Seren’s fingers were a soft brush as they laced through mine. She was standing now, the pain of her burns surely aching, but no longer unbearable. We watched as Claudian handed Ayla the tools to hammer the final nail in his coffin.
“You are hardly fit to make decisions for this kingdom. You never were much of a leader, Ayla, and really, this is to our benefit. You will make a beautiful figurehead, while I do all of the heavy lifting. We both win,” Claudian explained, so clearly believing his words to be irrevocable truth.
Ayla laughed, a mournful sound. “I have tried to be a good princess, and I have tried to be a good daughter. I have done everything you have asked of me, without question. My biggest mistake was thinking that everything you did was for me, when all along, we have both been serving your own twisted ambitions.”
Claudian’s face changed as if he had only just realized Ayla was slipping away from him. “You know that isn’t true. I love you.”
“If you really loved me, you would have let me keep the only mother I had ever known. You would have supported my needs over your own. If you loved me, you would not be on the floor in chains. I guess that was your mistake.” Ayla's eyes were downcast, head shaking in disappointed resignation.
I ceded my hold over her emotions. She no longer needed my help in allowing her true feelings to shine through.
A figure moved in my periphery, and I turned toward it. It was Safiya darting across the slick floor, feet silent despite the rubble. I had nearly forgotten she was there, wielding her mágik from theshadows, but I would never forget the scene that played out before me.
Chapter thirty-nine
Safiya
The ballroom was littered with debris and slick with blood, but she did not falter. She did not feel the stone cutting through her boots or the heat of fire on her face. There was only that buoyant pull which carried her toward her final task.
Her revenge.
Safiya lunged, a dagger in her outstretched hand and rage on her face. Her blade sunk deep between two ribs, soundless but for the soft gasp of her victim. Shocked blue eyes met hers, dark and stormy. The tempest that had grown within her spilled forth after years of holding the floodwaters at bay.
“Do you remember me?” Safiya asked, twisting her dagger until he cried out. She felt it scrape against his bones—clashing and killing. “My name is Safiya Keres.”
She retracted her blade from the king’s chest in one leaden, undoable moment.
Life’s blood spewed from his pierced heart and gurgled in his throat.
Her fist came down again. “I came to this Goddesses forsaken country to heal what had been broken. I left my family behind. I sacrificed comfort and love. I found a kingdom that could not be healed.”
A strike for her, for her mother and father, one for every one of her six siblings. A deep, hacking slice for Alora—the girl she had loved and lost at Tarquin’s will. She stabbed him for Ayla and Harkin and every Acsillan citizen who had suffered under his rule.
“Do you know why Acsilla could not be healed?”
His mouth opened but only blood dribbled out, sticky with drool and bile.
“The problem with this kingdom was not the Ordelésans. It was you. You do not want peace, and now you shall never have it.” Safiya bared her teeth, shoving him to the ground.
He teetered for one weightless moment, and then he fell. An irrevocable part of her past made meaningless.
Safiya did not stop carving her blade into his chest until her face was covered in his cooling blood. She did not rest until the King of Acsilla lay lifeless before her.
Relief flooded through her as she sank to her knees. Her lips tilted in a smile, and her dagger clattered to the floor, sticky with dark blood.
She was free.
The ballroom was unbearably silent for the longest breath, then Ayla screamed, a sound like grief and anger and betrayal becoming one, and everyone in the room knew that their world had been irreparably changed. Safiya knew thatshehad brought forth irreparable change.
Chapter forty
Ayla
The ruined ballroom was broken by harried movements, steel and bodies cutting across the space in a blur. Feet slipped on slick marble, bloodied and wrecked from grime and the remnants of their mágik. Armor clanked raucously as guards hastened about. Prince Claudian strained at his bindings, attempting to free himself in the chaos.
In the center of it all, Ayla threw herself to the ground beside the king.
Wracking sobs spilled from Ayla’s chest, tearing through her throat. They were not tears of silent resignation any longer; these tears demanded to be felt.
