Page 26

Lies And Learning

“Get up,” I command.

Is that my voice? Controlled and full of authority, not even a hint of a wobble.

There is hope in Horus’s eyes as he lifts his head to look at me. That only breaks my heart and at the same time hardens my resolve as he slowly gets to his feet. “Domina—”

“Don’t—” The word comes out too hard and I pause, barely, to lash my emotions and the Shadows down tight. “Don’t call me that.”

He called me that in the Shadowood when he thought I was Tabra. But he also was the first to call me that after he knew I was Meren.

“Be well, domina,” he had said right before Reven performed the rites that saved my life by shadow.

For a Wanderer to call me that was an honor. Or so I thought.

Horus swallows and tries again. “My queen—”

“No.”

He was also the first to call me that .

I take a breath. “You may not address me by any name. Never again.”

I see the hope fade to shame and then a finality settles over his face. His familiar face, lined with time and care and worry, with the harsh elements of Aryd and later Tyndra.

“Is it true?” I ask.

I know the answer, but I want to hear it from him. I deserve to hear it from him.

“It is.”

Even knowing the answer, I have to breathe through the instantaneous surge of voices. “Give the order to smite him,” they say.

Bene.

My lips actually form his name.

“Meren?” The Devourer’s voice quiets the others, and I come back to myself.

I can’t hold myself together in the face of this, so I definitely can’t hold the Shadows at bay.

Unable to look at Horus a second longer, I force my gaze above his head to the top of the canyon where the rock meets the sky.

“Forgive me,” he begs. “He had my sister.”

“Forgive you?” My throat seizes around the words somewhere between anger and tears. “Was it your information that brought Eidolon’s soldiers to the Shadowood and killed so many of the Vanished?”

“Yes.”

I still can’t look at him. “Was it your information that warned Eidolon to marry my sister before we arrived to stop them?”

Silence.

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“He deserves death.”

Another breath. “Did he find us in Wildernyss when we went to Trysolde because of you?”

“Yes.”

So many betrayals. So many—

“Did he come to Tropikis because of you?” I demand. I lost Omma in Tropikis. I lost Reven in Tropikis.

“No.”

That gets me to look at him. “No?”

Horus draws back his shoulders. “The day I pledged myself as your bodyguard was the day I turned my back on my sister’s pain to serve you faithfully.”

A whimper of sound comes from the woman’s direction and his gaze slides that way. “I couldn’t save you both,” he says to her, expression twisting with regrets.

“Lies and more lies,” Vos spits the words like a viper. “We should cut your tongue out before we kill you slowly.”

Words I know cost him, but this betrayal cuts him as deeply as it does me. Deeper, maybe even. They were friends all that time, long before I showed up. Worked together to build and protect the Shadowood and the Vanished. They were both voted in together as representatives of their dominions among those people.

And Horus destroyed all of that.

Their home, their safe haven, the second chance they were all given, including him, by Reven. The man who stands behind me with no idea what this means to him.