“Try me.”
She looks at me, her expression direct and measuring. “You are the queen heir,” she says.
The words should not strike as hard as they do. I knew what she implied yesterday. I understood enough from the way the room shifted around me, from the way men who had not looked twice at me a week ago could no longer stop looking. Still, hearing it spoken plainly is something else.
Nyara goes very still.
Petunis continues as though naming the weather. “This is your throne. I have simply been keeping it warm for you all these years.”
My fingers tighten around the edge of the table. “Why?"
“One does not usually answer that question with breakfast.”
“I asked it anyway.”
For the first time that morning, something like weariness touches her expression. “Because succession does not vanish because people make a mess of their lives,” she says.
I hear my own voice before I fully know I am going to speak. “What happened to my mother?”
Petunis does not look away. “She died.”
Obviously.
The bluntness of it lands like a boulder dropped into deep water. “And not here,” she adds. “She chose a man over Alarna, and she paid for it dearly. But the rules of succession still apply.”
The chamber feels colder. I think of all the absences I have carried without knowing their shape. All the stories never told. All the silences treated as if they were enough.
“The only one who truly knows what happened to your mother is Axar.” A pause. “And he is in Morrath.”
Morrath. The name was unfamiliar.
“Can you tell me more?”
“I can,” Petunis says. She reaches for the cloth beside her plate and folds it once with infuriating precision. “But I do not feel like it.”
Nyara nearly chokes on her tea.
“And Asharin, stop asking me questions about your mother. The dead have no use for your tears, Asharin. And the living evenless. The living do not need tears for the dead. They need you to survive long enough to be worth mourning."
I stare at my aunt in disbelief. “There are more pressing matters to handle than the past,” Petunis continues, entirely unmoved. “Such as the future. You must learn to be queen and quickly. Then you must make a decision regarding the bond with the Thren?—”
“I am not bonding with any Thren.”
The words come out sharper than I intend and yet not nearly as sharp as they feel.
Petunis pauses. “Alarna has no need to be bound to anyone or anything,” I say. “That is my final answer.”
Nyara lowers her gaze to her plate with such dedication that I know she is listening to every word.
Petunis leans back slightly in her chair. “You have a strong stance for someone who knows very little of our history or our current state.”
“I know enough.”
“Do you?"
She stares at me, the look on her face implying she knows more about me than she is saying. I wonder if she knows about Teorin, about his betrayal. About how hurt I am beneath it all.
“Make sure your judgment is not clouded by bias,” she says.
