The smile on her face was stretched. “With your sister’s backing, the rebel Princes will fall into line. I will rule, and in return my Bright Lady will help your sister by taking care of the Rossin. Once the faithful have gathered tomorrow, you will die; he will die with you and not be passed on to her.”
Raed pressed his lips together lest a cry escape him. When suicide had tempted him, it was the thought that Fraine would suffer the Rossin if he did, which stopped him. Apparently none of this mattered to her—he was simply the man who had killed her mother and any chance of a happy life.
“I want to watch you suffer first. I want you to know real loss.” Fraine got up, brushed off her pants and gestured to the guards waiting in the darkness. Raed managed to struggle to his knees just as his crew was dragged through the sand dunes; all were bound, and many looked as though they had put up a fierce fight.
Abruptly he knew what their fate was. “No!” Pulling his feet under him, he charged at the guard nearest him holding the silent and bruised Snook. The Young Pretender never reached them.
Other guards sprang from the shadows. Raed fought back with forehead and shoulder, but they knocked him down quickly, and with rifle butts and fists kept him down. The Young Pretender swore, snarled and wished for the Rossin to take him, but nothing happened. He had the wind knocked out of him, and when they were done, he was left staring at the stars.
“Get him up.” Fraine’s voice reached him like he was underwater. It should have come as no surprise to him that it was Isseriah who tugged Raed back up onto his knees. Under the rule of a new Rossin Emperor it was certain that the rebel had been promised his earldom back. Raed had no more venom, but he spat at the traitor’s feet.
Bruised and heartsick, the Young Pretender looked at his five crew members: Snook, Laython, Balis, Nyre and the young blade Iyle. They looked back at him with clenched jaws, dark eyes and resignation. They knew as well as he what was coming.
“It has been a pleasure to sail the waters with you, my Prince.” Snook tilted her head up, the light washing over her narrow, sweet face. She had never used his title as Aachon was wont to do. That she did so now poured cold horror through him.
“Long live Prince Raed,” she cried, and the other four crew members repeated her call as if their lives depended on it—but it made not one jot of difference.
“It’s been my honor,” Raed choked out.
He was held tightly as, in one practiced move, all five guards slit all five throats. Not one of them cried for mercy. The gushing of blood flooded over the sand, and then they let the bodies drop. Like that, they were no longer human, just bundles of meat he had once known, loved and sailed with.
Raed bellowed, reaching for the rage of the Rossin, not caring what happened after—but all he found was emptiness. This was his crew. They had followed him for years, and he’d taken them to their deaths far from the oceans they loved. Like everything else, it was his fault.
“I see now, Brother”—Raed glanced up as his sister’s words fell on him like rough stones—“that you do in fact have a heart. That is, until they cut it out of you.”
What could he say to his sister? No matter how many times Raed told himself that it was the Curse, the Beast, the Rossin that had torn their mother to shreds, he could not shake the guilt that it had been him in some way.
For Fraine, the Young Pretender could find no words. She was not the little sister he had carried on his shoulders, but neither was he that carefree lad anmore. The Rossin had killed both of them along with their mother.
Fraine and Tangyre looked down at him for a second. Raed wanted them to stop looking at him, wanted it to be over with. Every bone and muscle ached in his body, but it was not as terrible as the pain in his soul—if he had a soul.
His sister looked across at Zofiya. “Will it be painful?”
The Grand Duchess hummed a little tune under her breath, her eyes on the looming mound that blackened the horizon. “They will all be gathered tomorrow, and the Bright One will descend.”
Zofiya’s laugh cracked halfway through, and even in his pain Raed could hear there was less and less of herself in her voice. He knew all about being eaten up from the inside. “Oh, it will hurt. The Bright One will devour his heart and brain and through them the Beast inside.”
In the firelight Fraine swallowed hard, for a moment looking pale, but she regained her composure and nodded. “Good . . . I want him to suffer just as our mother did. I want him to know pain and fear before he dies.”
“That you can be guaranteed.” The Grand Duchess sketched a little mocking bow. “Now, get you to the north and rouse the Princes there to our cause.”
Then the two women who had brought him to this fate turned on their heels, and quickly the darkness took them.
Raed shook himself, feeling the blood of his crew beginning to pool around his knees. He knew he had to stop Zofiya—she would tear the Empire apart. Even if she did manage to claim the throne, it would mean death and war for years—maybe generations.
“Zofiya,” he said, twisting around, “what are you thinking? You will have to kill your brother to take the crown. Everything I have seen says you love him dearly!”
Her eyes, when they looked at him, were confused, as if the spirit of the Grand Duchess was down there somehow, swimming desperately toward comprehension but unable to find it.
Sensing a chance, Raed tried to throw her a lifeline. “You swore to protect Kaleva! He is your brother—your blood.”
A flicker of horror passed over her finely carved face, the look of a sister who did still love her sibling. Yet even as hope surged in Raed, the expression passed, and she was once more a statue of calm. “The Emperor has always despised religion. He will never accept the Bright One as I have. I will show them the proper path.”
“You will bring about chaos!” Raed tried to surge to his feet but was held down by three guards.
Zofiya’s mouth formed a smile that was not her own. “And that will serve my mistress well.” She turned and faced the darkness on the horizon, the place where no stars burned. “Bring him—we go to make ready for her.”
Raed struggled weakly, but it was now only a primitive survival instinct. He had never felt more beaten and broken. It was almost enough to make him yearn for the next day. Almost.
TWENTY-SIX
The Unseen Prince
Dragging a bleeding Abbot through the almost empty corridors of the palace was not how Sorcha had imagined this visit to Orinthal ending up. Yet that was exactly what they were going to do.
y had stopped briefly to bind Yohari’s wounds, and Merrick had pronounced it a clean through-and-through stab wound. The Abbot must have flinched away from Delie’s strike with her sword at just the right moment. Still, it bled plenty, and the Abbot, hardly used to a life of stabbings, was not the best patient. If anyone thought Deacons were stalwart, they would have been surprised at his wincing and grumbling.
Still, Merrick was proficient in the art of field medicine, as Sensitives often had to be, and the palace would have much better facilities.
They finally reached it by scrambling through every alley and backyard in Orinthal—at least that was how it felt to Sorcha. The gate was devoid of any guards and even hung slightly ajar.
Sorcha ached to stop and light a cigar—at the very least a cigarillo. It was her usual reaction to stress and the impending feeling of doom.
“It must be quite the party if even the palace guards have given up their posts,” she commented, hitching the Abbot a little higher. His arm was over her shoulder, and his badge of the Order was digging into her neck. Such little discomforts at time like this shouldn’t have mattered—but they did.
The older man winced and clutched his side. “The number of Hatipai’s devotees is no less in the palace.”
