Displaced (The Birthright Series Book 1)

by Bridget E. Baker

  Mom ignores me. “Lyssa ne’Davina Alamecha, answer my question. Is your daughter half-human?”

  Lyssa bows her head. “She is, Your Majesty.”

  “And you hid this from me for more than eighteen years.”

  I silently will her to say she didn’t know. If she’d only claim she suspected, but didn’t believe. Perhaps she could claim she recently discovered the truth.

  Give Mom something to work with, Lyssa. Anything.

  She obviously doesn’t hear my urging, and she isn’t thinking along the same lines. Her whispered defense won’t help, either. “Lark had no idea.”

  “She knew nothing?” Judica grins. “Which means nothing, since you’re saying she had no idea. Which means she knows now. Unless you’re claiming she anonymously turned herself in. Whether she knew for an hour or a decade without immediately surrendering, the punishment is the same.”

  I roll my eyes. “You can’t really mean—”

  Judica shouts. “Lyssa’s been training her daughter in private for years. Obviously that was to cover this abominable lie.”

  “I train alone,” I say.

  “Because you’re pathetic.” Judica sneers. “I honestly don’t know which is worse.”

  “She asked me why she trained alone,” Lyssa’s voice wavers. “I told her it was to preserve the mystique of her skill, Your Highness.”

  Judica stands up and steps down so she’s eye level with Lyssa. “You told her she had to train alone because otherwise the entire evian world would see her for what she is.” Judica’s face twists. “Trash.” I never realized how much she hates humans.

  “I did not,” Lyssa says. “She never knew.”

  “Liar,” Judica says. “You’re compounding your crimes by trying to protect her.”

  “Step back, Heir,” Mom says. “This is my interrogation.”

  Judica’s fists clench, but she steps back and sits down.

  “Why did you keep her?” I ask softly.

  “Because I loved her. From the moment she was born and I realized she wasn’t Paolo’s child, I knew she was half-human. But my love for her kept me from giving her up.” She meets my mother’s eye, and I don’t know what she sees, but Lyssa flinches and looks back down at the ground.

  “You should have left with her,” Mom says. “You know the law.”

  “I do,” Lyssa whispers. “I broke it, and I will accept your judgment.”

  “Others knew,” Judica says. “They must have. Didn’t Lark have some kind of challenge today? I just heard—”

  “Lyssa ex’Alamecha.” Mom cuts Judica off. “I convict you of treason, compounded by eighteen years’ time and unmitigated by confession. I take no pleasure in this, but I sentence you to immediate death by beheading.”

  Mom draws her sword from the sheath at her side with a snick and before I’ve even stood up to protest, she beheads her best friend of more than eight hundred years with a single stroke.

  4

  Enora the Merciless.

  That was Mom’s moniker for almost nine centuries, but I could never make sense of it. Mom nursed me herself. She held my tiny hands in her own while I learned to walk. She fed me spoon after spoon of pureed peas and carrots. She swung me up in the air and rained kisses down on my cheeks, the bridge of my nose, my forehead, and my mouth. She changed my diapers without complaint, and when it was time, she taught me to go pee in the potty. Mom tucked me into her bed every night, until I was old enough I wanted to sleep in my own. And then she complained that I was growing up. She rocked me and read to me and watched human movies with me.

  Mom’s the opposite of merciless.

  She has always been the epitome of mercy, forgiving my weaknesses and flaws before I even realized they existed. She kept peace among our lands and protected our people. She taught me everything I know, and she gave me everything I needed. Always. She was a gracious friend, a doting mother, and an excellent ruler. I never understood how people could call her merciless.

  Until today.

  She killed her friend without a thought. No hesitation, no regret.

  My heart breaks, the light goes out of the room, my knees shake, and I can’t even process the scene before my eyes, but Mom doesn’t pause. She marches down the aisle between petitioners and strides to the door. I follow her numbly, passing Lyssa’s fallen form without looking. Judica walks along next to me, head high, eyes flinty, as though Mom acted exactly as she ought. My best friend’s mom keeps one tiny secret and off with her head?

