a right to own, but Irina had a weapon her sister could never have foreseen.
She had the human heart of a Draconi warrior just waiting for a new chest to call home.
THIRTY-TWO
IT TOOK MOST of the day to travel halfway through the Hinderlinde Forest. All three of them were covered with scratches and bites. Lorelai had been so exhausted after using the weary heart of Ravenspire to destroy the roads and then using Kol’s dragon fire to fight Irina that she’d been unable to walk on her own for the first few hours. They stopped in the late afternoon in an abandoned shack that Gabril remembered using when Lorelai’s father went hunting for deer in the spring. The shack was small—maybe twice the size of their tent—and its lone window was covered in the same dusty grime that coated the floor inside, but it was well-built and had a fireplace.
Lorelai paced the floor, her thoughts racing, while Kol started a fire and Gabril readied a small pot with the last of their beans for dinner.
The longer she waited between attacks on Irina’s infrastructure, the more time she gave the queen to recover her strength. If she really wanted to have the advantage when she entered the capital, she needed to hit Irina again.
Tonight.