Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Bodies.
Blood smears the marble dais like spilled ink.
Cold, still faces—men Alexandra had known her entire life.
Nektarios. Leonidas. Theseus. Christos. Loukas.
Dead. They’re all dead. But not Selene. They chained her to a mast. The sun is back, and it’s hot.
So hot. The daughter, daughter, daughter—it’s safe in the shadows.
Hidden but not. Sneaking. Watching. Careful—so careful. They can never know.
The pieces are moving. Do they know?
Strategy—all strategy.
The players believe themselves free. But the board has teeth.
“Be our voice,” they said.
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
Alexandra whispered and mumbled and babbled to drone the voices out. She whispered her dreams and wants—not for the others who believed her mad, but as a reminder of her end goal. She couldn’t forget. She couldn’t mix them up with their intentions, which were strong and loud and demanding.
“I want my crown,” she gritted out.
She’d made mistakes before and had lost sight because of them. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Be our voice,” they repeated.
They never shut up.
Alexandra hated them. The shadow. The Vimyrian god. Xavlin. They stood between her and the Perean throne.
A sharp click of heels echoed from behind. The scent of roses came next—sharp and overripe. Alexandra braced for a very different threat.
Her aunt.
“What are you doing out of your room?”
Kassandra’s shrill voice made Alexandra wince and brought her surroundings into stinging clarity. Her last lucid memory was of being in her room—an opulent enough space for a visiting Lady, though not nearly luxurious enough for a princess, let alone the king’s own niece.
Alexandra was now wandering the cold halls without a single recollection of how she got here. She was practically clinging to a wall, fingers raw from dragging across the coarse stone. What wing was this?
Kassandra, who could have been her mother’s twin but for the cold, harsh lines, stared down her flaring nose. “Titos wishes to see you.”
Finally.
After months, he would finally hear what she had to say. He would help her take back her home from that usurper who called himself her cousin. She was the rightful heir. Perean was hers.
Dimitrios couldn’t have it.
Kassandra’s lovely mouth twisted into a sneer. “Do you think you can stop mumbling to yourself long enough to stand before your king?”
Alexandra would one day claw her aunt’s pretty brown eyes out. “I’m not crazy, you foul cunt.”
Kassandra’s hand cracked across Alexandra’s cheek, and her temple struck the wall. The woman came over her like a dark cloak and hissed into Alexandra’s ear. “You’d do well to remember who released you from confinement.”
A shudder passed over Alexandra. She’d walked the entire way to the capital of Sottera, right up to the palace’s front doors, and how had she been greeted?
With a piss and shit-stained cell. A room with one small window, too high to see from.
One meal a day. A chamber pot they replaced only once every three.
During those weeks, her Eyes had gone through rigorous questioning and torture. Many died in the process, and those who’d survived would never forget.
Alexandra should thank her uncle; her remaining Eyes were more loyal than ever.
For now, she simply relaxed into her upright posture and smiled at her aunt. “Thank you.”
Kassandra sniffed. “You need to bathe first.”
The voices came then, tumbling and roaring. “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Alexandra snapped.
“The separation of lovers by oceans and seas isolates a vulnerable king and will awaken the accused.”
All Selene has to do is jump jump jump—he’s been waiting for her, always waiting, forever waiting. Her lover is go go going, not to her, to them, to the head head heads. Poor poor poor boy heir with no one to love him, blind to the trap trap traps.
Another slap cracked across Alexandra’s cheek, freeing her from all the voices, but not the lingering vision of a letter on fire, words blackening and wilting, and finally, all that was left were the words: I know you’ll do what’s right. Your beloved father, QMG.
They thought themselves generous with their warnings of what was to come. Never concerned with whether she was ready or not.
Fingers clenched a hunk of Alexandra’s hair and yanked her head back.
Kassandra glared into her eyes. “The gods have seen fit to ruin you for the crimes against your own family. Did they send you to us, or was this a part of some elaborate plan of your own to murder us as well? Either way, my brother would do well to have you put down like a mutt.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m—”
“We know how you murdered your brother,” Kassandra cut in. “Your own mother gave you up. I assume it was you who poisoned my beloved sister?”
Alexandra thought back to the night she stirred the petals of a Dyphis flower into her mother’s water, then poured one innocent glass.
The stupid bitch drank it, none the wiser, and took her bastard child with her.
