“Your mother is Arkasva.”
She laughed bitterly. “My mother is set to become the new Imperator of the South. And her first order will be to annex Bamaria to Korteria. Officially. Ka Elys in Elyria’s already agreed to do the same. Temporarily, of course.”
“What?” I balked.
“Gods, Tristan. Haven’t you figured it the fuck out by now?” Naria laughed bitterly, her eyes blazing. “My mother is evil. She’s in bed with the Emperor. She’d put me there, too, if she wasn’t so jealous. It’s been her plan all along, to do their bidding,to aid them in exchange for power. So she could convince herself that she rose to the top. Your grandmother, too.”
My stomach twisted, memories shining in a new light. All the times my grandmother had brought the Emperor into our home. Even after Haleika’s murder and public humiliation and execution. Just tonight she was going along with the Bastardmaker even after I’d been clearly tortured. Assaulted. Forced to watch the murder of my best friend—all while I was, while I was?—
Maybe she didn’t knowthatpart. But she knew enough. Had seen enough. And it hadn’t mattered. My feelings hadn’t mattered. I hadn’t mattered. Not to her.
My eyes narrowed on Naria. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because for once, no one can hear me. Because you have nowhere else to go. Because you came here to see me. And because,” she shrugged, “because it seems like you’re finally starting to get it.”
“But you’ve always been—” I shook my head.
“What?” she asked. “Loyal to my mother?” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you honestly think I had a choice? I thought you saw me. I thought you saw it.”
I blinked, because she’d been right. I had—I had seen it—the fear in her eyes, in her aura, the way she changed around her mother. The way she’d shut me down when I brought it up.
She stood suddenly, pacing the room back and forth. “This is so typical. You’ve had your eyes open to what this Empire actually is for what—a minute? And you can’t be alone?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Unlike you, I never swallowed the Empire’s lies. Or the lies of the woman who raised me. And unlike you, I’ve been alone my whole fucking life.”
“But you could’ve spent time with—” I started, my brain struggling to make sense of everything she was saying. To rectifythe Naria I’d known, with the one I was starting to see beneath the surface, and the one blazing with fury before me now.
“Spent time with who?” she spat. “My cousins? You really think my mother would have allowed that? Making friends with the people keeping the title of Arkasva from her?”
“If you had told them the truth, they would have helped you. Lyr would have helped you.”
Naria looked away, her voice growing softer. “It was easier to make myself hate them. To let them hate me. It was easier to go on without hope things could be different. To know where I stood; where we all stood.”
I was silent, so many memories of Naria over the years running through my mind, coming out now in a different light. The way she’d always been apart from Lyr, looking miserable. The way she’d spoken against her father’s killer, Aemon, with such ferocity, even though she knew no one agreed with her, only for her mother to loudly denounce her words again and again. Even the way she’d pursued me, knowing of my commitment to Lyr. I could see it now. See how it was all on purpose. Calculated.
“You had to spend nights in my bed just to see an ounce of my discomfort,” she said. “And now? Now you finally see the truth? I can’t decide if I’m that good, or you’re just that stupid.”
My stomach dropped. “Why did you become a soturion?” I asked. “I never thought you would.”
Her mouth tightened, and she pulled at the ends of her blonde hair, twisting them around her finger. “I didn’t want to be one. I don’t particularly care to be one now. I wanted to be a mage. I wanted to study and do magic. I always did. But she was Master of Education, already in every part of my life, dictating it, controlling it. Being up there on the dais before the Arkmage—being asked what path I’d choose—it was the only time I had a chance to make a choice. The first time in my life I had a choicethat she couldn’t influence or stop. That she didn’t see coming. And it was the only way to get away from her, away from her watchful eye. To gain a moment of freedom, of being able to breathe.”
She stopped pacing and sat back beside me, and gestured around her bedroom—the room that was once Meera’s. “You can see my plan worked really fucking well.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You should be. You’re stuck here now, too.”
She was right. We were both in danger. But as I watched Naria sitting next to me, twisting her hair around her finger, I realized for the first time since I’d left the Palace, I didn’t want to scream, or cry, or kill myself. It was the first time being with Naria felt good. It was just us. We didn’t have to put on a show. And she wasn’t being manipulated by her mother.
“I don’t mind as much. Being stuck here with you,” I said. It was the most truthful thing I’d ever told her.
She rolled her eyes and I waited for the rebuff. For her to snap at me and tell me how stupid I was being. But she only walked to her closet and reached inside, bringing out an extra pillow. Laying it on the bed, she pulled back the covers and patted her sheets. “Come here. I’ll take off your boots, help you into bed.”
“I can stay?” I asked.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. “It is.”
“They really hurt you bad, didn’t they?” she said softly.
