Ciera smiles at me. “Years. We have years, Rystan. I can’t tell you how many, exactly, but she’s well now.”
I remember how to breathe again then.
We have time.
I glare down at her body, stalking to her with a burning rage I can’t contain. She was going to let herself die, and she didn’t so much as tell me. I need to shout at her.
The sound of a frantic set of footfalls rushing toward us distracts me. I unsheathe my dagger and return to the door, positioning myself in front of the queen, though there are plenty of guards in the corridor.
Instants later, an imp in a page outfit appears, out of breath, wide eyes still open in shock.
“Your Highness—” The dainty, light-green-skinned imp is breathless. “You’re needed in the war room at once. We have had news.”
Queen Ciera’s violet eyes cut through me.
“I’ll stay with Vlari,” I say, my words concealing my rage. She and I have a matter or two to discuss today.
The queen squeezes my arm, and follows the page out of the room.
I sit next to Vlari, and take one of her hands.
As the seconds stretch, I half expect her to take the coward’s way out. She has to know how pissed I am. But reality fades, and she pulls me into one of her visions all the same.
Looking at her, I find that I’m incapable of saying anything at first, taking in the fact that she’s right here in front of me. Almost alive.
“You were dying.”
She sighs. “My mother can be dramatic.”
“You weredying.”
She doesn’t seem to get it.
Silence looms as she stares at me cautiously, and I do my best not to snap.
If I let go of whatever control I have left, there’s no telling what I’ll do. Quietly, I ask, “Why didn’t you wake up?”
She takes a moment before answering. I know she’s thinking of a way to make her response sound better. “If my energy were to die down in eversleep, I think I could still power the ward for a while. Years, maybe. They say the Cursed Prince in the Wilderness still retains his power, though he’s been in eversleep for thousands of years.”
“You decided to stop caring about your survival based ontales.” Never mind control. I’m shouting. She deserves to be shouted at.
She waves her hand. “So what? My life against that of thousands of folk? It’s not like many people would actually care if I wasn’t around. You would have forgiven me, eventually.”
I could throttle her. I want to. “They have to. I don’t.”
She seems amused, as though she knows I’m talking utter nonsense. As if she knows I’m twisted around her littlest finger. “You would have.”
That’s new.
Vlari has never given me a reason to think she was aware of her hold on me, not even once. Even when I was weak enough to let her glimpse just how deep my obsession with her ran, she’d gloss right over the knowledge, reading something else instead. Teasing, cruelty, indifference. She’s never acknowledged any awareness of my feelings.
Now she is implying she knew.
She knew I loved her.
“You would have understood I did the right thing. You would have admired me for it. And when Tenebris was ours again, you would have danced to songs about the sleeping princess at the heart of the ley lines. In a thousand years, you would have told your grandchildren you knew me.”
I’ve never known such fury. “Don’t.” I can’t deal with this. Her flippancy. Her indifference to death. “Don’t you dare do this. Don’t you dare give up on life.”
