“The priest told you to return home?” The King of Barstus, Maksim Zolotov, asked this time. His official titled declared he was the ruler of the Serpent’s Sea and Defender of the Ice Mountains. In other words, he was a powerful ally for my uncle. “But how can this be since the Brotherhoods do not speak?”
“You are right in saying that. They do not speak. But I do. And after living with them for eight years, we developed ways of communicating.”
Maksim snorted. “It must be quite the method if he could communicate such subtleties as that.”
“Despite their silence, they are highly intelligent, well-educated men. It is simply that they don’t communicate verbally.” I tried to keep my patient tone, but it wasn’t easy. “Father Garius saved my life, your majesties. We shared a bond that transcended verbal communication.”
Maksim snorted again. I couldn’t tell what it meant, but I hoped he believed me, even if it was reluctantly.
The rulers peppered me with questions, and I answered as best as I could. They wanted to know exact details about my parents and brothers. They asked about their lives and their behavior while they were alive. Then they asked about their deaths and what it was like to find them the way I had.
They asked me to explain in as much gory detail as I could remember how my parents died. Exactly how had their throats been slit? In what direction? How much blood had there been?
They wanted to know how the last years of my life had been lived and who I associated with. How I got here from Heprin. They especially wanted details of my education and training. I answered them as best as I could, while still retaining a few secrets about my journey here and especially about my training. The questions went on for a long time. One monarch after the other jumping in.
“And you just walked from the castle?” Ravanna Presydia, the queen of Blackthorne demanded. “Nobody recognized you or tried to stop you?”
I had already answered this question countless times. Frustration bled into my words when I clipped out, “Father Garius avoided highways and villages. We were not seen. And as to your question of leaving without being noticed, I was only nine at the time and nobody tried to stop us. I remember that we did not see a soul as we moved through the castle. It was as if the entire staff had disappeared. Or maybe they’d discovered my family’s bodies by then and were overcome with shock. I prefer to believe the latter.”
Her mouth pressed into a frown. “And you say that Taelon Treskinat simply took the crown off your father’s head? That brings another question as to why someone would go to all this trouble to kill the royal family but leave the Crown of Nine on the floor? Covered in blood.” She looked up and down the line of council members, accentuating her point with a single raised eyebrow. “Wouldn’t the whole point of murdering your father be to take the crown and assume control of the realm?”
Her icy gaze returned to mine. My heart thudded painfully at the cruel words. It still took my breath away to picture them on the floor, bloody, lifeless. “I cannot speculate on the murderer’s intentions.” My voice was barely above a whisper. Several council members had to lean closer to hear me. “As I have said before, at the time I was only a child. I knew nothing more than that my family had been stolen from me. Even now, after all these years left to wonder why or how or what I could have done differently, I still do not have an answer. I have as many questions as you.”
The corner of her mouth lifted in victory. I realized the Queen of Blackthorne did not care who I said I was. She did not want me to win this trial. I could only vaguely remember meeting her as a child and there was not much to the memory other than her standoffishness. But this woman, today, hated me.
“One last question,” she announced. We had been here for hours. My feet were weary, and my back felt stuck with a hundred pins. But Ravanna’s kohl had not smudged nor had her red lips faded. She looked as perfect as she had the moment I first saw her. “You say you were so concerned about your family, your dead parents and siblings. But you left with a stranger only seconds after finding their throats slit? That doesn’t seem like the behavior of a grieving child. That seems more like the contingency plan of the guilty party.”
My mouth dropped open. “Are you suggesting that I killed my family?”
That subtle smile she could not hide lifted the other corner of her mouth. “I am merely suggesting that your behavior seems suspicious. Not only did you flee the scene, but you stayed away for eight years. We have been searching the realm high and low for that crown and you had it stashed away with mute monks in the most backward kingdom in the realm. Only now do you return, when you know the council was deciding to fashion a new crown. Only now do you show up, when we were set to vote on a new bloodline for the Seat of Power. You knew before you ever left your precious monastery that your time was running out. If you had arrived even three months later, your plans to steal the throne and the Seat of Power would have been too late.”
The room faltered in front of me. My vision swam. “No,” I whispered.
