Page 69

“Answer me.”

“Half of Memnon’s top warriors were in on it. Itaxes, Rakas, Tasios, Palakos, Thiabo, Dzoure, and more,” he gasps out.

My stomach twists at the betrayal.

“You and Memnon were both to be drugged at dinner,” Zosines continues.

“Once you were sedated, the plan was for Eislyn to take Memnon away—she had very specific plans for him—and you were to come with me. But you left dinner early, so here we are. There are five hundred Roman soldiers and mercenaries preparing to descend on the palace, if they haven’t already.

Another thousand mercenaries, mainly Cimmerians, are at the ready, should anything not go smoothly. ”

I try not to feel as hopeless as Zosines is making the situation sound. Memnon has single-handedly defeated worse odds. It’s not over yet.

“What else?” I ask.

Sweat beads on his forehead, and his breathing comes in short, shallow pants. “The royal family and any loyalists were to be killed. We can’t have anyone avenging the fallen king and causing unrest.”

Terror rolls through me. Tamara and Katiari are certainly at the top of the list.

“What do you get out of it?” I ask.

The corners of Zosines’s mouth twitch and spasm as though he’s trying to hold a gloating smile back. “I would be king.”

Ah, there it is. He sold his dearest friend out for power.

His mouth continues to twitch.

“Anything else?” I prod.

Finally, he adds, “You. I would get you as a war prize.”

My eyebrows lift. Me? It’s such a preposterous thought.

“Why?” I finally ask.

The look in his eyes shifts, turning… covetous is the best word for it. I’ve seen that look from him before. I just never paid it much attention. The man has six wives—already more women than he must know what to do with. If he had it his way, I would be the seventh.

Revulsion moves through me. He clearly never thought this through. I’d curse him to death sooner than he could lay a finger on me.

The distant sounds of commotion grow louder. I think…I think I hear the massive palace doors groaning open. Shit.

“Besides you,” I say, “is anyone else coming for me?”

Zosines laughs. “Everyone is coming for you. Memnon is gone, and your allies in the palace are dead. Some still sit in that dining hall, their corpses rotting away in their chairs. Their bodies will remain unburied, their flesh left out to rot. But if you come with me, I can save you. I can make you queen once more.”

Queen? That’s what he intends? If it weren’t for the truth spell, I would doubt his words, especially now that I have buried a dagger in his side.

He must want me for my power. He must think that sparing me from certain death tonight will make me feel indebted to him. Such are the ways of Sarmatian warriors.

But it’s not my way.

“This is your only chance to live,” Zosines adds.

His words are punctuated by distant battle cries. The soldiers are inside.

I search his eyes. “You think I am scared of the Romans? Of death? Or that I would cling to my throne if Memnon didn’t sit beside me?” I shake my head. “I would follow him to the ends of the earth. I would follow him even into death. But I think you shall go there first.”

With a flick of my wrist, the power encircling us rushes for his head.

Snap.

His neck breaks, and my magic releases him, his body going limp on the ground.

I glance up when I hear the sounds of furniture crashing and wood splintering. The soldiers must be raiding the bottom floor of the castle. The cries of the encroaching legion grow louder.

I straighten. I need to get going if I wish to stop Eislyn before it’s too late, but first…

I look down the hall to where Tamara and Katiari’s room is. The curtains of the portiere are partially ripped away. My heart beats faster and faster. There’s no time left, but I need to be sure.

Ferox steps in close, his head nudging my hand so that my palm rests on it.

I’m here with you , the gesture seems to say. I draw in a deep breath, then head toward their room. Halfway there, I can hear the slow drip of something.

I’m not even to the doorway when I see Tamara’s body in the shadows of her room, slumped against the wall, a bloody, gaping wound in the center of her chest where someone ran her through with a sword.

My knees nearly give out, and I have to stumble the rest of the way to Tamara to stop myself from falling.

I pass through the still-intact wards shielding the room and fall to her side, cradling her cold body in mine.

Her head slumps listlessly against me, and though the shouts and screams are closing in, for a moment, I cannot bother with them.

This is a Sarmatian queen, a woman who led armies into battle and made life-and-death decisions on behalf of her nomadic peoples for years before Memnon took over. She deserved more than a traitor’s blade through her chest.

