I force the tension from my shoulders. I can’t apologize. I can’t make this right, and I have to live with that knowledge forever. I think about Destruction dying and close my eyes, but Mother can’t know I’m hurting. Mother can’t know my plans went awry. What would I say if I wanted to kill Chancery, but failed? What would I say if I tried to do what Mother thinks I did?
For a split second, I consider what Chancery would do in my place. She’d run past Mother, ignoring her vexation, and chase me down. She’d fall at my feet and apologize. She’d probably confess that she was jealous and wanted time with Mother on her own. Then she’d beg for my forgiveness with a few tears to season the entire thing. If I did that, we could be friends. But Mother would remove me as Heir.
And Mother loves Chancery, not me. Mother spends her time voluntarily with Chancery, not me. So I wouldn’t be Heir anymore, and I wouldn’t be beloved, either. I’d be caught with nothing. A cheap facsimile of my twin, not inherently sweet, not strong enough to deal with the realities of the throne.
Mother would have no use for me at all.
So I say what I must. I killed my sister’s dog, which is sickening, unforgivable, but my sister is still alive. “Well, there’s always next time.” I choke down the disgust I feel. I bury the regret. Instead I focus on my frustration, my resentment, my jealousy. I fan it until my eyes spark and my fingers tingle. “I guess there’s some sport in that, right?”
Mother crouches down in front of me. “No, Judica, this isn’t a game. There can’t be a next time. You must promise me that. You must never try to kill your sister again.”
I try not to, but the frown shoves its way through, pulling the corners of my lips downward. “What if she betrays me? What if she’s a threat to me? To you? To Alamecha? What then?”
Mother shakes her head. “You mustn’t ever kill your sister. She would never betray you, or me, or Alamecha. Never. Do you hear me?”
I nod, tightly, not having to try quite so hard to expand my resentment. “I hear you.” I sound practically sullen.
“You don’t need to fret over this. I’m drawing up paperwork today that will name you as Heir, formally. Chancery isn’t a threat to you. You know that, right?”
I should be reassured. Mother clearly wants me to feel better about things. She’s worried and wants to protect darling, perfect, contrite Chancery. But I’m smart enough to know that if Mother can draw up paperwork naming me, she can also change that paperwork. Which means it’s completely worthless. Pointing that out is probably equally useless. “Yes, Mother. I believe you.”
She pats my head. “Good girl. I don’t expect you to do anything about this, because I don’t think anything you do or say would be well received, but your sister is very upset right now.”
She loved that stupid dog. I liked Pebbles too. He always licked my hand and bumped my leg so I would scratch him behind his ears. I didn’t mean for him to die, but she thinks I meant to kill her, my own sister. “I know.” My lower lip wobbles.
Mother’s mouth tenses. “The thing is.” She clears her throat.
“You want me to apologize to her.”
Mother nods. “That might help, but we might need to wait and do that tomorrow.”
“What am I supposed to do at our party tonight?” I ask. “Ignore her?”
“That’s the thing,” Mother says. “She doesn’t want you there.”
I open my mouth, but I have no idea what to say. She’s right. I tried to force Mother to spend time with me, cutting Chancery out. It’s fitting that I should miss this celebration, lose out on even more time with Mother for my selfishness. Not that it fixes anything, but I get it.
“I told her you should be allowed at your own party,” Mother says. “Of course. But I think I have a solution that will work out better for everyone. We’ll host your party first. You can greet everyone, and spend some time with your friends.”
Is she really so clueless she thinks I have friends? “Okay.”
“And then after an hour and a half, you can return here, to your room, and Chancery will come out. You can both enjoy the party, but we don’t agitate her further,” Mother says.
I hate the idea. Chancery gave me a necklace an hour ago to tell me she’ll always be my best friend. I grab my shirt, feeling the metal underneath. But my options are to apologize and explain it was all a huge mistake, that I was simply greedy for time alone, or to let this stand.
