“What?” I twisted in his grasp, but he didn’t budge, his gaze fastened to the gold-hilted sunstone knife. “I’m trying to tell you. Why are you?—”
“Tell me where, Kiera!” he roared.
I gasped. “It’s my mother’s.”
He flung my wrist away from him as if I’d stabbed him. He staggered backward, looking me up and down as if he’d never seen me before. “Your—your mother.”
I stood there, trembling, confused. Until it hit me. The only possible way he could recognize this knife. The knife Mother had carried on her only when she went to visit the Temple. As she did the night she was murdered.
My world shattered.
“You,” I gasped. “Youkilled my mother.”
Aiden flinched, then his face steeled with rage. “And you’re Weylin’s gods-damned daughter! A spy sent to kill me!”
“You murdered my mother, you bastard!”
I lunged at him with the knife just as the door exploded open behind me. I started to pivot just as Aiden roared, “Nikella! NO!”
Pain stabbed through my neck.
I staggered, my vision blurring.
My fingers reached toward the pain. Feathers. A dart. Gods, which one?
I fell to my knees. Mother’s knife fell with me.
Mother. Murdered by the man I thought I...
Someone cradled me to the ground as consciousness fled my mind as if it were a sinking ship. I fell to the darkest depths.
May the gods bring my soul to yours, Mother. I can’t lose you again.
Chapter 40
Kiera
No one waitedfor me on the other side of the Abyss.
Only demons wearing the faces of my failures ready to drag me into the Longest Night.
Chapter 41
Aiden
“Fucking Four, Nikella,”I snarled, plucking the green-feathered dart from Kiera’s neck. “You could’ve killed her.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Nikella said coldly. She put the empty whistler back on its shelf. “I saw Ruru load it with a sleeping dart when Maz was telling him how to clean it earlier.” Her eyes narrowed. “You let your heart rule your head too much, Aiden.”
Words I’d heard from her throughout most of my years.
Ruru burst out of his room, holding one of the little knives Kiera had given him. When he saw her limp on the floor and the dart in my hand, his eyes widened. “What did you do?” he cried, rushing forward.
I caught him around the chest. “Easy, Ruru. You don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Do you, Aiden?” Nikella shook her head.
I stared at Kiera—was that even her name? The princesses were named Emilia and Delysia. The knife drew my eyes like a crack in a mirror.
