“Lord Raffe.” She put her hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow. “There’s been some kind of mistake–”
“Time’s up, Your Majesty.” His dark eyes were cold, distant, as he looked past her, not at her. “Looks like Celestria has made the decision for you.” His smile was all teeth and no feeling when the guards yanked her to her feet.
Nev’s sword was drawn, but more sentries filed into her booth. She could hear a cry, Hanna perhaps, but her vision was blurred. Nothing but shapes and distorted sounds pulsed around her.
Fight back,her brain shouted.Do something.But fighting and physical strength were never her power. She was not Aesira, she would not win this fight. Not with brute strength, anyway.Through the million things buzzing in her mind, one word surfaced before the rest.
Treaty.
“You can’t do this,” she spat. “You need me. If I am sacrificed, the treaty is null. Novaria will attack.”
Raffe leaned close, his moustache tickling her ear. She flinched away but he gripped her face, keeping her close. “It’s a good thing,” he whispered, “there aretwoNovarian princesses.”
Kamari’s stomach plummeted.
Aesira.
They would use Aesira in her place.
“You did this?”
Raffe smiled and snapped his fingers. The guards closed in. She turned her attention to her parents. “How can you sit by and let this happen!” The guards pinned her arms behind her back, bending them at such an angle a shock of pain shot clear up to her shoulder.
Her mother was half decent enough to at least look grief-stricken that her daughter was about to die but it was her father’s cold voice that paralyzed her. “It is the will of the goddess,” he said, clenching tightly to the pointed star pendant hanging around his neck.
A goddess that never blessed Novaria. A goddess that bathed in blood.
A goddess that was not real.
A hot tear slid down Kamari’s cheek and her lips trembled. “Is it? Or is it the will of men?” Her mother’s brows bunched, a befuddled look sweeping across her face but Kamari had no time to explain before the grip from the guards bruised the back of herarms. Nev struggled against several sentries, sword drawn, metal clashing together.
“Please, do something!” Hanna’s pleas drifted over the wind like a piece of gossamer, floating and floating, until the breeze swept them away and all that was left were the noises of the crowd.
The sentries pulled her down the steps, through the stands where hundreds of wide eyes bored into her. Some spat, shouting obscenities at her. A queen that was never wanted. Others prayed over her, their greedy hands reaching for any piece of her they could touch.
“Praise Celestria,” they said. “Fill the reservoirs. Fill our cups!”
More tears fled from her eyes and when her feet hit the sand of the stadium her legs shook. Somewhere in the distance, through the raucous chatter of the crowd, another three chimes rang, their high pitches getting caught on the wind.
Aesira.
The sentries tied her to the dais, the noose snug around her neck. “Aesira!” she shouted but her voice was lost to the crowd–her people–cheering for her death. “Aesira!” she screamed again, this time choking on a sob.
“Screaming will only make it worse,” one of the sentries said. His voice was rough, just like his hands, as he bound Kamari’s wrists together with thick rope. “Be quiet.” He tightened the rope until it bit into her skin.
Tears dripped down her nose, into her mouth as she gazed out at the arena. At the hundreds of people who laughed and clapped and shouted as the noose tightened around her neck. Was this what it was like for all of them? Each name that was drawn? Each sacrifice? The thought of other sacrifices brought forth even more sobs. Fordecades, Vargah had performed the ritual. For decades, the kings and queens of this country had happily killed one of their own, and it was Desmond who wanted change. Who wrote that he would find a way.
And it was Desmond who was now dead, and Kamari who would die next.
She braved another glance at the crowd. The children that sang and the mothers that prayed. She didn’t blame them. They were thirsty beyond reason. Hot and scorching withoutastrato keep them cool. Kamari dying meant they would live and so she would not blame them.
She didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, but change was coming and her sister would bring it.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice went unheard as the High Priestess began a prayer, but her mind was racing through each and every moment in her life up to this one.
Her childhood in Novaria.
Her sister and her brother.
