by K. A. Tucker
Wait—and pray the girl did not fail her.
She retrieved her engagement ring. The spells she had affixed to it were bound to Romeria’s new form now. There was no need to adorn a corpse.
A scraping sound pulled her attention behind her. She knew before turning that Malachi had returned, unbidden. She was on the verge of collapse, but she bowed as she did every time, dropping to her knees, her forehead touching the stone.
“Rise.”
The Fate of Fire stood before her with his horn fully restored. He had roared in agony when he severed it, but had promised it would return. “It is complete. She is now tied to Islor for as long as she lives.” His piercing gaze rolled over Sofie’s shape.
She knew what he had come for this time. Was this a requirement of all his elementals, or was she special in this way?
Shedding her clothes, she climbed onto the altar.
Chapter Ten
I wake to the toll of church bells and the memory of fetid flesh lingering in my nostrils.
I’d like to convince myself that it was all a terrible nightmare, that I’m back in my studio apartment in Chelsea with only Korsakov’s ire to worry about, but I’m lying in a bed that isn’t my own, and my body aches like never before.
I remember …
Annika leading me along secret passageways and steep stairs to the sanctum.
The grisly remains of the high priestess’s mutilated body behind the altar.
That monster with its red eyes and charred flesh, sinking its claws and teeth into my helpless body.
And yet here I am, staring up at a soothing canopy of silks in taupe and robin’s-egg blue.
“How am I not dead?” I croak, asking no one in particular.
“Send word that she is awake,” an unfamiliar voice whispers.
I try shifting my head toward the speaker. A sharp pain radiates through my neck, drawing a hiss from my lips.
“Be careful. You are still healing.” A woman in a white robe trimmed in gold appears by my bedside, concern etched into her forehead. Her outfit reminds me of a nun’s habit, though the gold veil is translucent and airy, her corn silk hair visible beneath.
“How long has it been?” My voice is hoarse.
“Three days.” She offers a weary smile—the first genuine one I’ve seen in what feels like forever. “You must be thirsty. Allow me.” Settling onto the edge of my bed, she slides a gentle hand against my nape and elevates my head. “Drink, but slowly.”
I manage a few sips of water from the silver mug she holds to my lips, my gaze searching her features. Gray touches her temples and weaves through her hair, crow’s-feet crinkle at the corners of her eyes, laugh lines frame her mouth. She’s in her fifties if I had to guess.
Swallowing hurts.
“Thanks,” I say as she slips her hand free. I don’t have the energy to pull myself up. “What happened?”
“You do not remember?” Round, steel-blue eyes search my face.
“That depends. Was the big, scary demon with giant horns real?”
“The daaknar. Yes, it most certainly was real.”
I sigh. Thank God. I thought I’d lost my mind. Though I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer that to the other reality—that my father’s been right all along, and demons exist. “It killed that woman.”
Deep sorrow carves into her expression. “High Priestess Margrethe succumbed to her injuries, yes.”
She knew her. Well, I suspect. Given her robes, I’m guessing she’s somehow affiliated with the church. A church that idolizes gods with horns protruding from their heads. What fresh hell has Sofie dropped me into?
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
The woman bows her head in acknowledgment.
Sleep tugs at my feeble body, but I have too many questions. “What happened after that thing attacked me?” How did I not suffer the same fate as the high priestess?
“It died. You killed it.”
“What? No … that’s not possible.” I search my foggy memory. It had me in its jaws. I was defenseless against it. “It bit me.”
“Yes, we have not been able to explain it either. To my knowledge, no one has ever survived an attack like that.” Her voice is doubtful, as if she’s still grappling with that truth. “We believe the daaknar tried to feed off you, but your blood harmed it.”
“It fed off me?” My face twists with horror.
“Not for long. It cast you aside and released that horrific shrill scream that could be heard across all Cirilea”—she winces as if recalling the sound—“and then it burst into flames. We assume it returned to Azo’dem.”
Azo’dem. Zander said that name when he was condemning me to death. Given he thinks I am a murderer, it must be their version of hell.
“Only an elemental caster has ever been able to banish a daaknar.” She studies me closely.
There it is again, this talk of casters. Zander mentioned it in the tower, and then Annika did so in the sanctum.
Annika.
“Did she get away? The king’s sister was there that night—”
“My sister is well,” a deep voice cuts in.
The woman tending to me scuttles off the bed and bends in a deep curtsy. “Your Highness. I didn’t expect you so soon.”
I swallow against the flare of nervousness and fear, and listen to the steady approach of footfalls, dreading that I’ve survived a demon’s mauling only to land myself back on a bonfire. That wouldn’t make sense, treating my injuries only so he could watch me die. But people sometimes choose irrational paths in search of reprieve from heartache. My mother taught me that.
Zander appears at my bedside. He is wearing all black again, though the jacket he wore to the tower cell has been replaced with one more regal, made of a velvety material. The embroidery along the lapels reminds me of waves crashing against rocks, the ochre thread accenting the deep gold highlights in his hair. His sword and dagger remain at his side.
And that stony, unreadable mask is firmly in place.
