Chapter 10
You Will Never Have Authority Over Me
The goblin attending my mother rushed to her side. In the instant it took the goblin to reach her, Rafaela had already composed herself, and stood strong.
The goblin didn’t dare touch her. It was as if I’d imagined that moment of unpreparedness.
Not one of Rafaela’s hairs had escaped its plait, a braided circlet atop which she wore no crown.
She wore … no crown.
Fuuuuuuuck. Not good. So not good.
Rafaela always, always, always wore her crown. Teo and I used to joke that she probably slept with it on, but we weren’t reckless enough to creep into her bedchamber while she was sleeping to check.
Cosette’s beady little eyes flickered curiously over me as my mother descended the stairs, a fierce stare on me the whole time.
“Move,” she commanded the two guards standing between us without glancing at them.
Like Alonso, she’d been raised a royal. But where he’d been an heir to his throne, she wasn’t heir to hers.
Didn’t mean she wasn’t every bit the monarch he was.
Whether the guards recognized who she was or what she was, they didn’t look to Cosette for approval before sliding out of Rafaela’s way. Nor did she have to ask Arno and the other who stood beside me to give us space either, though Arno didn’t shuffle off as far as his fellow guard did.
Those behind me took a giant step backward.
Only Cosette remained in swatting range, along with the white-haired goblin with the satchel.
Directly across from me, so close we could embrace, Rafaela only stared.
“I … I can scarcely believe it … here you are.”
She dragged just her fingertips along my bare arms as if she, as much as the white-haired goblin, feared I was an apparition. Her butterfly-light touch sent a shudder racing down my spine.
“How are you here?”
“I was captured and imprisoned.” I glared at Cosette. “By her.”
Only after I said it did I realize the explanation applied to two different, relevant scenarios.
The irony was a swift kick in the ass from my old frenemy, the cage.
Rafaela’s head swiveled toward Cosette. “You will release her at once.”
The parvnit, who evidently had a death wish, chuckled breezily. “Of course I’m not going to do that. She’s my prisoner. She’s a murderess.”
Had I not known Rafaela for nearly a century, I might not have recognized the sudden glimmer in her eyes for the pride it was. “Murderess” was what had done it. Had to be.
“I care not what you think she’s done. You—”
“Oh, there’s no question about it. She killed two people. Humans. And then a guard. Fae. And assaulted a bunch of us too.”
Rafaela’s pumping-blood-red lips split into a slow, dangerous smile. I resisted the urge to take my own step back.
“I didn’t ask you what you believe she did. I asked you to free her immediately. You’ve not yet done so. You should.”
When Cosette still didn’t move to obey, and even the dim-witted Arno inched away farther, the white-haired goblin opened his mouth as if to warn her. But after a look at how hard Rafaela’s face was, he snapped it shut without a word.
The lumoons bobbed lower as if preparing to better illuminate the imminent bloodbath.
I sighed. “You should do as she says, Cosette, and she may still spare you.”
Rafaela scoffed, somehow making the sound both refined and menacing at once.
Cosette crossed her leather-clad arms and legs while her wings fluttered behind her. “I am an investigatory soldier of the empire. I will under no circumstances release a murderess without lawful reason to do so.”
“I-I’ll do it,” stuttered Arno. With a grimace, he peeked at the tear he’d opened in my lip that was quickly mending but still raw at present. A bruise might even be blossoming upon my jaw.
I smelled fear pumping through his blood as he extended a magical key toward my cuffs without removing it from his belt. The key buzzed like the prison sentry’s wand-weapon. Arno waved it behind me and my shadole shackles fell heavily. They clattered against stone before he bent to retrieve them.
Cosette whirled on him and shrieked, “What are you doing?”
“He’s trying to save you,” answered another of the guards. “Don’t want the inquiry if we let a superior die on our watch.”
“The only person dying is my prisoner. The drake can come down to the prison himself if he wishes to argue his case to the magistrate. But it’s already been decided.”
She snapped tiny fingers at the guards, sht. “Apprehend her.”
They only began backing toward the doors, unwilling to expose their backs to Rafaela.
Smarter than they looked.
“I said apprehend her,” Cosette boomed in her big voice.
