“Yes.”
All the air left Amarande’s lungs in a slow leak. It was true, then. The Warlord was able to run amok unchecked because the greatest warrior in the Sand and Sky refused to attack.
The princess bared her teeth. “And so what? The Torrent wasn’t enough for you? You decided to use Ferdinand as your puppet in Ardenia? To kill another kingdom?”
Her mother’s hand struck out, quick as a Harea Asp, crushing Amarande’s injured hand in an iron grip. The princess cried out, her wound screeching with pain as bones and ligaments pressed in on the oozing gash.
“I do admire your spirit, Amarande—I will admit that when I learned of your plea for consent, a voice, a choice, I found it inspiring. You told all of the Sand and Sky what you wanted literally over your father’s dead body.” Her mother’s voice was but a whisper of hot breath against Amarande’s cheek. Suddenly, that moment on the dais at her father’s funeral, where she informed her people she wanted a say in who became her husband and their king, felt almost a lifetime ago. “So dramatic in execution—and brave. And yet it was not effective in the way you’d dreamed. You shot for the heartstrings of your people, but enraged the decision-makers, did you not?”
The princess clenched her teeth to muffle her scream, looking her mother straight in the eye, breathing hard. Geneva’s grip intensified. Amarande could no longer hold back an agonized sob. “Mother…”
“Do you think you are the only person seeking freedom of choice, Amarande?” Ferocity gathered in Geneva’s tone as her words built. “You, my darling daughter, were born into a leadership that has ruled this kingdom for a thousand years. Your people are conscripted into the army—men, women, everyone—without choice or thought. If they survive that, they’re sent into the mines to produce diamonds fromwhich they will never profit. Their lives are mapped out for them just like their fathers’ and mothers’ before them and their fathers’ and mothers’ before that for the past millennium.”
Geneva’s thumb, so small and strong, pressed into the precise spot where Amarande’s flesh gaped beneath the gauze. She cried out, tears rolling out of the corners of her eyes.
“I committed the worst acts of my life, stars save me, when I left you to protect your legacy.” Geneva squeezed Amarande’s hand so hard now she thought the bones might crack. “In the years since that horrific night I learned that legacy is not worth saving. Especially as a woman.”
Amarande struggled to keep her eyes open, trying to read her mother’s face through the unrelenting pain. Geneva’s voice was dark and direct and full of the weight of a lifetime of regret. Or, perhaps, disgust.
“Up until tonight, you were the most powerful woman in Ardenia and possibly the most powerful on the continent of the Sand and Sky. And yet, even with all that power, you couldn’t even rule in your own right. Love in your own right.Bein your own right. Could you?”
As blood soaked through the fresh gauze, snaking down their joined hands, and the pain tore at the edges of any coherent thought, Amarande’s mind flashed back to another powerful woman’s words. The Dowager Queen Inés, snapping back at Amarande’s assertion that the Crown of Pyrenee was not hers.Yet you have the right blood, and your claim is still worthless without you attaching yourself to another like a parasite.
A parasite, begging for her own kingdom. These women had been through it before. They knew how to rule even if their blood and rights created a different burden for them than they had for Amarande.
Geneva squeezed even harder. Amarande’s bones stretched and cracked as the wound folded upon itself, pain kissing every edge, injured or whole. “I want an answer—could you?”
Amarande wet her lips, her teeth suddenly chattering. “No.”
The Runaway Queen dropped her daughter’s hand. “And that is why we must end it. Your brother’s reign is the first step.”
Amarande cradled her hand against her chest, as safe a distance as she could get. She swallowed, stars at the recesses of her vision. “How is that better? Another man on a stolen throne? How is that moreacceptable than my simple request to rule alone? Ferdinand may be a promising ruler, but elevating him does not solve the problem of the patriarchy. Inés is as power hungry as they come, but even she offered me a more diplomatic solution that did not call for erasing my claim by locking me in a tower.”
Amarande expected another outburst—more painful retaliation. Instead, her mother found a new target. “Inés did, eh?”
“Yes, before the wedding.”
“And you believed her?” Geneva cocked a brow. “I knew Inés well once—as peers do. She is much smarter than anyone gives her credit for, as distracted as they are by her face and bosom. Do not dismiss for a second the fact that she knew exactly what she was doing, appealing to your motivations in the moments before that bloodbath.”
“She said that if I ran from Renard and let her do her work, we could upend the patriarchy with the right number of votes. Invoke a majority that would rewrite the laws and let me rule outright.”
Again, her mother laughed. “If your father was unable to produce such a result, I can guarantee Inés would not have been able to do so. It is called a patriarchy for a reason. The Inés I knew was always one to work within it, and she indeed has done well for herself. But I plan to break it. In my own way. In my own time.”
It was a threat and a promise—Ferdinand was indeed a puppet. The woman who had hidden behind a title for a decade, pulling strings, now taking her show to a new place, a new people, this time hidden behind the spitting image of a young Warrior King. Koldo had to know this, and yet she’d let it happen over not only Amarande’s claim but also her own regency. Why?
Geneva neatly packed her basket of tinctures and stood, turning to the door. She was finished, but the princess was not. Amarande sucked in a steadying breath.
“Did you poison Father? Or give the order? Toendit? Was that really the first step?”
“No.”
That was it. No explanation. Just a trite reply, and another step toward the door. Amarande wasn’t sure what to believe. Was she telling the truth?
The princess looked away, not wanting to give her mother the satisfaction of a closely watched exit. That was when Geneva paused.“Lygia’s boy, Luca. Where is he? You risked all for him and yet he is not here with you?”
Amarande’s chest tightened, the worn edges of the ransom note caressing the skin over her heart. Silent, she watched the woman’s profile. The sweep of her neck, elegant even on her petite frame. Geneva’s most recent title of the Warlord may have been passed along to another, but the weight of its power still anchored her proud shoulders.
“Your silence gives me a theory.” Geneva turned back to fully face her daughter. “I am no longer the Warlord, but I have a great interest in the Torrent. I knew Lygia, and I’m observant enough to know that Luca was not her child, but her charge. The tattoo on his chest was something she often tried to obscure, but I did not miss the shock on the faces of my Torrentian maids the first time they saw it.”
