“To the Crowhearts!” everyone echoed, raising their glasses.
Edlyn picked hers up and smiled, clinking it against Rayne's own goblet. Rayne watched, eyes wide over the rim of her glass, as Edlyn raised the drink to her lips, tipping it up, up—
“Stop.” Danyll grabbed Edlyn's wrist and forcefully lowered her hand.
“What are you doing?” Edlyn asked, struggling against his firm grip, but he persisted, prying the goblet from her fingers and holding it in front of him.
“Something isn't right.”
Rayne's eyes darted to Tierri. His face had gone pale, and she felt a flush creeping up her own neck, her cheeks warm. Danyll leaned forward, looking around the sisters at the king, who had frozen with his goblet in his hand.
“Was the food tasted?” the prince asked.
“Of course,” King Innis replied.
“And the wine?”
He knew. Both relief and disappointment washed over Rayne. She had failed, but her sister would live. She would be found out, but at least it was over. With the blood rushing into her ears, she didn't hear the king's reply or what Danyll said when he called Tierri over and whispered to him. Tierri looked at her with his lips pursed, barely hiding his own fear, before he left the dining hall.
The room was silent, the nobles looking at their laps or across the way at each other, no one touching their wine goblets. What great gossip this would make. Though dinner was ruined, these people would be the ones to see the corrupted princess to her dungeon cell. Of course, they didn't know that yet. But it was only a matter of time.
Moments later, Tierri returned hauling a bedraggled prisoner by a chain. The person shuffled behind him, barely able to pick up their feet. Their shoulders were slumped and their face was to the floor, braids snaking out from beneath their hood.
Black braids.
Rayne stood. Only Edlyn noticed.
“What is it?” Edlyn asked.
Tierri handed the chain to Danyll, who still held Edlyn's wine goblet.
“What is he doing?” Rayne asked.
“He called for a prisoner to taste the wine. He's being…Well, he's being himself.” Edlyn shrugged.
“This will be the best thing you’ve tasted in weeks, traitor,” Danyll said. The nobles tittered. The prisoner lifted her eyes. Eyes that Rayne knew. Imeyna found her almost immediately and gave a small shake of her head. She knew what was about to happen. It was another of Rayne’s failures.
Rayne had to stop this. She turned to her father. “Is this necessary?”
The man studied her face, so much like his own. High cheekbones, a narrow nose above plump lips, thoughtful brown eyes. “Do you know her?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Then she was one of your captors? I would rather see her dead than my daughter.”
“She was kind to me,” Rayne said.
“She is a criminal.”
He saw everything in black and white, right and wrong, while Rayne lived in the gray area in between. He saw only a Shaddern Knight, while she saw a woman and a sister, someone who had saved her and loved her in spite of who she was. Just like all those years ago when he'd seen only a slave girl daring to kiss a prince, while it was really just a girl loving a boy.
The king's eyes flicked past her and Rayne turned around, an objection frozen on her tongue, just in time to see Imeyna lift the goblet to her lips and drink.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rayne
Tierri's story had left out the important parts. How quickly the poison took effect; the desperation in a person's eyes as their throat constricted; how terrible it truly felt to watch someone stop breathing and not be able to do anything about it. To watch them die slowly and painfully.
There was chaos in the dining hall, but Rayne couldn't move. Imeyna dropped to her knees, her hands around her throat, but she had been forgotten. Danyll and the king were pushing Edlyn out of the hall, shouting for Tierri as they squirreled her away to her rooms where she would hide once more behind the Crowheart door. Nobles scrambled away from Imeyna as if the poison were contagious, women dramatically falling into men's arms.
“I was this close to drinking,” several of them were saying.
Rayne was caught in the middle of it, standing completely still.
She was a monster. She was a murderer. She was her father's daughter. It was so easy to condemn him but even easier to follow in his footsteps. To live up to her legacy. Imeyna was making a horrible, keening sound and Rayne clamped a hand over her own mouth to keep from crying out. Then Imeyna collapsed onto the floor, her cheek slapping the marble with a sickening finality.
Rayne's chair tumbled backward as she scrambled out from behind the table, but still, no one even glanced her way. She had been forgotten in the madness.
But she would never forget.
Not the way that Madlin had bravely knelt before them with her hands fisted at her sides. Or the way Merek had told her to leave him behind in the rubble of a collapsing city. Or how Imeyna had drunk from the goblet, knowing what it contained and knowing what that meant for her. Sacrifice one for the many. They had all given themselves up, paid the ultimate price.
Now it was her turn to pay.
A carving knife sat discarded on the table. She picked it up and stalked to the doors, joining the flood of people exiting the dining hall. The butter-yellow dress was not good for blending in, but no one tried to stop her. Most were worried about themselves more than the princess with the carving knife, rushing to their own rooms or to leave the palace. She marched through halls, past banded slaves and ladies' maids, and no one said a word to her. The door to the stairway beyond her rooms was ajar and she took the steps two at a time, her skirts rustling and threatening to trip her. At the top, the Crowheart door was secure, a line of fresh blood drying near the latch.
Her chest heaving, she pressed the tip of the carving knife into her palm and drew it sideways, opening a small gash that welled red with blood. She pressed her hand to the door and felt the power flow from her veins and join with the spellwork, Danyll's magic, Tierri's magic. The stone shifted and ground open. She was turning sideways to slip through when strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her backward. They dragged her down one flight of stairs to a landing between floors where there was no door and shoved her against a wall. The back of her head knocked against the smooth stone, her teeth snapping together, pain shooting up into her nose.
“You can't do this,” Tierri hissed. “You will die.”