In a bizarre way, I’m getting what I want. I won’t be sharing my party. But for the first time ever, I’m realizing that if I don’t share, I get half the time I had before. I thought I knew what I wanted. I thought I was being smart.
I was an idiot.
And yet, when Mother stands up to leave, she looks at me with respect in her eyes. I’m terribly afraid that she’s proud of me for trying to kill my sister. Which is both undeserved and unwanted. I’ve never wanted to blurt out the truth more than I do right now. I want to beg Mother to forgive me, beg her to plead with Chancery to understand.
Chancery won’t look at me with respect. She won’t blush and give me corny jewelry. She’ll look at me with loathing, with contempt, and maybe even with fear. I swallow and force myself to meet Mother’s eye calmly.
Because any kind of apology Chancery would accept would require me to admit that I made a mistake. A fierce queen is respected. A ruthless queen is feared. A terrifying queen is obeyed. But a flawed one? She’s replaced. I’ve learned my lesson for this year.
Be perfect at all costs. Even when it hurts more than burning coals.
5
The Present
What wakes me is the cold. Not like a dog’s nose or watermelon on a hot day. No, nothing friendly, nothing welcoming. This cold hits me like a flexed palm, striking my body with a painful ache. I’ve clearly been cold for a long time, because my fingers and toes are stiff. But I don’t know where I am, or how long I’ve been here, so I can’t let on that I’m waking up. I don’t open my eyes, but I reach out in other ways.
I’m lying on my side with my arms in front of me, clasped as if in prayer. The stone underneath me is hard, unyielding, and inconsistent. I’m guessing it’s limestone based on the texture, which I can feel easily because I’m wearing only my underwear and sports bra. One particularly rough stone rubs against my ribs with every breath. I quickly suppress my shiver before anyone who may be watching might notice. It’s humid, but not as humid as Hawaii. There’s a chill in the air outside, I suspect, but I both hear and feel the regulated air entering the room from a vent in the ceiling. I’m inside a building somewhere in the developed world. I hear a heartbeat behind me. It’s evian.
I don’t open my eyes. I don’t breathe any faster than I would while sleeping.
“She shouldn’t wake up for almost another hour,” the heartbeat says in a gruff voice.
“Unless she’s stimulated,” a woman says, the sound piped in from a speaker in the ceiling. She’s not inside the cell with me and the gruff-voiced man. Her voice is high, shrill-adjacent even. Maybe she’s nervous, or maybe she always sounds upset and unhappy.
“What did you want me to do to her exactly?” The man sounds disgustingly eager.
“Don’t be crass, Egan. Shake her.”
He shakes me, but I don’t respond.
“Nothing, boss.”
“Do it again.”
He kicks me in the ribs.
“I said to shake her.”
“She’ll heal.”
The woman’s voice tsks but doesn’t reprimand him again.
He clearly takes her failure to censure him as encouragement and kicks me again, harder this time.
I grunt.
“See?” he asks. “Told you a kick would do the trick.”
I blink and blink and blink and my eyes finally process the veritable flood of data. Egan’s heavy, black boots are retreating and fury floods my abused, prone body. My hand shoots out and grabs the heel closest to me, then I wrench it hard. Egan is a very so
lid man, but that doesn’t keep him from toppling to the flagstones next to me.
I’m practically giddy to discover that I’m not restrained in any way.
I can’t prevent the small smile from creeping across my face. I roll to my knees and spring to my bare feet, taking in the details of my confines out of my periphery while I focus on the threat in front of me. Egan’s dark brown eyes widen, his nearly black eyebrows slanting downward angrily.
I kick him in the throat, collapsing his windpipe. Then I use my foot and hand to flip him on his stomach, and I pull his arms behind him and upward. He’s choking in front of me, oxygen deprived and dazed, but he’ll heal the injury to his throat quickly enough and recover use of his lungs. If I don’t kill him first.
