When Cadmus saw Valenna, he spread his hands and smiled. “Valeria, my darling! It is wonderful to have you home again.”
After five years away, Valenna wasn’t prepared for how visceral her reaction to her father would be. Her chest burned like she’d drunk acid, and she recoiled from him as he stepped toward her.
He followed her as she shrank away, and he planted his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. His smell triggered a parade of memories—crying over a broken doll and being locked in a dark room until she stopped; lying in bed hungry because she had shed a tear over a beloved cat that died; flying into battle in a billow of caustic wind, her brambles strangling faceless soldiers. She had had no hate in her heart for them, or any conception of why they deserved to die.
Was it possible for a man to smell cruel? Her father did.
She forced a smile and ducked out from beneath his hands. “Have you done what I asked?”
“I was so pleased when I received your message. I have long searched for that sanctuary, but I always thought it was on some secluded island. I never guessed it was on the border like that—how clever. And I’m eager to see the hydra. What a fine gift.”
He rubbed his hands together as he spoke, and the familiar motion brought the angry magic roiling inside Valenna.
“You agreed you wouldn’t attack Cobblepine,” she said. “You said you would only take the hydra.”
“Of course. And I meant to keep my word, I really did, but I was so eager. Twenty years is a long time to search!”
White-hot terror shot through Valenna. “You promised you would leave them in peace! It was a condition of our deal!”
“I know, I know.” He creased his brow and looked regretful. “I’m such an impatient person. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t much—one detachment, a few phoenixes, and a dreadnought or two. And we didn’t take everyone. Just the youths.”
If her father attacked the sanctuary last night, then Evander might have been caught in the raid. What if he was inside the inn when the phoenixes arrived? What if he was captured?
“And who did you say the child’s father was?” Cadmus asked with thinly veiled malice in his voice.
“I said he was an Allageshan farmer named …” She searched in her mind for a name. “Leroy.”
“Oh, he died, did he not?”
She conjured a sorrowful expression. “He did.”
Cadmus rubbed his smooth chin. “Well, that’s taken care of, I suppose. If you want to marry, I can arrange it. You will need to produce a legitimate heir eventually, once we’ve defeated Marwenna, of course.”
“I’m not interested in marriage.”
His eyes flashed, but he quashed his anger. “We shall see.”
When she sent a message to Cadmus begging for his caladrius bird in exchange for the hydra, she’d told him that she ran away because she fell pregnant by a man who later abandoned her and the child. She said the child was very ill and needed the bird’s gift to survive. It was a cliché story, but she knew her father’s disdain for her would render it believable.
Valenna turned away from him as nettles stung her ankles. The pain was pleasurable.
She was home, and Cadmus stood before her without his caladrius bird. It was beautiful how his thirst for revenge dropped him into the path of her own vengeance. She had saved Evander and secured her father’s demise at the same time.
She smiled to herself—a crooked, scheming smile, and, as she did, she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror. And she saw her father in her face.
It frightened her, and she started out of the mirror’s accusatory view.
“It is interesting, my dear,” her father said, his boots jingling as he swept across the room and sat in a graceful heap on a silver velvet sofa under the window, “that you are back just now, on the eve of my invasion. A wonderful coincidence.”
Nausea pitched in Valenna’s stomach. “I should like to go to my room and rest,” she said.
Cadmus smiled benevolently. “Of course, of course. We will talk soon. Guard!”
A guard entered.
“Accompany the princess to her room, please!”
The guard led her down corridors and up staircases, but Valenna’s feet knew the way to her old attic bedroom.