I find myself unable to look away from this man—this king—whom I was supposed to marry, who now wishes me dead. The daylight offers me a glimpse of his face that the moonlight did not, one that reveals a perfect balance between the hard edges and symmetrical, softer features—a square jaw that surrounds full lips, sharp cheekbones that frame large, deep-set eyes, a long, slender-tipped nose that meets a shapely brow.
Though I know it’s probably not wise, that it could be seen as a challenge, I hold his steady, dissecting gaze. His eyes are a light hazel. They would be pretty if they weren’t so full of hate.
“How are her wounds?” he asks after a moment.
“Healing well, Your Highness.”
“Show me.”
His words are an echo of those he spoke in the tower when he demanded to see the injury to my chest. The memory of his gentle touch against my bruised skin sends an unexpected shiver through my body.
The woman’s fingertips are cool as she peels back the bandages, exposing my neck.
Zander’s expression reveals nothing.
“How bad is it?” Am I missing a chunk of my body like Margrethe was? Will I have use of my right arm after that thing tore through my shoulder?
“Not as bad as one might expect.” She tacks on a quieter “Your Highness” at the end, and I realize she’s talking to me.
I’m not anyone’s Highness, I want to say. I’m just Romeria, or Romy for short. But I remember who I’m supposed to be, who everyone believes me to be.
“Why don’t you show her, Wendeline,” Zander suggests.
The woman—Wendeline—nods and rushes to somewhere nearby, returning a moment later.
The entire time, Zander’s unwavering eyes remain locked on mine. It’s like he’s waiting for a twitch or clue, an unspoken answer to his thoughts. It’s unnerving, and I can’t help but divert my gaze.
She holds up a hand mirror bordered with elaborate gilded curves in front of me.
My face r
eflects within the frame.
My face. The one I’ve known all my life, back when my life was ordinary in East Orange, Jersey, and then when my life became anything but ordinary. The same blue eyes of Alton’s Adriatic Sea, the same hair, as black as a starless night. The same dusting of freckles across the bridge of my nose, almost too light to notice.
How can I be the Romeria that I’ve known all my life and this other Romeria, this princess of a kingdom in a strange place?
One who journeys to a foreign land.
Sofie said so little in our short time together, her words vague and random at the time, and yet the connections keep snapping into place.
“It will take time for me to repair them, but I have no experience with healing injuries from a daaknar. I fear there will be scars,” Wendeline offers, reminding me that I have an audience watching me closely.
I pull my attention from this face that is mine and yet also a stranger’s, and inspect the two puncture wounds over my jugular. They’re no more than small dots, so contradictory to the lethal fangs that sank into me. What did Wendeline mean when she said she healed them? Even as I ask myself this question, the answer is there, lingering at the recesses of my mind. Is she talking about … magic?
“What about her arm?” Zander asks.
Wendeline nods and shifts her focus to my shoulder, pushing aside the loose cotton material. It’s then I realize someone has changed me out of my sullied and torn wedding dress. It’s an unpleasant feeling knowing I was undressed while I was unconscious, but I push it from my thoughts because it’s in the past and something else worries me more.
Sofie’s ring.
Relief washes over me when I feel the band against the soft pad of my thumb. They didn’t remove it. Could it have been the ring that somehow protected me against the beast? Is that what Sofie meant by protection? Did she know I would be attacked?
Zander watches where my fingers fidget, missing nothing. His brow pinches with confusion before smoothing over once again. It’s a fleeting tell, and it reminds me that he tried to take this ring from me.
Wendeline peels away the gauzy bandages from my shoulder and holds up the mirror. “It was much worse to begin with.”
Four grisly streaks—each at least six inches long and an inch wide—mar my skin where the beast’s claws sank into my body. Oddly, there are no stitches. I would’ve expected dozens, and yet my flesh appears to have knitted together without the help of needle and thread. The scars will be ghastly, but it could have been much worse. I still have my eyes.
“Leave us,” Zander commands softly. It reminds me of how Korsakov’s voice used to go soft when he’d send people away. It meant he was going to exact revenge and didn’t want any witnesses.
“Your Highness.” Wendeline curtsies and darts out, her cloak swooshing with her hurried steps. Is that a sign of respect—are people expected to jump and run at his every word?—or is it that she’s afraid of him?
He’s a king, but what kind of man is he? All that power, people bowing and rushing around to do his bidding. Even as scary as Korsakov was, you’d never catch Tony or any of the other guys calling him anything remotely close to Highness.
Zander shifts closer to tower over my feeble body. “Feel free to speak your mind.”
And say what? This man condemned me to death. After he kissed me.
I meet his examining gaze. “I’m good.”
The corner of his mouth twitches as he watches me curiously. “Annika said you were different from before. I can’t say I didn’t notice it. I had the priestess search for signs of whatever elemental magic courses through your limbs. There is no other explanation for you surviving that which should have killed you twice now.”
“You think I’m using elemental magic.”
“I do not know, but I will get the truth out of you.” His cool fingers slip around my forearm, lifting it into the air. “In case you get any ideas, these will keep you in check.”
