She paused here, taking joy in watching Amarande’s heart drop. The princess’s breath went shallow.
Geneva continued, voice hard as the Basilican steel still in her grip. “The woman I was when I crushed Lygia’s throat as she made to sound the alarm? No. The woman I was as Warlord and the woman I am now? Never.”
Amarande’s heart was in her boots, but she held fast. Did not wrench her eyes from her mother’s still-girlish face.
“The person I became the night I left this castle no longer feels pain. You cannot cut me, Amarande. You cannot hurt me. And you and your love will not defeat me.”
“I will. Ihave.If you would just surrender—”
“I am not surrendering. I’ve said as much.” Geneva’s teeth flashed. There was truth to what she had said—All sigils in the Sand and Sky are predators by design. Trade one for the other and you still get the teeth.And now her eyes narrowed. “Why haven’t you cut me down? Lit myhair and dress on fire with that torch? Relieved me of my sword and stabbed me through as I frantically searched for my way out?”
“I—”
“Why, darling daughter? Why?”
The threat of tears pressed against Amarande’s eyes as her heart climbed out of her boots, pounding with what she must do. She set her grip on the torch. “I don’t want it to end this way.”
Her mother’s lips curled. “Not all princesses get a happy ending. Queens don’t either.”
Amarande swung the torch then, the flame aimed straight for Geneva’s head.
As Amarande ran through the motion, tears crawling into her eyes, her mother ducked, the torch connecting with bare stone of the wall behind.
There was a groaning shudder. The wall finally moved—revealing the concealed exit. Amarande lurched forward to brace herself as the floor spun, too. Arms up, torso exposed. Weapon neutralized.
And that’s when the distinct sting of a blade entered Amarande’s thigh.
Not the sword. A dagger. Geneva crouched over an exposed boot as they spun. Amarande registered the boot, then the blade. Not so different from the one she’d grown up with.
“A gift from your father.”
Amarande swayed, her hands wrapping around the dagger hilt as they completed the turn.
The walls shuddered to a halt. Amarande slumped all the way to the floor as Geneva got to her feet, not retrieving the knife. Knowing exactly where she was and where she’d be running.
Amarande blinked.
The library. The turntable had yawned open: A massive bookcase spun into the passageway, covering the hidden doorway.
Stars, Taillefer’s hopes were true.
More heavy tapestries bled from the walls, stained windows rinsed with noon light, her ancestors peering down in stony silence. And, as the last queen of the Ardenian line pulled the knife from her own leg, her mother met her eyes.
“I did love you, Amarande.”
Although her mother’s sleeves were charred from the torch, Geneva was not gravely injured. She could walk away. Run away. Again.
Without another word, Geneva turned away, leaving it at that after all those years.
Her mother may have been finished, but Amarande was not.
Just like that day in the meadow, her body knew exactly what to do.
Amarande swung her good leg out as hard as she could, knocking her mother off her feet in an instant. Then Amarande crawled atop her mother, pinning Geneva’s arms between her knees, her weight on the woman’s belly, her elbow thrust across her windpipe.
The knife a whisper from her neck.
Amarande’s leg wound was weeping at a terrible rate. Fueled by adrenaline, her strength was both false and fleeting. Blood bloomed across her trousers.