I apply pressure until I’ve dislocated both shoulders. He wriggles underneath me. I’m grateful he can’t scream yet, but I don’t pay much attention to him, not anymore. After all, it’s not Egan who truly interests me. He’s not my captor. He’s a pawn. I look around at the three solid stone walls, and the one mirrored one. Then I glance upward, casting my eyes around for the speaker from which the villainous voice emanated. There are two things in the ceiling, nine feet from the ground. A speaker and an air vent.
“I assume you can see me.”
“I can.”
“Then you can watch while I kill your man in front of you.”
“I can.”
“If you think I’m bluffing—”
“Oh, I know you’re not. I’ve heard all the rumors, and I don’t doubt them for a second.” The mirror shimmers and suddenly becomes a window. No more than eighteen inches from me stands a woman whose face surprises me. It’s not abnormally beautiful, not for an evian, anyway. It’s not full of rage. It’s not scarred, or plain, or distinctive, at least, not in particular.
But I’ve seen it before, a very, very long time ago.
Flawless, deep golden skin. Tawny bronze eyes. Full-bodied, rich mahogany curls that shine and bounce with a toss of her head. High, pronounced cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. Full lips that are slightly open as if she can’t help looking like an airbrushed model, but she wishes she could.
The recognition is immediate, but the placement takes a beat. I scan my memories, reaching further and further back until I finally reach my oldest and fuzziest memory.
“You were there in the room on the day I was born.”
Her full lips close and then curve into a knowing smile. She bobs her head, her eyes glinting with pride. “I was, but it’s impressive that you recall my presence.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your sister.”
A shiver claws its way up my spine, like a cat scaling a tree trunk without regard for the damage done.
The woman holding me in this cell is Melina, the sister who tried to kill Mother almost eighteen years ago. The sister Mother exiled instead of killing. The sister who wanted Chancery dead. “Oh.”
“It’s about time we met, don’t you think?” She touches her throat with one delicate hand. “But we could talk more easily if you’d free poor Egan.”
“He kicked me,” I say. “Twice.” I don’t mention that he insinuated that he’d be willing to behave much worse. She was there. She heard it.
She sighs heavily. “He did, and he shouldn’t have. But I’d say the collapsed throat and dislocated shoulders qualify as punishment enough for his inexcusable rudeness. If it helps, we don’t see many guests.”
“Is that what I am?” I ask. “In that case, I’d really like some clothing.”
The respectful glint sparks again in her eyes. “I’ll have appropriate clothing brought in. We had to ensure you weren’t concealing any more shims like the one you cleverly poked through your navel.” Melina’s tone reproves me for nearly escaping from the van earlier, but the look in her eyes belies her inflection.
I tighten my hold on his arms and shove them higher. He has healed enough to grunt in response. Good, I want her to realize I mean it. Egan’s in jeopardy. “While we’re on the topic, clothing will be nice, but I’ll only free your ill-mannered lackey if you agree to release me.”
Melina laughs just like Chancery. It’s uncanny, really. I wonder whether our father laughed like that, like wind in the trees, a bird warbling with joy, the nicker of a horse when he hasn’t seen me in a while, the squeal of a child with a lollipop. Was our father’s laugh distilled from a fount of pure joy as well?
“I can’t release you, little one. I’m sorry.” She bites her lip. “Truly.”
I swallow and try to think of everything Mother ever said about her. I draw a blank. Why didn’t I press for more information on my own sister? She was flawed, that much I recall, but how? Why? I was too afraid I’d hear Mother describe my own flaws to ask. And inasmuch as Chancery made me crazy sometimes, she was a known quantity. Mother’s reticence to discuss Melina made me uncomfortable enough that I preferred to pretend she didn’t exist.
“Fine, then answer my questions and I’ll release him.”
She leans closer to the glass and responds in a low voice that barely carries through the speaker. “I don’t actually care what you do with poor Egan. I’m too smart to send anyone I truly value into the cell with you. I’ve heard the stories. You adapted well to the Heir training, taking to it like a monkey to the trees, or a shark to water. You excelled far more than I ever did, from the accounts I’ve heard.”
