Page 11 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Tiyung

Idle Prison, Yusan

Hana stands in front of me, her curves covered in a fine dress and cape. She’s illuminated by a lantern, but she doesn’t say a word.

“I’m losing my mind,” I mutter.

“That tends to happen in Idle,” she says.

It is Hana’s raspy voice, but it cannot be Hana. She died two years ago while trying to murder a nobleman for my father. But this woman has the same thick brown lashes and thick brown hair. Her skin tone is the same shade of brown, and she’s tall, nearly as tall as myself. Of course, she’s not Hana, but she could be Hana’s twin. She has the same extraordinary beauty that my father looked for in all of the girls he trained to be poison maidens.

All that to say, I am currently imagining a lantern and a dead girl. Perhaps I’m not doing as well as I thought.

I run my hands over my beard.

“Hana,” I say.

She stares at me and then looks around. “They held Prince Euyn in here, you know. You have royal accommodations. No chains, no torture, a private cell with a latrine—it’s practically a villa compared to the other places in this dungeon. I suppose your status matters even in the tenth hell.”

“Hana, are you really here?” I ask.

“My name is Zahara,” she says. But she meets my eyes and gives me a small nod. It really is Hana. I gasp. Somehow, she’s alive and standing in front of me. “You look terrible, Tiyung.”

“How? I thought…”

“Your beard doesn’t suit you,” she says.

“No, I mean…”

“Neither does prison. I could slip poison into your water.” She casually eyes my full tray. “End this internment for you.”

She speaks like she’s bored, and it’s in the same tone I remember. It really is Hana.

Or I’m having a very detailed hallucination.

“Why don’t you, then?” I ask.

“Why should I be kind?” she says. “Not to mention that Seok wouldn’t know it was me, and what is the point of that?” She pauses and shrugs. “Besides, you are the king’s captive—I am to leave you alive for now.”

She looks at me with hate in her eyes, and then I remember that we never did recover her body. I saw a girl who resembled her burn on a funeral pyre, but we were too far away to check for details. Hana must’ve struck a deal with the nobleman she’d been sent to kill. She faked her death with his help, then fled to the capital and somehow met the king. She isn’t wearing all blacks, but I bet she’s an assassin for the throne.

Or a spy.

“You have nothing to say?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.

“No, because you’re correct,” I say. “You have no reason to be kind to me. I benefited from your suffering, from the torture of the other nineteen girls. It’s only right for me to suffer some of what you did. As Sora did.”

She lunges toward me and stops herself. Barely. Her muscles strain, her fingers spread, and she’s so close I can smell her rose perfume. But she takes a breath and regathers herself. Then she stands straight and exhales, smoothing the skirt of her dress. “Do not speak that name.”

The realization hits immediately: Hana loved her. I wonder if Sora knew, then remember Sora saying something about it being too much to even think of your loved one, but desperately wanting to honor their memory. I thought she was talking about her parents, but that never really made sense.

She was talking about Hana.

My gut twists in a new way.

“You were in love,” I say, my voice weak and raw.

Hana resumes her casual air, even as her gaze burns into mine. She must’ve studied Mikail to act the same way, to be so casually lethal. That shouldn’t surprise me, though. Hana was the smartest girl in my father’s school. I am positive she would make an excellent spy.

“I am in love with her,” she says, and my chest tightens. “True love doesn’t end just because of death.”

She bangs on the door once, and a guard opens it.

Even if her words hurt, I wish she’d stay so I have someone to talk to, but she is done with me.

Desperation takes hold. I try to think up something, anything that might interest her, might make her stay, but my mind is slow from however long I’ve been in here. I stand with my mouth open, but no words come.

Hana is almost out of my cell when she tosses an envelope onto the stone floor. It lands on the dirty ground near my feet. Then she walks out like it never happened, leaving me with a lantern, a message, and a million unanswered questions.