Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
JULIANNA
The black eyes of the nahashim blinked slowly at me, its tongue poking out pathetically as I held its tiny body in my hands.
“You’re not hungry,” I said firmly.
The snake hissed, baring blunt fangs that couldn’t hurt me—no matter how hard she tried. And she had.
I sighed. “You literally just ate dinner.” The snake hissed again.
“Fine,” I groaned, and placed her back into the box that had become her bed.
“You want me to do it?” Dario asked. “Julianna,” he added at the last second.
I hadn’t even noticed him come into the room. I stood up and wiped my hands on my dress, already looking away. “If you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Me?” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “No. I love serving crushed bugs to baby nahashim.”
“How nice for you.” I strode out toward the balcony. I still gagged just a little every time I had to hear the snake eat. And swallow.
A cool breeze blew against my face, but the sun was shining warmly enough, I could almost taste summer. Almost.
We were weeks into the spring season, and staying in yet another safe house.
In Korteria of all places. Cretanya in the end, Thene in particular, had been a nightmare.
I should have known. That’s where I’d been the last time my life fell apart.
Where I’d escaped to, where I’d been free for a moment with …
Seth. But that had all been taken from me in the most brutal way.
It was all I could do to go on—to survive by not thinking about it.
I reached for my ring finger, for the blood oath I’d made him before he died.
I’d sworn I would survive, promised I’d live, even without him. And I had. I fucking had.
Even after the soturi came to our inn—again.
Even after two safe houses in the city were compromised. After a brutal akadim attack left dozens dead. Worse, turned. Dario had had to get us out, and we’d fled the country in the middle of the night—not even saying goodbye to Cal and Marisol.
But I was still here. Still alive, still somehow surviving every day. So I guess that was something. And now I was hiding in the country of my worst enemy. Kormac’s country.
Our new host was a loyalist of Ka Azria, a wealthy member of El Zan Vylette.
But they weren’t Elyrian. As expected by our location, they were Korterian.
Born and bred, going generations back. They just also happened to be one of the few that didn’t support Ka Kormac, who thought they were overstepping their power and that what had happened to Ka Azria—to my Ka, to my family, the family I’d never known—was wrong.
And while he’d been nothing but kind, protecting us, housing and feeding us, I didn’t fully trust him. Not that I trusted anyone completely.
Because as of a week ago—there was no Elyria.
And no more Bamaria. Not according to our new Emperor.
Because of the recent instability, rising akadim attacks, and growing concerns about vorakh living amongst us—the new southern Imperator, my aunt Arianna, had decided to unite the southern border.
My homes, the home I’d been raised in and loved, and the one I was supposedly destined to rule, had both been turned into something called New Korteria.
It was temporary, they said. It would dissolve the moment we were safe.
What a joke. That day would never come. And if it did, I already knew there’d be some horrendous attack or distraction to delay it.
I guess it didn’t really matter that I was here.
We were all Korteria now. Everyone of us along the southern border.
Go figure. They made my aunt announce it—so Bamaria didn’t revolt. Elyria under the rule of Ka Elys had been basically Ka Kormac all along. And why would Lord Viktor, the Emperor’s son and newly consecrated Arkasva of Korteria ever take issue?
Arianna may have been given the title of Imperator, but it was worthless now. All the power lay here with Kormac. Like always.
I clutched my stomach. We were fucking surrounded.
Even El Zan Vylette was laying low, it was going to be pretty hard to remove Ka Elys from power and place me on the Seat when they currently didn’t have a country to rule.
But what did it matter? What did any of it matter?
Rhyan was long gone, an akadim. Galen was dead.
Murdered. Tristan back under the thrall of the enemy, their puppet once more.
And Lyr—Lyr had been missing for almost a month now.
It was time to stop pretending we lived in Lumeria anymore.
Or that we were remotely free. The whole Empire was going to be New Korteria soon.
Dario stepped onto the balcony. “May I join you?” he asked formally, his Glemarian accent thick.
I continued staring out at the green hills, the white flowers beginning to sprout in the meadows.
In the distance there was a growth of purple flowers I didn’t recognize. The color was mesmerizing. And for a second, I lost myself in them, wanting to go out there and pick a bouquet, place them in a vase and stare at them for hours.