I squeeze tighter and tighter as she talks, taking out my frustration on the target at hand. Egan moans, and I knee him in the back. Shut up, you useless waste. If Melina truly doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, I have no leverage. I stand up, releasing him. I ignore the noises he makes as he relocates his own shoulder by slamming into the wall. He doesn’t get either arm on the first try, which makes me grin a little in spite of myself.
He crosses the room toward the floor to ceiling metal door on slides, and I follow him. Go ahead, sister. Press the button to free your useless goon. I’ll be right behind him.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Egan. Get comfortable in there. We won’t let you out until I’m ready to put darling, treacherous Judica back to sleep.”
I swear under my breath, but file the information away. She’s not killing me, at least, not right away.
“You worked hard to create your reputation of ruthlessness, efficiency, and pragmatism.” Melina flattens her hands against the glass and leans closer. “I know precisely what that kind of reputation costs. Thousands of hours spent suffering unspeakable pain, healing over and over, only to be injured again, and fighting nearly fatal matches so you’ll be ready when it’s time. Stretching and developing your mind through countless lessons, languages, historical facts, game theory. But it’s never enough, is it? No matter how much you learn, there’s always more, like trying to drink straight from a fire hose. I know this, because you see, I earned my reputation the hard way too.”
I wish I knew what exactly she was known for, other than trying to kill Chancy after our mother refused.
“I told Mother this would happen, you know.” Melina shakes her head. “I predicted this from the very beginning.”
I don’t know, in fact, what in the world she’s talking about. “You predicted you’d kill Mother, and then Chancery and I would fight, and Chancery would win?”
She laughs again, but this time I sense the difference between her laugh and Chancery’s. Her laugh starts off at the same place, Delightsville, but it goes off track somewhere around Happytown and there are notes of delirium, of insanity behind it. The end of her laugh is unhinged somehow, unbound by any solid emotion or empathy.
“You grew very still for a moment,” she says. “Do you mind if I ask why?”
“You sound like her, like Chancery.” I wonder how she’ll react to her name, since she swore to kill her from what I heard.
“Ah, sweet, gentle Chancery. I sound like her, do I?” She shakes her head. “You’re so entertaining, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to he
ar that Mother finally died. But I feel sorrow, too, more than I expected. But no, I certainly didn’t expect her to live quite this long when I challenged her to a fight to the death eighteen years ago.”
“You lost,” I say. But after proclaiming it’s true, I wonder. Did she lose? Who was unable to kill whom?
“I challenged Mother the day you were born. I knew you and Chancery would eventually come to blows. Mother promised me that it would never happen. She vowed that you two would become fast friends, but you can’t force people to get along. Having one child destined to rule doesn’t really make for the best dynamic. There’s a reason all three sets of female twins born in the last century of an empress’s life have resulted in full blown civil wars.”
I lift my chin. “Chancery and I worked things out.”
“Oh, sure you have. When was it you were hacking at one another with swords? Oh, right.” Her grin this time doesn’t touch her eyes. “Yesterday.”
So I’ve only been out for one day. Good to know.
“I need some information from you.” She leans closer to the glass.
I lift my eyebrows.
“Why did Mother change her mind? Why did she cut you out?”
My heart contracts.
“Angel tells me you saw her face, so it’s no secret that she worked for me. She told me that Mother changed the paperwork naming you as Heir just before she died. She said she named Chancery as her heir, but hadn’t finished the paperwork. Unfortunately, she had no idea why Mother did any of that.” She pins me with a glare. “But you know. Of course you know why you were displaced.”
I look away from her.
“I need to understand,” she hisses. “Tell me what motivated the change.” Her eyes bore into mine.
I shrug with practiced indifference. “That’s too bad.”
Her lips compress until they’re practically white, and then she spits her next words. “You will tell me eventually.”
“Or what?” I ask.
unForgiven (The Birthright Series Book 2) Page 4
