A better chance than if you were dead,a quiet voice says in the back of my mind. And it’s right. A small chance is better than no chance. I have to try.
I meet his gaze, feeling completely sure for the first time in a long while. “Maybe you don’t see it, but it’s clear to me that you aren’t the person they wanted you to be. You aren’t thekingthey wanted. You’re better. You have a heart and you want to do the right thing, but if you don’t wake the fuck up and figure that out, none of this will matter. We’ll both die here, and whatever chance we have of fixing this massive shit-fest will die with us. The system you were raised in is broken and homicidal, and if you aren’t willing to disobey it, then you might as well feed us both to the fucking wolves.”
I need him to make a choice. I need to know if he would rather die, showing obeisance to the power structures he was raised to protect, or live, and help me tear them all down.
A few seconds later, he shakes his head. “It is not broken. It is flawed, yes, but not broken.”
Hope disappears like a flame below the waves.
“Really? That’s what you took away fromthat?” At a complete loss on what to do, I crawl to the other side of the bed and curl up facing the wall.
“Amara,” he whispers.
I pull the sheet over me. “I’ll be over here until you either decide you’re done defending the boot on your neck, or until the guards come and execute us both.”
24
WHAT SHALL WE BUILD NEXT?
VEXAR
AMARA HASN’T MOVED. Only the curve of her spine is visible in the dim light, partially covered by the tattered sheet pulled around her. A large tattoo colors the skin between her shoulders. A tattoo I did not know was there. I want to drag my fingers over it. I want to go to her, hold her, but I know she would refuse me.
She thinks I am too … obedient, that I am blinded by the laws that have held my people together for generations. But she does not know my people. She does not know our laws or our ways.
I drag a claw over the bed frame and watch a flake of metal drift into the shadows below. “Why do you think this system is broken?” I ask.
She sighs, but does not move. “It allows slavery on a large scale. It forces its future rulers to compete in a bloodsport to prove they’re willing to do anything to obtain power. And it’s convinced you that obedience is more important than actual honor.”
“It has convinced me of no such thing.”
Sheets rustle behind me. “You couldn’t tell me if you would let the baby burn, Vexar.”
I say nothing.
“You know how I would have answered? I would have said, ‘Fuck the law, if someone needs help, no matter who they are or what the cost is to me, I’ll help them.’ And the fucked up part about all of this is that I’m pretty sure you would do the same. Or you would want to at least. But the second I mentioned a ‘law’, you couldn’t give me a straight answer.” She pauses. “Because you value the law more than anything else.”
Breathing becomes a challenge as I ask, “Why do you say my people have allowed slavery?”
“Your mother told you the rumors were false, right?”
My chest tightens. “She did.”
“Andshetold you to drop your investigation?”
Another flake of metal falls. “Initially, yes.”
“Andshewas the head of your empire at the time?”
I fold my hands in my lap and stare at the wall across from me. “Yes.”
The bed shifts. Amara moves closer. “You said no one with the title of ‘Queen’ would have known about the slave trade, but you were wrong.” There’s a beat of silence as her cool hand slides over my shoulder in a comforting caress. “Your mother knew.”
No. “She believed the rumors were spread to sow dissent. That is why she told me to drop the investigation.”
Amara takes her hand off my shoulder, and for the barest of moments, I feel her apprehension and sadness through our connection. It is a slip that she fixes quickly, closing me out again like a threat. Perhaps I am a threat.
“I told you I saw a woman here with Gaius,” she says, her voice heavy and slow, “and that Gaius called her, ‘my Queen’. She was tall. Not as tall as you, but close. She was thin andlooked … older. Had long white hair pulled back into a braid. Pale skin. And she was wearing a ring. A big ring. Black with a symbol carved on top, like a couple of x’s and dots.”
