ADRIA
The fortress rattles with marching regiments, echoes with groans of the serpent-wounded, and rings with the polishing of guns and the sharpening of blades. Nevertheless, it’s far too quiet without her. I retire to my room, bury my face in the pillow that still smells like her hair, and try to drown it out, but nothing could possibly be louder than the silence, the absence, of Kori of the Daylands.
Loneliness gnaws at my heart, a restless animal, ever aching and hungry for the presence of a girl now terribly distant, gone for who knows how long. I have no one else to hold me gently. No one else I would ever allow that close, even if they offered. So I revert to my oldest instinct. Despite presupposing he may hate me right now, despite knowing that our conversation will likely make me hate myself even more, I go to my oldest friend.
I honestly don’t know what I’ll say to Thaane. Certainly not that my heart aches for my own political prisoner, my meant-to-be enemy, the emblem of everything the Shadowlands have so long stood against.
Certainly not that I miss her in the marrow of my bones, that I have to think about the softness of her mouth if I hope to sleep at all.
But he’ll see it, I think. Thaane knows better than anyone when I’ve locked legions of screams behind my tired eyes. And I am so, so tired of carrying everything but the sky on my shoulders alone.
I need someone to recognize my buried anguish and push me—damn nearorder me—to press on anyway. In the same way that Kori saw my shatter points and still deemed me worthy of affection, I need my brother to witness my weakness and still call me his queen. He won’t say it in so many words, to be certain. It’ll probably be couched in insults, thorny with judgment. But Thaane tells me to get my shit together because hebelieves I can get my shit together.I need that belief right now, more than I can bear to admit.
Trying to page him via our linked comms tablets doesn’t earn a response. Maybe that’s punishment for ignoring his messages directly after the serpent attack; maybe I deserve as much. Regardless, I pocket my tablet and simply head to Thaane’s personal chambers. I expect to find him sleeping, at worst, or more likely honing the weapons of either his body or his technological arsenal, or perhaps organizing records of the recent attack. But when I approach his room, all I hear is his voice, deliberately low and restrained despite his usual audacity.
My hand, raised to knock, freezes above the sliding door to his chamber. A chill skitters down my spine. Without pressing the button to announce my presence, I instead press my ear to the door.
“I did everything you asked,” Thaane says, every word clearly grating through gritted teeth. “I kept your daughter alive, until you saw fit to request otherwise. I risked my entire rebellion to execute your sun serpent strategy—”
My stomach drops.No.
No, this can’t be what I’m thinking it is.
I press my ear harder to the door—and hear the voice of Kori’s mother for the first time.
“I fail to see this supreme risk to you,” Chloe says, her voice breaking through comms tablet static. “Overcharging one of your fighters gave you an advantage. And taking out your reigning queen in the attack would have benefited your rebellion, as well. If it hadn’t been a colossal failure.”
“Do you have any idea what it was like to share a room with an overcharged telepath?” There’s a crash like Thaane’s clenched fist against his desk. “She was inall our heads at once.It was a collective invasion, a violation. She could’ve puppeteered Azarii’s entire army to her own ends if she hadn’t been losing her mind from the amount of incessantnoise.Once she imprinted Kori as a target on the serpents, we had to do away with her entirely.”
“A contained loss for an incredible victory,” Chloe insists. “Again, if you hadn’t failed. And where is my daughter now? You’ve lost her, and with Adria still on the board, you’ll soon lose the whole game.”
“Are you threatening me, Monarch?”
“Merely voicing the reality.”
Thaane swears viciously. “You promised me immunity in the coming conflict.”
“You promised to silence my daughter,” Chloe snarls, even louder than he, “before her insistence on knowing everything leads her down a darker path.”
“You really think you still have the high ground here? What kind of mother offers a bounty for her own daughter’s head?”
“What kind of soldier accepts payment to fund a hit on his queen?”
“Ilovemy people.” Another crash of Thaane’s knuckles against his stone desk. “You ought to understand that, as the leader of your own. I love them too much to leave them in the care of a weak woman, ashamed of her own strength, still so easily swayed by matters of the heart. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the Shadowlands.”
My stomach roils at Thaane’s words.
I left my bloodline behind when I took the shadow throne. My mother and father, buried in the name of peace—my uncle, single-mindedlydedicated to burying me alongside them. But Thaane, while not linked by blood … Thaane was the closest thing to family I had left. The only one whose critique I still trusted to sharpen me like a second sword. The only one willing to both battle beside me and call me to account when the crown weighed too heavy, when I let my people down.
How long has he been working with Azarii? I credited him with saving my life from that fateful freezeblade, but did he send the rebel contingent himself to interrupt my training with Kori? Did he stage the entire event to cement his position as my most loyal advisor, who literally saved my life, rather than a traitor in our midst? How many of his warnings about the Shadow Court were meant not to prepare me, but to throw me irreparably off-balance?
Thaane, in Azarii’s pocket all along—and not only Azarii, but Kori’s murderous mother, too. It was Thaane, my companion since childhood, who sent sun serpents to tear out Kori’s throat if all else failed. Assaulted our own people in the process. Maimed General Isek, for good measure.
My vision turns scarlet at the edges.
I’ll always be ashamed of what I did to protect the Shadowlands’ peace. I’ll always visit my parents’ graves with my head hung low, palms open and entreating with the Beyond for forgiveness, even knowing it was done to prevent greater shedding of blood.
But Thaane has never known shame.