I continue to hold her body against mine, even as I hear boots on the stone stairs. My eyes scan the room, looking for Katiari, dread coiled in my belly. I have to cast an illumination spell to see the rest of the room.

Beneath the soft orange glow of it, I see the slumped body of Katiari. She lies on her back, four arrows jutting from her chest, a pool of blood beneath her.

Carefully, I release Tamara and move to my sister-in-law’s side, touching her skin lightly. It has the same deathly chill clinging to it as Tamara’s does. The Sarmatian princess is gone as well.

A disbelieving breath shudders out of me. She was not just a sister by marriage but by love and choice as well.

I am a child again. Soldiers have invaded my home, killed my family. My sobs turn into an anguished cry.

Roman sympathizers did this. Rome once again took from me.

I can hear them at the end of the hallway, knocking over braziers and ripping at the hanging tapestries.

Poisonous rage builds in my veins, devouring my grief and turning it into something darker, deadlier.

I am reliving old pain, but I am no longer a child, and these men shall suffer.

Another cry rips from my throat, but this one sounds feral, wrathful.

I rise, Ferox near my side. I place a hand on his head.

“ Impenetrable armor for your body ,” I incant.

My magic billows over the great cat, coating him in a protective ward. Heedless of the few seconds I have left, I turn the same spell on myself, my power moving down my form and readying me for battle. It won’t hold forever, these spells never do, but it will protect us for now at least.

A dozen or more sets of feet rush toward the end of the hall where we are, likely drawn in by my scream.

Quickly, I place a curse on my mother-in-law’s and sister-in-law’s bodies. “ Skin like death, liquefy the innards of any who dare touch these corpses .” My voice breaks on that final word. My mind knows these women are gone; my heart cannot fathom it.

I cast the bodies one last grim look. The soldiers will try to desecrate their remains. I smile malevolently at the thought of the painful death that awaits such fools.

My power gathers beneath my skin, my muscles and joints throbbing from it. Rage makes even that pain feel good.

I glance at my panther. “Ready yourself, Ferox. Everyone beyond this room is an enemy. Kill whatever you can.”

I step out of the bedroom as the first of the Roman soldiers closes in on me. This soldier is a youthful man with rich, golden skin and thin, lithe legs.

His eyes widen a bit when he sees me, and he slows just a little. Behind him are more than a dozen others. I raise a hand, my magic gathering.

“ Annihilate .”

BOOM!

The entire castle trembles as power explodes out of me, blowing the soldiers in front of me apart. Bloody limbs fly, smacking into other soldiers farther back, knocking them down.

All that’s left of that golden-skinned man is blood spatter on the ground.

I stride forward as more soldiers pour into the hallway off the stairs.

I waited too long to leave this place, but I no longer care. My rage burns in me, scalding my magic.

I storm down the hallway while Ferox rips out the throat of a soldier struggling to push off the mutilated torso of a fallen comrade.

More magic gathers. “ Annihilate! ”

Another explosion. More scattered bodies. Those pretty Roman helmets are blown from the heads of their soldiers or else they’re blown away with the severed heads of their owners still inside them.

The sight of the soldiers’ scattered remains soothes something primal in me. I never thought of myself as particularly malicious, but apparently, for my soul mate and my family, I am. Ruthlessly so.

So focused on the carnage am I that I don’t notice the first arrow that strikes me. It hits me in the right shoulder, and though it doesn’t so much as tear the fabric of my warded tunic, the force of it still nearly knocks me off my feet.

Archers. There are archers inside the palace, despite the closeness of this space.

The thought has me casting another annihilation spell.

Bodies burst apart, dust falls from the ceilings, and the walls shake.

I don’t care if this whole massive place falls on our heads, so long as it takes these men out with it.

I try not to think about the grief and sorrow that claw up my throat at what I’ve lost this evening—and what I might still lose.

I need to get to Memnon. Gods, I need to get to him. I still haven’t heard from him, and I sense little down our bond.

There are many places Eislyn could’ve taken Memnon, some of them entirely inaccessible. But if she and my mate are still here in this realm, then there is one place above all others where she would take him.

When I get to the stairs, I blow apart another cluster of soldiers, the spell taking out a large section of the stone steps with it.

I descend what remains, recasting the ward I placed on Ferox, who clings close to my side.

The palace temple, then. That’s where I must go.