A Crown of Victory and Vengeance (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

EVIE

S urvive .

I jolted out of bed, groggy from the dregs of the nightmare crawling after me into consciousness.

My hand instinctively went to the switchblade hidden underneath my pillow as my senses tried to hone in on the sound that had ripped me back to reality.

Not the wind howling against my house as if it wanted to rip it to shreds, polished beam by polished beam.

No cutting eyes watching me as I struggled through another bout of fretful sleep that tired me more than anything.

No assassins were trying to steal me away. Again.

The door.

Tapping. Gentle and hesitant.

I relaxed, my fingers unwinding from the weapon; it was still trapped in the bracelet he had gifted me.

“Come in,” I croaked.

My voice was so small, even I barely heard it. I cleared my throat, acutely aware of my rumpled nightshirt, the same one I’d been wearing for…gods, I couldn’t even remember.

Since my second wedding? So two weeks, give or take. Secluded in my bedroom and in a haze of grief and numbness, I’d lost count. Who needed decency in a sea of traitors?

“Come in,” I said, barely louder than the first time.

The door opened slowly. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn’t be the one visiting. The tapping had been too slow, too tentative, and there wasn’t that impossible pull within me that appeared whenever we got too close. I’d also threatened to scorch him and myself if he darkened my doorstep again, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

But a small part of me still sighed when Leesa walked in, soft as air, her tight blonde curls swaying as she carried the tray of food inside.

Her smile was as warm as the day I’d met her, though more tentative. Even with the deep bags under her eyes, she still looked like a doll.

“How are you feeling, Your Highness?” she asked and I recoiled inside. This title bothered me more than the Your Grace I’d hated so much–but not enough to do or say anything about it.

How was I feeling?

Like the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with married me and another woman on the same day, without giving me the slightest warning, after filling my head with lies about the two of us being perfectly created for each other and promising I’d become the queen of the most powerful Clan in all of Malhaven.

That’s how.

“Tired,” I said.

I struggled to move my body from underneath the three blankets I had to snuggle underneath each night. The numbness infecting my body made me weak and cold.

The only thing I could do properly was shiver and clutch my pillow tightly as my body was wracked with inhuman sobs.

Every.

Single.

Night.

Small wonder I hadn’t run out of tears by now. Perhaps the ones I’d swallowed those long sixteen years hidden in the mountains by my parents, after they’d ripped me from the Protectorate Clan I’d been born to lead, were finally coming to the surface.

Godsdamn it.

Almost three weeks ago, I’d faced a river monster and thirty-four assassins, and came out alive.

I’d charred two Serpent attackers and took down a temple with nothing but my power, which I hadn’t had a whiff of until coming here, in the brutal Blood Brotherhood Capital.

Two months before that, I’d fought against an invisible force controlling my body and impaled my own leg to save myself against a deadly snake.

As a child, I’d survived the kind of hunger and cold that took out entire armies.

Now I had to take three deep breaths before rising from my own damn bed just to take a few steps toward the small jute mat lying on the floor. Leesa placed the golden tray gingerly on top of it as I struggled to sit, my legs uncooperative and sluggish. I kept my eyes downcast, stare hazy.

Seeing, but not.

Living, yet not quite.

My room was tainted with memories of him . The windowsill where he’d helped me finally mourn the death of my parents. The bed where we’d slept and snuggled. The table where…I couldn’t even think what had happened on top of it without grief sinking its bitter claws in my heart, let alone eat there.

The bloody copper crown he’d given had rolled underneath it, as if wanting to taunt me.

Leesa nodded at the charred metal. “Still no luck destroying it?”

“Nah.” I plopped down on the mat, every brittle bone in my body rattling. “That damn thing is about as stubborn as Dria Vegheara.”

With the dregs of my frozen power, I’d zapped the crown and it had just rolled on the floor. I tried setting it on fire, it only left a thin ash coating on the metal. I’d even flung it out the window in my back garden, only to have a mean-looking raven bring it back and plonk it on my bed.

That ugly crown was indestructible.

“If you don’t finish the soup, Goose might actually cry this time,” Leesa said, eyebrows pinched with concern.

I nodded instead of a thank you. Leesa kept smiling, even as her face muscles twitched.

Everyone in this house was worried.

Leesa, my so-called lady-in-waiting, Goose, the house steward, and Adara, my bodyguard, had been my constant shadows these past weeks. Luckily, my threats had managed to keep him and his empty apologies away.

He’d been pretending to leave me alone.

As if I didn’t know the truth.

As if I couldn’t feel him.

I stared down at the tray. A crisp green apple and a bowl of soup, little dimes of chicken fat winking at me from the surface. This would have been a feast only a few weeks ago. Now food tasted like ash, water was about as sweet as poison. Even the air I breathed, which I’d found crisp and salty before, now had a noxious scent.

My body rebelled against all the things that kept me alive.

I hated this.

But my body wasn’t the true problem, was it? It was simply reacting to the ache growing inside of me. My mind, my soul, my heart, they were the ones that had been infected. They hissed in my ear to get back into bed, let my power ignite, and waste away until nothing but ashes remained of me.

I gulped and grabbed the apple hesitantly, like it had sprouted teeth and wanted to eat me instead. Leesa watched me struggle long enough to give a stuttered sigh, then busied herself with my sheets. She and Goose took turns bringing me food and fussing around my bedroom, as if changing my pillowcase and bringing me flowers would somehow fix me.

I took my first bite just as the wind blew open the blinds toward my back garden. I didn’t even flinch. Leesa gave a startled cry and rushed to the window.

“Leave them,” I muttered past the flecks of apple. They tasted like cinders, burning, not nourishing.

