“Be our voice,” they repeated.
They nevershut up.
Alexandra hated them. The shadow. The Vimyrian god.Xavlin. They stood between her and the Perean throne.
A sharp click of heels echoed from behind. The scent of roses came next—sharp and overripe. Alexandra braced for a very different threat.
Her aunt.
“What are you doing out of your room?”
Kassandra’s shrill voice made Alexandra wince and brought her surroundings into stinging clarity. Her last lucid memory was of being in her room—an opulent enough space for a visiting Lady, though not nearly luxurious enough for a princess, let alone the king’s own niece.
Alexandra was now wandering the cold halls without a single recollection of how she got here. She was practically clinging to a wall, fingers raw from dragging across the coarse stone. What wing was this?
Kassandra, who could have been her mother’s twin but for the cold, harsh lines, stared down her flaring nose. “Titos wishes to see you.”
Finally.
After months, he would finally hear what she had to say. He would help her take back her home from that usurper who called himself her cousin.Shewas the rightful heir. Perean washers.
Dimitrios couldn’t have it.
Kassandra’s lovely mouth twisted into a sneer. “Do you think you can stop mumbling to yourself long enough to stand before your king?”
Alexandra would one day claw her aunt’s pretty brown eyes out. “I’m not crazy, you foul cunt.”
Kassandra’s hand cracked across Alexandra’s cheek, and her temple struck the wall. The woman came over her like a dark cloak and hissed into Alexandra’s ear. “You’d do well to remember who released you from confinement.”
A shudder passed over Alexandra. She’d walked the entire way to the capital of Sottera, right up to the palace’s front doors, and how had she been greeted? With a piss and shit-stained cell. A room with one small window, too high to see from. One meal a day. A chamber pot they replaced only once every three.
During those weeks, her Eyes had gone through rigorous questioning and torture. Many died in the process, and those who’d survived would never forget.
Alexandra should thank her uncle; her remaining Eyes were more loyal than ever.
For now, she simply relaxed into her upright posture and smiled at her aunt. “Thank you.”
Kassandra sniffed. “You need to bathe first.”
The voices came then, tumbling and roaring. “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Alexandra snapped.
“The separation of lovers by oceans and seas isolates a vulnerable king and will awaken the accused.”
All Selene has to do is jump jumpjump—he’s been waiting for her, always waiting, forever waiting. Her lover is go gogoing, not to her, to them, to the head headheads. Poor poor poor boy heir with no one to love him, blind to the trap traptraps.
Another slap cracked across Alexandra’s cheek, freeing her from all the voices, but not the lingering vision of a letter on fire, words blackening and wilting, and finally, all that was left were the words:I know you’ll do what’s right. Your beloved father, QMG.
They thought themselves generous with their warnings of what was to come. Never concerned with whether she was ready or not.
Fingers clenched a hunk of Alexandra’s hair and yanked her head back.
Kassandra glared into her eyes. “The gods have seen fit to ruin you for the crimes against your own family. Did they send you to us, or was this a part of some elaborate plan of your own to murder us as well? Either way, my brother would do well to have you put down like a mutt.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m?—”
“We know how you murdered your brother,” Kassandra cut in. “Your own mother gave you up. I assume it was you who poisoned my beloved sister?”
