Chapter 16 #3
She would never allow that vision to come to pass. She would never forgive that monster.
“You…refuse?” Orithyia asked, confused.
“He’s a lying snake. He would prefer to think me mad than to ever consider that he could be wrong. I have sacrificed my pride on the altar of his pig-headedness more than I can bear. I won’t do it.”
Orithyia sighed, aggrieved, before spearing her with a look reminiscent of a tutor with an exceptionally dull pupil.
“Without your husband’s goodwill, you cannot command the resources you will need. We will require his riches to outfit the paladins of Altanus and carry out full scale war on the dualists. If they are not cut out root and stem, they will ally with Batea and Drakon.”
Aurora doubted that.
“No, there must be another way. Figure out something else!” Aurora demanded.
Orithyia pounded a fist on the table between them.
“You little fool! Put aside your wounded pride for one moment and think! Your husband has been surrounded by those who worship Lies his whole life. Dia was like a second mother to him. His cousin has been his sword bearer from the moment he ascended the throne. It was Batea who created Drakon. It was she who spread rumours of his being soul-swapped, making it politically impossible for him to kill Drakon as you requested. It was she who was with him on Drakon’s back before he told his court you were mad.
Now that he is free of their influence, there is every possibility he will see that you are perfectly sane! He can be salvaged as an ally.”
Aurora swallowed back bile.
“And you think, even if he finally gets his head out of his ass, I should—what—forgive him for what he’s done to me? For allowing Drakon to go free?”
Her vision had shown her that she would. But she couldn’t. Not again. He didn’t deserve it, even if he saw the truth. She would never become a woman so weak as to let that man stomp all over her again.
“If you are so in need of vengeance, then punish him in all the petty ways that unhappily married women have punished their spouses since the dawn of this world—after you have used him to get what Trisia needs.” Orithyia waved her hand as if such a thing were nothing.
“As if that would ever be enough for what he’s done,” Aurora growled.
Petty revenges? That would never satisfy her. He deserved to burn for what he’d done.
“It must be. For the sake of Trisia, you must allow it to be. Lies has become entrenched in these lands, Your Highness. No doubt Her agents were behind the blight. She has used Her wicked cunning to turn the king from Knowledge and Her truth. To save this kingdom from ruin, Lies must be defeated. To give it a future, you may very well need to become its queen in truth.”
“Once I’m done with Drakon, I’m leaving. Someone else can become that bastard’s queen.”
“I’m so sorry, my queen. If I had just—”
She wouldn’t allow that queen to be her. It would never be her. She was returning to Fae’s side. Theron could rot.
“Be that as it may, I urge you to give the king one more chance now that he is free of the agents of Lies whispering in his ear. We will need him to defeat the real threats—Drakon and the dualists. If you can agree to try, then I will give you my support today at court and every day thereafter.”
May the Triad thrice damn Orithyia if she was lying about Batea, the former head priestess, or anything else Aurora could verify for herself.
But if she spoke true? If Theron had succumbed to agents of Lies and he could be salvaged as an ally?
Could she afford not to? Even Orithyia said she needed his co-operation.
The idea of Drakon gaining followers terrified her.
While she had no doubts that the majority of dualists were perfectly peaceable, no group so oppressed would fail to produce a few radicals happy to turn that persecution back on those who had hunted them.
Aurora allowed herself a moment of abject self-pity.
Fate and Passion were the greatest bitches in the whole of the Tapestry to tie her thread to Theron’s. To send her on this nightmarish mission. Silvanus had been all too right when he said Fate was cruel to those She chose to do Her bidding.
Maybe her vision wasn’t necessarily what she thought it.
The rest hadn’t been. Maybe what she’d felt for him in the vision had been the affection and bitterness one feels for an especially trying pet.
Maybe she would convince Theron that she would become his queen once Drakon was slain, intending to cruelly string him along and then abandon him to his misery thereafter.
That, she could handle. That, she could do to him. It would be no less than he deserved.
“If your information proves true, and you prove yourself as an ally today, then consider the bargain struck.”
She would just have to find a way to warn Hyllus and the innocent dualists of Orithyia’s plot before the high priestess could enact her plans. And leave before she aided Orithyia in truth.
“Then we had best make haste. Court will begin all too soon.”