Over her little fuchsia head, Rafaela told the guards, “You’re dismissed.”
“Not Arno,” I said.
“Which one’s Arno?” Rafaela was asking when the five other sentries sped out the doors, allowing them to slam closed behind them.
Arno stood alone.
Rafaela sniffed the air. With quick glances, she took in my face, my split lip, a smear of my blood on the edge of Arno’s hand.
Rafaela’s jaw tightened, as did the skin around her eyes. “I see.”
Arno whimpered under his breath.
To the goblins who’d emerged from the halls, she said, “Take him to the dungeons.”
When Arno’s shoulders slumped, his head dipped between them, and he allowed the goblins to lead him away, Cosette’s mouth dropped open with a squeak.
“What…? No, you can’t…”
“You obviously don’t know who I am. So let me give you another chance you don’t deserve. I am Rafaela Eudova, drakess of the Zaraga territory.”
My world, which had done little but tilt on its axis since I awoke in that sarcophagus, tipped again.
Cosette was apparently unimpressed. “I am Cosette Darling, Investigatory Soldier of the Blue Band, Dominion of Emperor Junot.”
When she named the emperor, I heard Rafaela grind her teeth, though the parvnit and remaining goblins wouldn’t have.
“I am authorized by the emperor,” Cosette concluded.
Like a striking serpunta, Rafaela’s head lunged forward. Cosette squeaked again, her wings faltering for a beat.
Inches from her face, Rafaela said, “You will never have authority over me.” Around a clenching jaw, she hissed, “Only the emperor himself, and no one else, will have that.”
My world tilted again.
“Since you seem too small to have much brains—”
Cosette gasped in affront.
“I’ll give you the opportunity to leave. I will not attack an agent of the emperor without provocation.”
“You just sent one of my guards to your dungeons!”
“I was provoked.”
Cosette threw her arms up in the air. “How?”
“He hit her.” Rafaela looked at me. “While she was in your care, I presume?”
“I didn’t tell him to hit her.”
“That’s fortunate for you.”
I chortled. “She did argue pretty strongly for my immediate execution, however.”
Rafaela tipped her head toward Cosette. “Did she, now?”
“And she refused to call for you or Alonso.”
“I had no reason to.”
“You did,” Rafaela seethed. “The woman you believe to be your prisoner is my daughter.”
“W-what?”
Rafaela didn’t repeat herself.
“Your daughter? But … you don’t have a daughter. Just the son…”
“Dressed like a pauper and abused under your supervision … stands Soravelle Davana.”
“Where … where do I know that name from?”
“Your history lessons, I would guess, if not for the fact that you seem to know astonishingly little about me.”
World tilt. History lessons?
“But…”
“But that would make her the long-missing, presumed-dead princess of Zaraga?” Rafaela said. “Yes, yes she is. Go now and don’t return. I find myself in a forgiving mood. Only because I’ve longed for this moment for so very long.”
Cosette must genuinely not know of my mother’s reputation, because she went nowhere.
Finally, Rafaela addressed the white-haired goblin, who clutched his satchel tightly. “You found her?”
“Yes, Drakess. The prison curera is a third cousin. After she attended the princess, she shared with the network.”
The goblin network, the most reliable spy system within Zaraga.
The goblin bowed low. “If you’ll forgive me, Drakess. I didn’t want to inform you of my suspicions before I was certain. I claimed the authority of the drake to divert her here.”
Cosette gasped.
Rafaela said, “Thank you, Rodrigo.” Rodrigo? “You’ve done well. Now go find Alonso and tell him to meet me at once in my chambers.”
“Yes, Drakess. And shall I inform him of the reason?”
“No. I’ll surprise him.”
Rodrigo was Marina’s cousin. When I last saw him, to my memory just days earlier, his body had been strong and straight as an arrow. His hair had been black as night. His feet had been covered in scales that shone bright as a flame’s orange.
The goblins dispersed. Only the parvnit didn’t take a hint—or a mercy—and remained when Rafaela folded me into her arms and held me close to her bosom.
Her heart beat steadily against mine, my own seeking to align with the only mother I’d ever truly known.
The last and only time she held me like this, I was eleven, freshly plucked from a fighting pit I barely survived—only for she herself to kill me less than a day later.