I knowexactlywho the stranger is because I remember everything.
I remember who did this to me... the man standing right in front of me.
A man I once loved, Roshan Acharia, the king of Oryndhr.
***
ROSHAN STARES ATme with those beautiful, expressive brown eyes in his breathtakingly handsome face, and for a heart-stopping moment I can’t control the deluge of conflicting emotions barreling through me.
Love, hate, hurt, anger.
Sorrow for everything lost.
“Starkeeper,” someone whispers, and I flinch.
My gaze flicks to the people surrounding him, and I recognize many of the faces: Aran, Clem, Hamid, and my old guards. I cherished them once, too, but they all stood by and did nothing while their king put me in irons. Aran was my teacher, Clem was my friend, and Hamid was a mentor, until they chosehim... and abandoned me. Bitter rage blooms on the heels of my recollection as my heart shatters anew.
And then my stare lands on Laleh—my very fuckingdeadbest friend—who has been with me here in Everlea. My heart quails in my chest, and I’d lift my hand to rub at the phantom pain if the rais of Karkad weren’t holding me in place.
“I saw you die,” I whisper hoarsely, feeling my eyes burn and my mind fill with horror. Who would be so cruel to play a trick like this? “Youdied.”
She laughs, the macabre sound chilling me to my bones. Her eyes, including the sclera, bleed to dark purple, those ugly veins stretching wider until she looks monstrous. “I suppose Idid. But I have a new lease on life, thanks to a little corpus magic from this realm.”
“Who?” Darrius is back to a single version of himself, his voice dark with fury.
“I’ll never tell,” she singsongs with a giggle.
Aghast, I stare, remembering what Ani had shared with me about the unlawful, dangerous side of necromancy, death magic, and reanimation. Laleh is nothing more than a fleshly husk, animated by corpus magic, not the girl she’d been. She’s not alive and she has no soul.
“You’re a revenant, not my Laleh,” I say, my voice breaking on her name.
She pouts. “But I havesomany of her memories. I thought we could be friends.”
“My best friend is gone.”
“But I am still here, darling Sura,” she says. “I’m better and stronger thanks to the blessing of my lord Fero.” I blanch at the ease of her admission, cold terror filling me. “You can be, too, you know. A goddess, if you just accept him, as you were meant to do. He will reward the faithful.”
I gape in horror. Fero ishere?
“No! What the fuck have you done?” I snap through my teeth. “I killed the queen and banished him!” My voice is wild, my hands balling into fists. “The god of death is the harbinger of eternal devastation, you stupid fucking fools.”
In anger, I move toward her and belatedly realize that Masišta’s arm is still banding me to him while I’m under the threat of his knife. “Let go of me!” I snarl.
“Release her,” the king of Oryndhr commands, and I hate the way that deep baritone feathers over me, opening wounds I had thought closed. My chest burns.
Masišta sneers. “The oracle says the beasts are breeding. We had an arrangement. Her for the azdaha eggs.”
Gasping, I blink in confusion thathehad orchestrated that vile exchange, but then Roshan frowns. “I have no knowledge of that,” he says sharply. “Now let her go and leave before I end your miserable life.”
After a tense handful of seconds, Masišta shoves me to the ground and hurls himself off the cliff to the ocean below. For a moment I’m stunned. Then I remember that he controls water, so he will likely survive the fall into the sea.
Groaning, I push myself upright, wincing at the stones cutting into my knees as I stand. My magic heals me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the bite of pain or the lingering numbness from the ropes. Darrius shifts closer, his posture stiff. This isn’t a dissenter from his own kingdom; this is a king from a neighboring realm. Any aggression could be construed as an act of war. Including said king’s act of showing up unannounced with a small army.
“You have come here,” Darrius asks in a silky tone, “without a royal decree?”
“I was invited by Rais Masišta and Raissa Tabiti,” Roshan says, and cocks his head, a dark purple flicker bleeding through his eyes. I study him, breath stalling in my lungs. I’ve seen that somewhere recently—Razulek’s memory!And I’d seen it myself in Coban.
Suddenly, I realize why he’d stopped looking at me what seems like a lifetime ago in Kaldari. To hide that something foul had been consuming the Roshan I knew.
