Page 49 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

“Do you know who you are, Eda? You’re nobody. You’re not the daughter of an Emperor. You’re not the daughter of a Baron. You’re the daughter of a gods-damnedsheepfarmer, your mother’s childhood sweetheart. She married the Count of Evalla to cover it up, to give you some chance at respectability.”

Eda’s head was spinning. She couldn’t breathe. She bunched the material of her filthy skirt tight in one hand. “What are you saying? What sheep farmer?”

“Oh, he’s dead too,” Domin spat. “Died years ago. But you would have known him when you were a child. He was the father of your friend, that wretched sickly thing you made into a Marquess.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“DOMIN.” SHE FORCED HERSELF TO BREATHE,FORCEDherself to focus on his face amidst the black spots crawling at the edges of her vision. “Domin, how do you know that?”

“From Rescarin. He got it out of your friend’s mother last year after the Emperor’s death.”

There was a roaring in her ears, every part of her screaming. Because if what Domin said was true, it meant Niren was her sister. Hersister.

And Eda had killed her.

She leapt off the couch, grabbed Domin by the collar, and pinned him up against the wall. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” He shoved her off him, no knife at his throat this time to keep him from overpowering her. “You’re finished, Eda. The Empire is done with you, and so am I.”

“Domin, wait. We can retake the city, you and I. Together. I’ll make you Emperor. You’ll rule beside me. We’ll—”

His face hardened with rage. “When have you ever doneanythingforme,YourMajesty? Ever since you were crowned you’ve manipulated me and controlled me. Bent me to your whims and your wishes, thinking I wouldn’t notice you using my feelings for you to get you what you wanted.”

“Domin—”

“That’s all over, now.” He turned his face to the door. “Guards!”

Four Enduenan soldiers stepped into the room, helms gleaming in the firelight. “My lord?” inquired one of them, a young man with a scar on his cheek.

“Arrest this woman,” said Domin. “She’s a traitor and a murderer.”

“Domin—”

Domin slapped her, hard, across the face.

Her skin was still smarting as two of the guards grabbed her shoulders and hauled her from the drawing room while the other two followed, the points of their sabers biting into her back.

They locked her in a holding cell next to the stables.

It was dingy and dark, hardly ever used, and it stank of horse and moldy straw.

She crouched on the dirt floor and rocked back and forth on her heels. She was empty. She was blank.

She was nothing, nothing, nothing.

There were no tears, there was no anger.

She didn’t know how to feel anything in the face of Domin’s revelations.

Gradually, as the night deepened and cold air seeped into the cell, her utter shock dimmed, and Eda came back to herself.

She paced the confines of the tiny chamber, barely six feet square, and tried to make sense of her current situation, tried to see a way out of it.

All those years ago, Eda had bargained away her own blood. The life of her sister. And she’d never known.

But hadn’t she, really? She’d felt that connection, since they were children. She felt it now. It ate at her, gnawed her down to muscle, to bone, to the delicate organs beneath that measured out the beats of her life.

Her only friend in all the world. Hersister.