I frown at the cuff around my wrist. It’s plain and black and fitted as if molded especially for me. It reminds me vaguely of the black obsidian horn Sofie impaled me with. I can’t find a fastener or even a seam. A matching one graces my other wrist. “How?”
His responding smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Islor has a few secrets of its own, still.” He releases his grip of my forearm and wanders from my bedside.
My hand. The one he sliced with his dagger.
I study my palm. There is only the faintest line where the sizable gash existed. I open and close my fist several times, testing it. It’s as if it didn’t happen at all. “You cut me,” I hear myself say. He did, didn’t he?
“You did far worse to me.” He sighs. “What am I to do with you, Romeria?”
Now that I know half my neck isn’t missing, I grit through the sting and turn my head to follow. The bedroom they’ve put me in is a vast improvement to the tower cell. Here, patterned paper and painted portraits adorn the walls and furniture fills the corners. The ceilings arch twenty feet over my head and daylight streams in through three grand windows. A set of glass doors are propped open.
Zander stops in front of them. “Annika tells me the daaknar was intent on her until you drew its attention to you. Why did you do that?”
“Because it would have killed her.” I don’t have an explanation beyond that. I didn’t think; I acted.
“And you knew it would die if it attacked you?”
“I didn’t even know that thing existed before that night. So, no. I guess I figured my time was up.”
He peers over his shoulder to shoot me with a flat look. “You expect me to believe you didn’t know daaknars exist.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, because you’re not going to trust anything I say.”
His lips twist. “Finally, something out of your mouth I know to be genuine.”
I could speak all kinds of truths right now—that demons are hallucinations of my mad father, that magic only exists in the world of my mother’s cult—only I’m no longer sure they’d be truths. Everything I thought I knew has been flipped upside down by a red-haired woman with flames dancing along her fingertips and a desperate need to resurrect her dead husband.
My father believes in demons. He’s railed against those who told him they didn’t exist, and look where that has gotten him? He’s been cast aside, an unfortunate case left in society’s gutter. Now here I am, in a place where everyone seems to believe demons and magic exist. I’m wearing scars to prove the former. Am I to hold fast to my denial and become an inverse reflection of my father?
The only certainty I see before me is that there are too many things I can’t explain with what I thought I knew. But Sofie warned me of that too.
The rules of the world to which you are accustomed are about to change.
And in the world that I’m currently trapped in, there are kingdoms to kill for, beasts who feed off people, and magic I’m sure I can’t fathom.
God only knows what else there is.
Zander’s attention veers back to his view outside. “How did you destroy it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Sofie was adamant that these people not discover my true identity, but what does that mean? That I’m not Princess Romeria of Ybaris but a doppelganger she has somehow planted at the worst possible time? That I’m not from Islor or Ybaris and had never heard of either place until a few days ago? Where even is the real princess? What did Sofie do with her body?
Is this somehow her body?
A shiver of panic courses through my limbs.
Regardless, I can’t imagine how knowing who I really am could be more dangerous to me, but I have to believe Sofie was speaking the truth. She thinks my success will bring Elijah back to her, and she wouldn’t risk that.
Still, how am I to survive in this place as the woman who murdered a king and queen?
With a version of my reality, I guess.
I take a deep bre
ath, not sure how this will be received, other than—likely—not well. “I don’t remember anything before waking up in the garden, the night I pulled Annika from the river.”
Zander’s chuckle carries through my room. “Innocence by oblivion. How convenient. Has anyone used that defense to explain away murder in my court yet?” He pauses with dramatic effect. “No, I do not believe so. You are the first. Congratulations.” His tone drips with sarcasm.
I roll my eyes at his back. “It’s the truth, whether you believe it or not. I don’t remember my life in Ybaris. I don’t remember coming here. I don’t remember meeting you, or anything that might have happened between us.” My cheeks heat at the implication.
The silence stretches on and I hold my breath, studying his form while I wait for his response. Broad shoulders lead into a tapered waist. Beneath the cover of that jacket, I acutely recall powerful thighs pressed against my hips and hard curves against my fingertips. Under other—vastly different—circumstances, I would be looking for ways to gain his attention. Now, I wish I could disappear from his bitter thoughts forever.
Finally, he turns and leans against the frame to face me, folding his arms across his chest. It’s a casual stance, but nothing about his harsh expression reads as casual. “You’re losing your talents. I’ve already caught you in your lie.”
“What do you mean—”
“Sofie. The name of your coconspirator?”
Shit. He’s right. How could I remember her if I don’t remember anything before that night? “That was a lie,” I blurt before my alarm gives away too much.
His eyebrow arches, but he says nothing. He’s waiting for me to elaborate.
I don’t dare to look away for fear of appearing guilty. “I was terrified, and you were demanding a name, so I made one up.”
“You are telling me that no such caster exists.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying,” I lie, while convincing myself it could be the truth. Is Sofie her real name? Do I know for certain she is one of these casters?
He seems to consider this. “But you did have help from someone in Islor. Either someone within the court or the household.”