Amarande blinked. Torches lined the walls in an alternating pattern, vast shadowy voids clouding the narrow, downward-sloping floor before her. The darkness was such that at first she couldn’t see her mother, only hear her sprinting footsteps in the distance. Then, as her eyes adjusted, Amarande caught a glimpse of a figure, dressed in a ball gown, barreling forward, sword held out in front of her, and clearly limping as she craned back over her shoulder to check her lead.
The Runaway Queen was fleeing, yet again.
Oh no you don’t.
Amarande spun into action, boots churning beneath her. She had no weapon. Her arm smarted. Her legs burned, as she went from stationary to all-out sprint.
Amarande’s heart lurched at the idea that after all these yearsshewas the one chasing after the Runaway Queen.
Geneva flashed in the distant light again. Amarande was gaining on her—the yards of lace and silk and all the underpinnings easily weighed double the sword she carried. And though her mother was indeed strong and trained, she’d likely spent very little time working agility drills in a ball gown during her reign as the Warlord.
Amarande gained on her with every passing moment. Fifty feet behind. To twenty. To ten.
Her mother came to a halt at a dead end. Geneva dropped her skirts and began punching various stones on the wall.
How many hidden doors were there?
Amarande now understood exactly how Geneva had managed to move about the castle with a stolen infant and escape into the night. She knew the Itspi’s veins as well as its bones.
That knowledge didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that Amarande had no weapon. She and her mother would go through that wall together or they would end it here, in this hallway, alone. “I won’t let you run away again. Surrender or fight. There is nothing else.”
Geneva turned around to face Amarande. “There’s winning. I want to win.”
“Winwhat? Ardenia? Not going to happen. The Torrent? You’ve already lost.”
“As long as I live, I can gather opposition. So can the previous Warlords. They’re alive, you know. And they are not the sort to let their legacy go quietly.”
“Do not threaten me, Mother.”
“It’s not a threat to you; it’s a threat to your boy up there.”
“A threat to him is a threat to me.”
“Fine; then I’ll beat you both.” Fury seethed about her fine features. “I have a great interest in keeping the Torrent safe frompatriarchal imperialism.You know, the exact kind of thing that has left my own daughter powerless.”
“I am not powerless.” Amarande was unarmed, yes, but she always had the power she needed. “And if I’m not mistaken, you used that patriarchal imperialism to worm your way back into this castle and steal my crown.”
“I believed you weredead.I believed I would save Ardenia.”
“No.” Amarande shook her head, eyes not wavering. She reached for the nearest torch, not as a weapon, but to hold between them, so that she could read every inch of her mother’s face. “You believed you’d gain control over Ardenia, and add to your domain,Warlord.You swear up and down that you love Ferdinand. No. You loved what he coulddofor you.”
“That is not our relationship.”
“Is it not?”
Geneva’s hands still scrabbled about the stones behind her. Sword hand and free hand pushing anything beneath her fingertips, looking for just the right pressure point. Her sword was in striking distance.Amarande did not retreat—the torch, her fists, her wits. There was much she could use. But if Geneva got that panel open and she was left in this hallway, she would lose her chance entirely. And so she stayed less than an arm’s length away.
Geneva tried out a smile. “I wanted a relationship with you, you know.”
“You voided that possibility the second you ran away.”
“I came back.”
“And locked me in a tower! Keeping me prisoner isn’t a relationship; it’s manipulation. It’s not love. You do not love me, no matter what you say. And I could never love you.”
Those eyes, so much like her own, narrowed, her mother’s upper lip snarling.
“Is that supposed to cut me, Princess? Is that supposed to hurt me down deep?” Though smiling, Geneva’s expression was as cold as the worst of a Pyrenee winter. “It may have in the past. The woman I was when I kissed your forehead good-bye? Sure. The woman I was when I stole into Koldo’s midnight quarters and snatched her sleeping babe? Possibly. The woman I was when I lashed that baby to my chest and ran for the stable, only to find Lygia awake, nursing her cough with boiled water and honey? Maybe.”