Because they were violet. Because I was Hava, Goddess of the Violet Ray.
I groaned and shook my head. Another title, another identity that sounded impressive, and might have been interesting to me at another time. All I saw now was more ways for me to be used, hunted.
I’d remain Julianna and nothing else. I wasn’t the Heir. I wasn’t Hava. I wanted to be no one. I looked away from the flowers.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Dario said. “Maybe … maybe you’d like to take a walk in the fields?”
“No.”
“You should get outside. Stretch your legs.”
I glared back at him, gesturing around us. “I do believe that we are outside.”
His mouth tightened. “You know what I mean. Out there, out in the open, where you can breathe, be surrounded by nature, its smells, the way the air moves. You’re so cooped up in the house. You’re always in the house.”
“I said no.” My voice hardened.
“Okay. Sure.” He looked away, his jaw clenching. “Sorry.”
“Did you need something?” I asked.
“No, I-I just—I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m babysitting nahashim,” I said dully. “It’s not that exciting.”
Meera had become obsessed with the snakes since she realized she could control and communicate with them. It was part of her identity as the Guardian of the Blue Ray, Cassarya. Admittedly, it was a productive pursuit. Her ability had saved our lives. Several times.
As soon as we arrived at our second safe house, a nahashim had appeared. Another the next day. All sent from Devon Hart. He was trying to find us, before Emperor Avery did. I couldn’t decide which man was worse. Luckily, neither had their hands on us—yet.
At first, she sent the snakes away, purposefully confusing them so they’d go back into the wilds and leave Devon’s service.
But then she’d realized she might be able to do more than just confuse them.
We attempted to send one back to Glemaria.
Not for Devon. But for Kenna. And it worked.
Since then, messages had been passing back and forth between us regularly.
When Meera had intercepted his latest attempt she’d realized the snake was pregnant. So now we had two newborns. And I was on babysitting duty, while Meera sat with the mother. She’d sent the snake on a mission to find Lyr, again, and it had just returned this morning—with nothing. Fucking nothing.
Was she dead? But if she was—wouldn’t we know? They’d want us to know, whoever killed her.
“Um,” Dario started, then stopped. He’d been like this for weeks.
Trying to talk to me, then stopping, when I didn’t answer, or waved him off.
I hadn’t meant to be mean to him. I just—I didn’t have the energy most of the time to talk to anyone.
It was clearly getting to him, upsetting his confidence.
Which was leading to more and more moments like this.
I wish he’d just go away. Leave me alone. I didn’t want anything, or anyone. Just peace.
“Aiden wanted me to tell you,” he started again, “um, he said he could have some more magic lessons with you tonight after dinner, if you want.”
Aiden had become my mage professor, making up for all the time I wasn’t in the Academy.
In the Palace, I’d learned only one kind of magic.
Visions. How to control my vorakh,how to relax into it, interpret it, even cause visions to come by request. It was a far cry from what Meera had been experiencing.
But now that I had my own stave, I was making up for lost time.
When I wasn’t being tutored by Aiden, I was helping Meera with the nahashim, learning to communicate with them, too.
And teaching Meera how to have her visions without pain.
I turned to Dario, meeting his dark eyes. “Aiden could have told me himself.”
“He could have, but I was here, so I did. Do you want me to te—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll tell him when I see him.” I trained my eyes back on the trees in the distance. “How much longer is Meera going to be?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s trying to get the nahashim to go back out and search for signs of Lyriana.”
I sighed. When all the searches for Lyr, and …
for Lyr’s body, had turned up empty, she’d trained the snake to listen for conversations about her, to record them and report back.
The only problem—the conversations were everywhere.
Some of the talk had died now. Rhyan’s stripping and the attack in the arena were slowly fading as people began to discuss New Korteria, and the mandatory vorakh testing happening. Lyr was assumed dead.
I shuddered.
“We’ll find her,” Dario said, reading my mind.
“Like she found Rhyan?” I spat.
Dario paled. “Good day, Julianna. Enjoy the balcony.” He bowed formally, and walked back inside.
Fuck. “Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” His mouth tightened. “No need to apologize. You’re not wrong.”
“But I shouldn’t have said that. Rhyan was my friend, too. And I didn’t mean—”