“Just, Lanni… promise me one thing. Never trust Dornar. He’s a manipulative liar, and he will hurt you. Never be alone with him. Be cautious with his recommendations. Whatever you do, don’t ever agree to marry him. Promise me.”
She nodded brokenly, and he dropped her hand.
He couldn’t stand it for one more minute, and he couldn’t bear to say goodbye.
Without saying another word, he turned to go.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alanna feltas if she had split into two people. There was the trembling woman standing on the ground, ears ringing as she struggled to take a breath past the agony in her throat. And the bodiless entity floating above it all, watching dispassionately as Val tore out his own heart and offered it to her.
He was setting her free to go back and be the queen. Everything she had ever told him she wanted, he was giving her. Regardless of the cost to himself.
And she knew exactly why he was doing it. She had sacrificed them both for the greater good so many times, he couldn’t imagine that she would do anything else.
The part of her that hovered over them all watched the proceedings with detachment. As if through distorted glass, the voices too muted to hear, everything unfolding so very slowly.
She saw Nim turn into Tristan’s arms and start to cry.
She saw the Hawks, gray-faced and shocked, looking uncertainly at each other.
She saw Keely, jaw clenched in grief.
And she saw herself, standing perfectly straight, chin still raised, Dornar watching her with a pleased glint in his eyes.
She watched Val, his big shoulders hunched, wings drooping behind him, staggering slightly as he turned away, as if he had taken a mortal blow.
And then she heard her own words, so reedy and thin that no one would have heard her if it hadn’t been so deathly quiet. “No.”
She put out her arm, pointing at Val, her voice gaining strength. “Make him stop!”
Tristan put out an arm and gripped Val, stopping him, but he didn’t turn. He stood, facing away, head bowed.
She cleared her throat and looked out over the crowd. The courtiers, sycophants, and Ballanor’s cronies hanging on her words. As if they cared. Dornar’s smug smile fading into confusion. Only the Hawks watched her with any kind of sympathy.
She gripped her hands together to stop them shaking and cleared her throat again, and then raised her voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I love you, Val. Please don’t go.”
He jerked as if she’d stabbed him, and he spun slowly, reluctantly toward her.
He looked as if he’d aged twenty years in the two minutes since he’d kissed her hand.
She gave him a weak smile and looked back out over the crowd before saying, as clearly as she could, “I’m not the queen.”
There were several loud gasps, whispers breaking out in flurries as Dornar stepped up closer, shaking his head frantically.
Before he could reach her, she raised her voice again. “The marriage was never consummated. I can’t be the surviving queen, because I’m not the queen.”
She laughed, although it sounded hysterical, even to her. “I came here to ask for an annulment, but Ballanor refused. That was why Captain Lanval offered trial by combat for my right to a divorce. It was instead of the annulment.”
She looked over at Haniel, who gave her a reassuring nod. “And today the gods, the angels, even the Bard, looked down upon us all. And saved Val.”
There was a slightly horrified titter as people reacted to her words.
“I cannot be the queen you plan to rush back to the castle and manipulate into doing what you want. I am no longer the woman who you terrorized and who martyred herself again and again. You can’t control me. And even if you could,” she looked out over them all, her voice clear and strong, “I’m still not the queen.”
“Yes, you are the queen,” Dornar declared coldly. “Or are you forgetting your Brythorian blood ties?”
Alanna straightened her spine, “No. I’m explaining that I do not have sufficient claim to the throne—”
