“You don’t trust your own queen regent?” Rahzlyn asked from across the room. Letti had silently made her way over there with a bundle of clean linens for her glyphs. “No wonder this queendom has problems.”
“I implore you to join us, Roselyn,” Gregorios called to her.
“Considering you all plan to eventually slaughter my family, no thank you.”
“That’s not exactly how the sacrifice works,” Felaf said. “Besides, you’ll have plenty of time with them before then.”
“It is the wayourworld works,” Gregorios elaborated. “Every Chosen receives a fraction of the Astrals’ power and in turn must make a sacrifice to sustain the Astrals’ strength. Without their power, our own diminishes, and the realm becomes volatile. Politically and physically.”
“How could killing my family possibly do that?”
I peered away from the flames to survey Rahzlyn. Redness rimmed her honey-brown irises. Despite being surrounded by strangers, she expressed herself with abandon.
As she had while dancing under the guise of the Black Rose.
I reminded myself it was all an act.
“The devotion and credence of a sacrifice is the most divine way to show our loyalty and sustain our Astral’s celestial power,” Gregorios said. “Beyond that, it is a mystery even for us seers.”
“But don’t you know everything? Can’t you see all?” Rahzlyn countered. She hissed as Letti lifted her arms to wash the wounds there.
“Contrary to that narrative you’ve been told, the Astrals are not omniscient. Seers are merely the intermediaries between them and humans. Blood Sight, also, is limited. I possess the memory of all Scorpion seers before me. That is thousands of years’ worth of knowledge. To seek one fact or memory could take months, if not years without assistance from acolytes.”
Rahzlyn’s brow furrowed at this. “So how did you know where to find me?”
“A message in a dream,” Gregorios explained. “Sent by Gemini, somehow, for Raithe to retrieve you.”
“Icould just as easily have found you,” Felaf insisted.
Neither Letti nor Rahzlyn seemed alarmed by Gregorios’s treasonous revelation. Perhaps neither cared. If Rahzlyn were a true apostate, such information would be monumental to their cause.
“You should try Blood Sight on Rahzlyn,” I offered. “Before we reveal too much more. If she’s not an apostate, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Gregorios rubbed at his temples. “I must pace myself. Too much blood in a short amount of time is lethal, even for me. I will test your blood once I regain my strength.”
“You wouldn’t see anything anyway, because I’m not Scorpion,” Rahzlyn muttered, still playing the part of victim in denial.
Gregorios tilted his head. “Raithe tells us that you were in the middle of a plot to steal King Zephyr’s talisman, yet you claim to not be an apostate?”
Rahzlyn gripped the edge of the chaise. “I was hired to be the… to bea dancer. After being forced to prove my seduction abilities.” She swallowed, looking away.
My stare hardened. “For someone so set on being innocent, you are having a hard time explaining said innocence.”
“I’m having a difficult time speaking it aloud. But everything I did was all to protect my brother,” she said. “He’s been missing for weeks. Al… Mar…” She groaned. “They call themselves Gemini’s syndicate rebellion.”
“And who allegedly forced the brand on you?” I pressed.Did she know about Kole? Was her brother even missing?
Rahzlyn opened her mouth to speak. She clawed at her throat. “Her name… I can’t say it.”
“It’s now or never.”
“I’m trying to tell you!”
“Sotellus.”
“Ican’t! I need… air…” Rahzlyn gasped, frantically looking around. “I can’t breathe.”
I knew the truth—I witnessed the Choosing with my own eyes. Yet she was surely an apostate and couldn’t be trusted in a Chosen position. She ought to be taken to the cells like othersuspected apostates. She deserved to be fully questioned and forced to reveal all she and her family knew.