  It’s like we’re in a demented scene from Alice in Wonderland and my mom’s been possessed by the Queen of Hearts. Only it’s real life and no part of this was drawn with ink or created with CGI.

  When we reach the exit, Mom tosses a command over her shoulder to Balthasar. “Call Larena for clean up, and find Lark. She stands trial here in fifteen minutes. I’m taking a small break to confer with my daughters.”

  Confer with me? I have nothing to say to her. I can’t believe she killed her best friend. I can’t believe she’s really about to try Lark for the crime of being born.

  Mom doesn’t stop until she reaches her room and we’re all inside. She shuts the door carefully, not showing the least bit of anger, frustration, or grief.

  “How could you do that?” I ask, the second the door’s closed.

  I wish I hadn’t. Mom’s shoulders sag, and her face looks older than I’ve ever seen it. Lines crease her forehead, and crows’ feet crinkle around her eyes. She sinks onto the bench at the foot of her bed and Judica puts an arm around her in a shocking move. Judica never comforts anyone.

  “I did what I had to do.” Mom turns watery eyes toward me. “And you will follow my lead in a few moments with your friend.”

  Wait. Is she implying that I’ll behead Lark?

  I stumble backward, bumping into the door. “I will never kill my friend.”

  “This is your fault,” Judica says. “Lyssa as good as said she kept Lark because Mom kept you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mom drops her face into her hands and I hear a sound I’ve never heard from my mom in my entire life: sobbing.

  I want to shove Judica aside. She couldn’t comfort a brick wall, much less a human. I settle for walking around Mom’s other side and taking her hand in mine. “I’m sorry if this really was my fault.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I chose to keep you, and I knew the risks, if not the price.” Mom squeezes my hand. “I’d pay it again if I knew. I don’t regret keeping you, and I never will.”

  “Is that really what caused this?” My voice sounds surprisingly small. I’m supposed to be comforting Mom, not soliciting reassurance myself.

  Mom shakes her head. “There was no law that required me to kill you, Chancery, as you know. It became common practice after the Hundred Years’ War, but there’s no rule. Every time twin heirs are left alive, they battle for the throne.” Mom pauses. “But the two things have nothing to do with each other, and Lark was born before you. Lyssa made her decision before I made mine. Lying about Lark, keeping her among us, she violated that law. Among other things, that decision left her susceptible to influence from the other five families. On top of that, it was dangerous for Lark, and for the rest of us. It’s one of our oldest standing rules, and it’s inviolable.”

  “Even so, you might have simply exiled her, but...” Judica trails off.

  Mom couldn’t look weak, not after keeping me. Not after everyone talking for the past seventeen years and eleven and a half months about Enora’s folly.

  “So it is my fault.”

  Enora closes her eyes. “I’m not worried about looking weak. Let the other families attack. I’ll raze them to the ground.” She clenches her fists. “But Judica.” Enora stands up, pivots on the ball of one foot and slaps my twin full across her face.

  My jaw drops.

  “If you ever, ever again try to steer an interrogation toward the implication of your sister in a crime, I’ll execute you. And you’l
l deserve it for disloyalty to me and our family. Do you understand?” Mother’s eyes flash, and her body shakes with suppressed rage.

  Judica’s voice raises goosebumps on my arm. “Yes, Mother. I understand perfectly.”

  What had Judica been asking when Mom beheaded her friend? She’d been pressing Lyssa for who else knew. Which means...

  Mom knows Lark knew, because Mom knows I knew Lark’s secret.

  Judica realized it too? And was angling toward making sure I was punished. How did I wind up in this family? I’m so dense compared to everyone else.

  Because I’m only now realizing that Mom executed her oldest friend without a reprieve, without letting her say goodbye to her daughter or her son who are both in residence... because of me. Not in a roundabout way, because of an old decision, or because Mom keeping me emboldened Lyssa to hide Lark. No, Mom executed her friend to keep Judica from implicating me in the whole mess.

  Mom killed Lyssa to cover for a mistake I made today. Mom protected me: the weak one, the stupid one, the deficient one. Same as always.

  She really should let me go to New York. Her life would be much better without me around to ruin everything.

