When the women retreated, rushing to help some other unfortunate guard, the queen approached Darin and laid her hand on his brow.
Liana followed her reluctantly, unsure what to do.
“Darin is a good man,” the queen said. “It’s not my place to tell you how you should feel about him, considering everything, but you need to know he’s always cared about you.”
Liana swallowed the bitterness that rose in her throat. “It’s entirely possible to love a man but hate his choices,” she said.
“Indeed. But sometimes all choices are bad.”
“I don’t know him well enough to judge him,” Liana said. “When he learned of my existence, he never sent for me, not even when my grandfather died and I had no family left. He sent money and occasional letters. He was a stranger to me, and I to him. And yet…” The queen’s gaze was curious, kind, her silence encouraging Liana to speak. “I’ve always held a place for him in my heart and now, when I finally have the chance to fill it, I fear it will be wrenched away from me.”
Liana paused, surprised at her own words, shocked at the ease at which they came out before this quiet woman. She hadn’t planned to talk about her father at all.
“Love is complicated,” the queen said. Laconic as the statement was, it was also true.
The grown-up Liana understood the impossibility of Darin’s choices, but the child in her still hurt. This was not the moment for rational explanations, though—for inspecting the outcomes and judging in hindsight. What they both needed was herforgiveness.
She bent down and kissed his clammy cheek. “It’s fine, Papa. I understand,” she whispered in his ear. “I love you.”
He didn’t open his eyes, but his eyelids fluttered, and she was almost certain he’d heard her.
She turned to the queen. “Thank you. But I suppose you’re not here to offer me comfort.”
“No,” the queen said. “I’m here to beg.”
• • •
Upstairs, it waseerily silent in the small study the queen led her to.
Somewhere behind the locked doors, in Queen Orsiana’s bed, the king lay dying, and yet, there were no servants running around in panic, no black-clad physicians with their stinking vials and bloodletting tools, no efficient women with needles and bandages, no priests praying. In the soft light, Liana noticed the queen’s eyes were rimmed with red.
“I’d pray for Darin if I thought it would help,” she said before Liana had the chance to open her mouth. “But I trust Nila and her women more than I trust the gods.”
Wrapped in her pale lilac shawl, the queen leaned on the delicate desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She looked like a very small snowbird, trapped inside a jewel box. Liana had to remind herself that she was neither helpless nor fragile.
“I’m sorry I dragged you here,” the queen said. “I need your help.”
Liana’s heart sank; she’d expected this moment ever since she and Amron found his father. The queen had told her she would ask something of her.
“I came to beg you to talk to your mother.”
The queen words were a punch in the solar plexus. Lianarecoiled, her face a mask of revulsion.
“No, your father didn’t tell me about her, I figured it out a long time ago. And even if I hadn’t, you’re so obviously hers it shines through your skin. Your aura is emerald green and it smells of forest and blood.” The queen’s eyes were two shards of flint, cold and sharp. “And even though I know you’ve lived in Till, I don’t think that’s where you came from just now. You’re like an arrow flying, there’s a purpose to your being here.”
Liana nodded. It was pointless to lie.
“And that purpose is Amron,” the queen concluded.
In some ways, the queen’s frightening clarity was liberating, like a knife cutting away rotting flesh. There were things Liana couldn’t say out loud—not even to Amron—because they were too mad or too terrifying. But the queen, with her mirror-like eyes and a body that seemed constructed of paper and light, looked barely human, like some ancient prophet. She looked as if she could absorb any divine joke Liana might throw at her.
“He was mine, for a long time,” Liana said. “Then I lost him. Then I begged the gods—” Liana pressed her hand to her lips, hope and dread and grief threatening to explode her heart. “When you love someone, I suppose you are ready to do whatever it takes.”
Neither of them were sitting down, the queen still leaning on the desk, Liana standing in her dirty sandals and blood-spattered clothes on the soft teal carpet. The queen was shorter, but when she approached Liana and took her grubby hand with her cold white fingers, Liana felt she had to look up to meet her gaze.
“If this were just about the king, I wouldn’t dare ask. What is my grieving heart compared with the whole kingdom? But this is not about him.” The queen’s hands were smooth, silken, yet her grip was hard. “If he dies, we all die. I’ve seen it.”
They’d all died the last time, Liana wanted to say, all butAmron, and he…
