Eleanor stepped away from me, a slight tremble in her hands and betrayal lining every inch of her face. “What really happened?”
“That’s not important.” We were running out of time, I needed to tell her about her heritage, about who she was.
“Tell me, Adelia,” she insisted, and the look in her eyes told me she wouldn’t move past this reveal.
“They … they were murdered.” My chest constricted as the words left my lips. All this time, she’d believed it was an accident, and the truth was so much worse.
She shook her head, her wide eyes not leaving mine. “How do you know?”
“I-I saw the killer.”
“And they didn’t kill you?”
Sweat gathered on my neck, the events of that day rising to the surface. This wasn’t the truth I wanted to give her today.
“Just tell me what happened Adelia, please.” It was her plea that made me crumble.
“I killed him. The man who murdered our parents.”
Admitting my worst sin, especially to my sweet sister, brought it all back. Scenes from that day flashing in my mind.
The silence when I arrived home from town early. The panic as thick arms grabbed me. My instinct driving me to blindly thrust that broken vase. The man’s dark eyes staring at me, his hand clutched to his throat with blood pouring through his fingers.
“Adelia …” I met my sister’s gaze with bleary vision, unable to make out her features clearly, my hand gripping my throat, just as he had.
“It’s all for you, Eleanor. Everything I do is for you, to protect you.” There was a pause, and I blinked several times to clear the fog away.
“Your life is just as important as mine, Lia.”
No, it wasn’t.
I gripped her hands, pulling her closer. “You don’t understand—”
“Adelia!” Wista’s worried voice interrupted us when she rushed into the tent, her face harried and filled with fear. “We must hurry. The king has demanded your presence. Now.”
She gripped my elbow and tried to drag me away. Away from Eleanor and the truth I was about to reveal.
“Can I just have a few minutes?” I asked, chest tightening more the longer this conversation drew out. I had to tell her. Eleanor needed to know.
“No … Adelia, he’s furious. The army isn’t responding and Mortremon’s forces are gathering.”
Her face told me more than her words. If I didn’t go now, there would be dire consequences. I sent a pained look toward my sister as Wista hauled me to the tent’s entrance. I would just have to tell Eleanor once I appeased the king.
Her eyes were wet with the emotion of my recent admission, but her shoulders were set with determination. “Promise you won’t give in to him.”
That demand coming from my sweet sister, I couldn’t deny. Not now.
I spoke just before Wista dragged me from the tent. A whisper floating between us like a vow, because it was, and unbeknownst to Eleanor, it was her first true act as queen. “I promise.”
Wista led me to the plain separating Torglea from Mortremon. The sentient army stood to attention on the bare earth, eerily still, more so than I remembered. Not a rustle of wind through capes or the creak of shifting leather. Though their faces remained cloaked in shadow, the shimmering smoke usually curling around them was absent. They lined the ground like statues.
Terym’s soldiers formed a semicircle facing them, leaving space between the two armies. My eyes were drawn to the large platform in the middle of the clearing. The timber was worn and stained, built high enough you could glimpse both Yinora and Mortremon upon it. The sides were bare, providing an unobstructed view of the three single poles rising to the sky, a set of shackles on each.
A whipping post.
An offensive display for all to witness.
I’d heard of Torglea’s punishments of captured enemy soldiers, it was even sometimes used on our own people if they defected. The sight of it elicited the same abject horror that filled me in Terym’s dungeon—sweat breaking out along my skin and pressure building across my chest.