  Mom brushes off her skirt and steps toward the door. “We need to return. They’ll have located Lark.”

  No, no, no. Not Lark. I whimper. “We can’t, we cannot execute her, Mom. It’s not her fault. She had nothing to do with the decision to stay.”

  Judica’s cheek isn’t even red, but she’s on the war path anyway. “She is the decision. She must die.”

  I look at Mom, desperation freezing my muscles, tightening my jaw, forcing my hands to shake uncontrollably. “No, no. There’s something we can do, right Mom?” A sob escapes before I can clamp down on it. “You can’t kill her too. You can’t.”

  “If Lark knew,” Mom says, “then the law is the law.”

  “But she’s so young,” I protest. “You can’t hold someone to a law when they’re a child. She’s barely an adult, and we have no idea when she found out. Don’t you think killing her mother is enough punishment for just, I don’t know, being who she is?”

  The lines on Mom’s face pull at my heart. She’s resolute. “She’s eighteen, almost nineteen.”

  Great tears stream down my face and I brace for Mom to yell at me, or maybe even slap me. I know I need to pull things together. I can’t walk into a trial sobbing like a baby. But Enora the Merciful is here in this room, and she draws me carefully into her arms. “I’m so sorry, little dove. So very sorry. If I’d had any idea, we could have worked out a way to avoid all of this, but it’s far too public now, which means our hands are tied. If she knew, our hands are tied.”

  If I’d trusted my mom with Lark’s secret, she could have done something, avoided this. But I didn’t. I thought I could help Lark myself, and I wanted to be the one who kept her safe. I thought I was helping, but something about that fight must have triggered someone to pull a DNA test.

  I’m so stupid.

  “Wait,” Judica says. “You weren’t hearing petitions with me. Someone tested her DNA after she won a match...” Judica’s eyes widen and her mouth gapes. “Was Lark fighting you?”

  Mom’s nostrils flare. “That has no bearing whatsoever on the hearing we are about to hold.”

  The corner of Judica’s mouth turns up. “Doesn’t it? I’m not asking anything in an interrogation room, but I hope we can be honest with one another in private.” She crosses her arms. “Which is it, sister? Are you so pathetic you were defeated by a human? Or did you know her treasonous secret and commit treason yourself to help her? I’m not even sure which is worse.”

  I’ve never seen Judica smile quite so big.

  “Your sister,” Mom says, “had no idea what her friend was. I watched the entire thing. But as you know, Chancery detests violence, and I haven’t yet taught her to handle a blade. Those things hampered her in a challenge against her dearest friend in the world. We’re aware of the deficiencies and are working on a solution. It’s not of your concern.”

  Judica scowls at me before she jerks the door open and storms out, stomping toward the petition hall. Before I can follow her through the doorway, Mom places a hand on my arm. “We will talk about this later, but tell me you understand the importance of your ignorance.”

  I nod numbly.

  “I’ll burn the world down to protect you,” she whispers.

  Or cut off her best friend’s head without regret, apparently.

  Her hand tightens on my arm painfully. “But I’d prefer it never comes to that.”

  Me too. And I really hope Lark survives this. I’m afraid if I beg for her life, Mom will decide to teach me a lesson or something.

  Judica’s already seated when we reach the petition hall. The gathered crowd has swollen to an absurd degree. Every seat is taken, and dozens of evians are standing in the back of the room. My heart sinks. This hearing won’t go unnoticed. Even if her body has already been removed and all evidence of her decapitation expunged, word of Lyssa’s sentence has clearly spread widely.

  Mom ascends the steps to her solid wood throne, carved to look like a tree, its branches spreading out to the right and left over the smaller thrones for Judica and myself. I take my place to her left side without saying a word. Unfortunately, even from where I’m sitting, and even though she’s kneeling on the hard marble floors a dozen feet lower than me, Lark’s stricken face is directly in my line of sight.

  Her gray eyes are full of unshed tears, and she looks decades older than she did an hour ago. Her mother was right. She never should have asked for a favor from me. I doomed them both.