Leesa opened her mouth to argue, but nodded and turned.

I stared at the trees bowing in the wind, leaves and vines hurtled in every direction as dark, angry clouds rumbled in the distance.

“The Sages predict we’ll be facing a mighty storm.” Leesa snapped the sheets into a nice little folded pile. “They’ve lowered the dams, opened the ducts underneath the city, and called the ships back to port.”

Useless .

There would be no storm.

The clouds were too low, thick, and lumpy to produce anything other than a light drizzle and some mean wind. Like a wolf that howled too loud in the dead of winter, but knew it could never survive without its pack. All rumble, no bite.

I didn’t say anything. Too much effort to talk. It wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. What did I, a mountain hick, know compared to the wisdom of the Sages?

I definitely hadn’t known my future husband, the person I’d come to trust most in the Blood Brotherhood Clan, would betray me in front of hundreds of people.

Gods. How hadn’t I seen it?

That was the worst of it. The lie made me question all my decisions.

My instincts.

My thoughts.

My decisions.

Everything.

I ran a hand through my messy nest of hair, strands curling around my fingers and falling with ease. I’d been losing clumps since the wedding. My pillow looked like a shedding dog had rolled on top of it all night. I didn’t even feel the hair fall, my scalp as numb as the rest of me.

I didn’t feel much of anything anymore–except how utterly revolting this apple was. I’d eaten bark out of sheer desperation a few times in my life, back when the winters were long and I had two other chastising mouths to feed, and that had tasted better.

A cynical, frightened part of me hissed that someone had poisoned the food. If kidnapping and attacking hadn’t worked, perhaps a slower, more painful death would finally rid this world of me.

I shook my head. These were ugly thoughts, low even for the state I was in. Goose, Leesa, and Adara had done their best to protect me.

Physically, at least.

I doubted Goose and Leesa knew beforehand what was about to happen at the wedding, but I hadn’t bothered to ask. Did it matter?

Nothing truly did.

The three of them tip-toed around me the same way my cousins had after I’d returned to Clan life, bloody and scared.

The same cousins who hadn’t bothered to reach out. The palaver portal books had been lying in the library since before the wedding, gathering dust. With all four of them engaged to Blood Brotherhood members, the news of my surprise double wedding would have reached them by now.

It hurt that they hadn’t tried to talk to me yet.

Perhaps they’d found out I’d turned into this numb little creature who couldn’t even rule herself, let alone a Clan.

Had my cousins finally become too ashamed of me? It didn’t matter that I’d finally found my power, as terrible and terrifying as it could be, when I could barely feel it inside me now.

At my lowest moments, I begged the gods for at least one of my cousins to send a kind word I could latch on to and lie to myself that everything would get better.

My husband had betrayed me.

I was surrounded by people who’d lied to me.

My family ignored me.

There had been many times when I’d considered myself powerless before, but now I felt as useless as these mean, rumbling clouds.

And hopeless, like I could never crawl out of this cold chasm I’d fallen into.

And alone. Gods, I was so alone.

And disgusted. At this situation, at them, but most of all, at myself. For sinking deeper into this suffering and not being able to rip myself away from it. This was so much worse than when some invisible force had taken control of my body. Because now I could only blame myself for not being strong enough.

With great effort, I picked up the bowl of soup, intent on slurping it down in one go. No point in bothering with the spoon when I looked feral and felt dead.

I stopped just as my lips were about to touch the fine porcelain rim. I sniffed. Once. Twice.

This didn’t smell like Goose’s usual soup.

“What is this?” I mumbled.

Poison , that wretched part of me whispered.

No, it wasn’t. This smelled healthy. Herbal.

“Soup, Your Highness.” Leesa came to stand in front of me, arms cradling my rumpled sheets.

“What kind of soup?”

“Made from a fat hen. Goose picked the one with the biggest bones.” A hesitant smile played on her lips. “And some fortifying herbs. The prince insisted.”

I froze. “What did you say?”

“His Highness heard you were not feeling well and–”

“ Heard ?” I asked, the ice inside me melting into my rough voice, which finally rose above a whisper. “From who?”

“I–” Leesa’s brows furrowed, as if she hadn’t thought about that until now. “I–I don’t know. Goose just got the instruction.”

In the sea of deadness I’d been swimming in, a spark ignited. Lightning, spearing the frost.

The roar of a true storm.

What right did he have to even ask about my well-being, when he was the one to knock me into the depths of despair? He’d lost the privilege to know anything about me the moment he chose to also marry Kaya, his life-long friend he’d told me to trust.

The absolute nerve of that selfish, lying bastard.

Stitch by stubborn stitch, the pocket of power inside of me–which had been miserable and dormant only a moment ago–unraveled.

Before I knew it, blue tendrils shot out of me. The soup in the bowl instantly evaporated. Leesa closed her eyes and shielded her face as the porcelain cracked under the strain of the blue heat, strengthened by the fury roiling inside of me.

As quickly as they’d burst out, the tendrils retreated, purring like a satisfied cat that had finally had its back scratched. Nothing remained of the bowl except for small, ashy flecks, falling between my fingers.

But the rage remained.

Hot and unyielding, it traveled up my spine and thawed the numbness which had caged me.

It wanted to destroy .

Anyone and anything.

I gazed in the mirror and rose from the scorched mat, a rain of jute cinders cascading around me. They sparkled like stars, the clouds darkening my reflection. I looked like the gods of death and destruction the Quoriliths prayed to before their Clan had dissolved into mayhem.

“Thank the Gods,” Leesa breathed out, happy tears swimming in her big, surprised eyes. “You’re back.”