Andraste straightens, and as she wraps the linens around my daughter, her shoulders square for one defiant moment. “Amaya will be powerful,” she says in a hollow voice. “She is born of your blood, Mother. And as much as you despise him, she’s born of his blood too. Amaya will wield all the powers of the Evernight and Asturian royal lines, and if you harm her, then you will see your greatest weapon against the Prince of Evernight destroyed.”
Greatest weapon?
“Don’t you dare,” I gasp.
“Raise her.” My sister doesn’t even look at me. “Raise her in seclusion so that no one knows of her birth. Train her to be strong and powerful. Love her.” She pauses then, looking down at my baby. “And teach her the truth about her birth—that her father is a monster who stole her mother away and defiled her.”
“No, no, no, no, no!”
They’re not listening. Nobody is listening to me.
My mother steps closer, twitching the blankets aside and considering my daughter’s fate. And then she smiles. “You always were my favorite child, my eldest. You’re always thinking ahead. And you’re right. I’m letting my anger rule me.” She leans down and presses a kiss to my baby’s forehead. “This baby is mine. And she will be the greatest weapon I can ever wield.”
“No!”
Hands pin me down. The nursemaids. And just as I prepare to roll from the bed, another uncontrollable spasm assails me.
“You must push again, Princess,” the midwife says as my vision blurs again. “This is your afterbirth. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you must push, or you might die.”
I don’t care.
“My baby, my baby, my baby….” But the door shuts behind my sister, and all I can see is her figure outlined in a halo of light before they’re gone.
Forever.
And there’s nothing I can do but scream.
“Vi? Vi!” Someone grips my shoulders as I kick and sob.
I blink out of the memory, every inch of me torn open and ravaged.
Thiago hauls me into his arms. “It’s all right, it’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
But it’s not all right….
She was there, and her little finger curled around mine as if I could keep her safe…. And I didn’t. I didn’t.
I don’t know where she is.
I don’t know what her life has been like, but I can imagine.
Tears stream down my face, but it’s the rage in my heart that can’t be hidden. I always thought my mother had taken everything she could from me.
But I was wrong.
“I will kill her.”
“Vi?”
I let the note fall into his hand, and Thiago’s eyes race as he tries to read it.
“There was a baby. My mother stole my baby from me and then she cursed me to forget her. This is what she was hiding at Clydain.”
I see the moment he understands. Horror shrouds his expression.
It was difficult enough when all I thought I had lost was him.
I reach for that little curl of paper. I only managed to read the first half before my memories broke through another layer of the curse.
There is more.
What mother will never know is this: I swapped the babies. I gave your daughter to the forest, to Old Mother Hibbert, so she will be safe. And the child that Mother has raised is an orphan with limited magic. It was the only way I knew to protect her. Amaya is in the north now. With the unseelie. I’m sorry. For not fighting harder. For not defying mother. For keeping such a secret. It was the only way I could see to protect Amaya at the time.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Andraste
Sometimes the best disguise is to hide in plain sight.
Nobody will ever suspect I had a hand in tonight’s events as I marshal the guards and try to put out the fire that still rages. To the court of Asturia, I’m the perfect princess heir. The one who kneels at her mother’s side and hunts at her direction. The one who bowed her head when her sister fought.
But they’ll never see the truth.
I am the knife at my mother’s back, the knife she will never see coming.
I ease the doors to my chambers shut and rest my back against them with a sigh of relief. It’s only now, in the sanctity of my own rooms, that I let my hands tremble.
To see that look in Vi’s eyes—
She will never forgive me now that she knows the truth.
I want to vomit. I’ve held it in all night, but now—
Bile rises in my throat, and I rush to the wash chambers, sliding to my knees and gorging the contents of my stomach into the water closet. It’s not enough. As I lie there shaking, my head resting on the seat, all I can feel is the numbness.
There’s a beast inside me, and it wants out, ripping at my innards with sharp claws. But silence rings in my ears.
I am hollow, and all I want to do is lie here, but lying here means defeat, and maybe I could give in to it, but mine is not the only life that requires this subterfuge.
Amaya.
I see her little face and hear her cries echoing through the lonely forest. Some nights, in my nightmares, Old Mother Hibbert doesn’t come, and I’m forced to flee with the baby, howling wolves nipping at my heels.
But some nights—the gentler nights—I see her smile at me as she leads me into a garden of strange flowers, where she points each one out to me and names them. She’s a little girl in those dreams, and although she looks so much like my sister, she’s sweeter than either of us ever were. Innocent. A child really, when neither of us were ever allowed to be children.
I will protect that with my last dying breath.
And if I don’t get up, my mother will wonder why I’m so upset. And maybe she’ll start questioning my whereabouts when her tree caught fire.
And from there, maybe