  I inhale deeply to keep from sobbing in front of hundreds of my mom’s most important subjects. I need to hold it together right now, because Mom’s affection for me gives Lark her only chance of surviving this. I wrack my brain, scrambling for any idea that might save her.

  I can’t think of a single thing.

  “Lark ne’Lyssa Alamecha, daughter of Lyssa ne’Davina Alamecha,” Mom says flatly, her words reverberating off the fifty-foot ceiling, “you are half-human.”

  Lark doesn’t speak, but a tear rolls down her cheek. She’s standing trial for who she is. Her mother died for Lark being different than the rest of us, but Lark is the exact same person she was yesterday. Everyone liked her just fine then.

  This is wrong. The certainty of that washes over me. How can it be treason to be who you are? I want to stand up and scream it to the rooftops, but that’s exactly what Mom cautioned me not to do. I’ve made enough mistakes today to last a lifetime, so I keep my mouth shut, but I’m howling inside.

  “You don’t contest my statement.”

  Lark shakes her head and bows deeper, until her nose nearly presses against her chest.

  “Lark, look at me,” Mom says.

  Lark slowly raises her face. She knows she’s about to die, I can see it in her eyes. But what hits me in this moment is that she welcomes it. Her mother is gone, her secret is out, and Lark wants it all to end.

  “Did you know you were half-human before you received word of your mother’s treason?”

  “Of course she didn’t,” I say. “She had no idea.”

  Lark’s eyes turn toward mine, toward my voice, but she doesn’t even register that she knows me. Her entire face is blank. “I’ve always known.”

  I grit my teeth. “But she couldn’t have done anything about it, not before, and not once she turned eighteen. She wasn’t given a choice. How is her very existence a crime?”

  Mom turns toward Judica. “Heir?”

  “She should have turned her mother in. If she had confessed, she’d have been spared. Cast out, but not killed. But she didn’t do that. She tricked my soft-hearted sister into accepting the mockery of a challenge I hear she lost.” Judica sneers. “Lark’s as traitorous as her mother.”

  Rage and despair flood my body in equal portions. How can I do nothing? How can I say nothing while Lark pays for my mistake? But what c
an I do? I couldn’t even defeat a half-human. Never in my life have I hated the core of who I am as much as I hate it right now. If I weren’t so weak, if I were a warrior, maybe I could do something to save my only real friend. But nothing I do will help, because I’m useless. Worthless. Weak.

  “Lark ne’Lyssa Alamecha, I sentence you to death by execution. My daughter Chancery Alamecha will carry out the sentence.”

  I try to refuse, but no words emerge because my throat closes off.

  “I’ll allow twenty-four hours for each of you to prepare. Chancery is the only person allowed to see or speak to Lark in her cell during that time. I grant you each the mercy of saying goodbye.” Mom swallows. “And the execution will be conducted privately, not here in the petition hall.”

  Murmurs from the gathered crowd fill the space, rising like smoke toward the rafters. I don’t know many things, but I do know one for sure.

  There’s no way I am going to execute my best friend.

  Two guards yank Lark to her feet and march her down the middle of the room and out the door. Mom stands up and begins her descent, beckoning for me to follow. Judica hops up, but Mom turns back and shakes her head. “You need to train. Chancery’s going to help me select a gown for tomorrow’s gala.”

  “I need to train?” she whispers. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”

  Mom’s eyes flash, and Judica bobs her head stiffly in acknowledgement. When I walk past her, my steps wooden and shaky at the same time, Judica slams her shoulder into mine and nearly sends me sprawling down the steps. Of course she has no empathy for me. She has no friends of her own, so she couldn’t even imagine how I feel right now.

  Once we walk through Mom’s doorway, I close the door, and it’s like that motion snaps something inside of me. I collapse into a pile, tears streaming down my cheeks to soak the carpet. Cookie frolics around me, darting toward me repeatedly to lick my face and bump my hands. She can’t comfort me, because nothing will make this better. I know I’m way too big to fall apart like this, but Mom doesn’t chide me. She sinks down next to me and pulls me against her chest. I clutch at her, not sure what can possibly be done, or what could ever make things right again.