Sometimes, Alexandra fell asleep to the memory of her mother’s grotesque body lying in her own blood and sick.
“My mother was murdered by her handmaid, Selene Marinea.”
Kassandra shoved Alexandra toward the end of the hall. “Your lies will never pass for truth here, niece.”
The next hour was spent living another kind of torture: bathing. Her aunt had three different women—all with a bruising touch—dunk her in and out of lukewarm water. They must have ripped out half a head of her hair while brushing and pinning.
Kassandra stood over it all, inspecting.
Alexandra was tugged and pushed and jerked until she resembled a version of herself she’d once been. Except for the hair and eyes. Black as the darkest night—part of Xavlin’s gift.
Her curse.
Eventually, Kassandra deemed Alexandra perfect. Or “as together as she’s capable” and escorted her to the dining hall.
Alexandra would have thrived in a situation such as she faced…before. Now, she begged the gods for silence. The ability to focus.
This wasn’t a meeting with her uncle. It was a public lashing with her entire extended family seated at the table.
At the head, Titos reclined to watch her entrance. He was her late father’s age, but unlike Orestis, Titos preferred minimalism to ostentation. He didn’t need to flaunt power. It already radiated off him.
To his right, his second wife Daphira—and a snake of a woman that Alexandra once admired—peered coldly down her nose. Daphira’s sister, Lady Helike, sat beside her. Smug, both of them.
There were his children, of course—Calliane, Belenor, Thessa. Consorts. Suitors. Aunts. Uncles. Socialites, drunks, soldiers. A house fat with power. A house ripe for ruin. They were no different from Alexandra, though none would dare admit it aloud.
Alexandra didn’t mind. Let them have their moment. It wouldn’t last.
She focused on one boy at the other end of the table. Evander, Daphira’s youngest. A boy of eight. Quiet, barely half-listening most days. Ignored. It would take a small handful of deaths for him to become the heir.
Unlikely, some might say.
Alexandra smiled to herself and sank into the chair at her uncle’s left.
Titos scanned her up and down as she and Kassandra settled.
A full plate was put before Kassandra, but the space before Alexandra remained empty.
Daphira smirked, then tucked a tiny bite of meat between her teeth.
Alexandra’s stomach gurgled. When had she last eaten?
“I allowed your friends to remain as a courtesy,” her uncle began, gnawing on his meat.
She hadn’t seen her Eyes in several hours. Or had it been days? “Where are they?”
Damn gods—this was their fault. She couldn’t keep track of time anymore.
“As if you don’t already know.” Titos hurled his entire plate at Alexandra, soaking her in saucy meat and buttered vegetables.
Daphira’s eyes glinted as she daintily cut into a carrot.
“They’re dead,” he continued coldly, a flush filling his cheeks. “Or have fled. You interfered with my plans, and so I was forced to take action on those who remained.”
How many had remained? She honestly didn’t know. Many of her Eyes had vanished on the mountain road out of fear for what she had become. Others didn’t like Titos’s idea of using them for his own means, and Alexandra wasn’t in her right mind to help them.
Only her truest, most loyal remained, ready to follow her to the very end.
Alexandra’s fingers curled into fists, and heat shot through her entire body. “You have no right—”
The king pounded a fist on the table, rattling dishes. The entire length of table silenced. “You had the Perean council murdered!”
Alexandra covered her shock by tossing a chunk of meat from her lap. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The attempt on your cousin failed, by the way. Dimitrios lives.”
She breathed slowly through her nose. She wouldn’t react.
Servants placed a fresh plate before Titos without a word.
“Mad or not, you’re still royal blood,” Titos said, without looking at her.
“And blood still buys loyalty.” Titos turned his attention to a large brussel sprout.
“Until the day I find your presence useful, you’ll leave Perean and its affairs to me.
Whatever designs you have are over. Do you understand? ”
Alexandra sprung up, and her chair crashed backward. She leaned forward, sauce dripping down her neck and chest. “Perean is mine.”
“Not anymore.”
Straightening, she scanned the faces down the length of the table. Her cousins, Calliane and Belenor, the current heir. Thessa and, finally, Evander. Him she smiled at. He shrank deep into his chair.
“What are you doing?” Queen Daphira spat, silverware dropping. “Don’t look at him.”
“Why not? He’s so precious.”
Daphira shot a look to her husband. “Lock her away if you must keep her alive.”