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Mother goes without me. “I will speak to Gyster alone,” she says. “Remain, daughter. I’m sure we will have a lot to talk about when I return.”

Aunt goes with her, refusing to meet my eyes, and then I’m alone, left to pace the royal quarters.

I busy myself with assembling Mother’s armor as I used to do before I had my own to tend to. The familiar task of storing it in stacks of metal and leather, bundling it, and setting it aside takes me far less time than I hoped.

And my mind isn’t engaged, the practical and practiced task doing nothing to stop me from thinking, as much as thinking seems to be my problem lately. Getting me into trouble that I really should avoid.

I’m about to leave and go spar with someone in the exercise yard, to shed the now bubbling impatience I feel about who I really am, when footfalls echo through the closed door a moment before they burst open, and my mother returns.

Saying she’s not happy is like saying a thunderstorm might bring a little rain. Her vast fury slams over the threshold ahead of her, the sound of something cracking under the impact of her entrance reminiscent of bones breaking.

I’ve seen her raging, I’ve seen her go berserk on the battlefield, a one-woman army undefeated and untamable. But I’ve never seen her livid, shaking with it, eyes brimming with tears leaking out of her in protest of her vast and engulfing ire.

“Liar.” She’s barely coherent, her snarl not aimed at me, nor anyone present in the room, as she bends and flips the sofa in front of the fireplace up and over with a single, fluid motion.

It crashes into the stone and breaks in half, held together with fabric as she jerks on one ornate leg, the squeal of its broken carcass loud as it gouges the marble floor.

“Thief.” She straightens and heaves the remains across the room, shattering the glass windows, the heavy piece of furniture landing on the sill, half in and half out in the garden, exposed velvet fluttering bravely in the breeze.

“He will pay for what he’s chosen to do. ”

I think that’s what she’s said. I glance at Aunt, who shrugs at me, her scowl deep and her own anger right on the surface.

“Mother.” I know better than to interrupt her when she’s angry, but this feels different, and I am different.

“Deceiver.” She reaches for the table where the wine is displayed, both arms sweeping across the surface, bottles, goblets, and decorative flowers flying.

Splinters of crystal from the decanters whiz across the stone floor, and I feel something shoot past my cheek, just missing my skin by a hair’s breadth.

“Traitor.” Mother’s hands fold around the supports of the table, her chest muscles heaving, her shoulders, her biceps, and forearms bulging as she pulls her hands apart.

The metal structure resists her briefly. Cords in her neck do not relent, the redness of her face deepening as she bares her teeth in her titanic effort. Steel squeals in defeat and parts, the joins coming apart at the well-formed seams, the stone surface shattering as it collapses at her feet.

She swings the metal framework, now in two pieces in her hands, like vast weapons, one sailing up and out to crash into the decimated sofa out the window and the other arcing up over my head to take out the bathroom door.

I don’t flinch. With a grim scowl, I stride. To her side, grasping her arms as she did mine, barely able to hold her as she tries to shake me loose.

“Mother.” I will not relent. “Your majesty!”

That gets through to her. She pants as she stares back at me, a monster in her eyes.

But she returns to me slowly, reason creeping back, the strategist, the monarch, the woman always steps ahead.

I fear this has broken her, shattered my mother as much as she’s done to the furniture in the room, to the weak glass of the window.

Until she eases, still stiff, still ready for battle, but herself again. The monster inside her, the predator we share, remains and will, always. She’ll carry it until her last breath. But my queen is in control again.

“You will marry his whelp and seize this Overkingdom,” she snarls in my face, “or I will watch it burn to the ground.”

Aunt speaks before I can. “Heald’s agreement was with Gyster’s father, Ranaslo, the first Overking.” She’s still in the throes of her own fury, but she’s not out of control like my mother had been. “It’s the first time he’s admitting it, his excuses over.”

“Never mind our binding oath, sealed in blood.” Mother’s rage tears have left tracks down her contorted cheeks. “My loyalty, my continued fealty, our army’s sacrifice… my silence on certain matters.” She inhales.

But it’s Aunt who carries on. “In exchange for Heald’s absolute right to recover what we lost when the borders were redrawn after the formation of Protoris.”

“And a royal union that would secure our position forever.” Mother’s jaw jumps. “A marriage that was meant to be mine.”

Hers? “You were supposed to marry Gyster,” I say.

And now it all really does make sense. Hurts just a little bit more. Because I’m seeing my mother as a woman for the very first time, as a princess, dedicated and loyal and full of hope and honor. Betrayed, defeated, and cast aside.

“He married another,” Mother says. “And the only reason I allowed it was because of you.” She cups my face in her hands.

“He promised that you, Remalla, my daughter, would have what I could not. Too close to the war, I was told. Too fresh the battles and the part Heald played. A softer, kinder bride for the second Overking and a warrior queen for his successor.” She’s holding my face so tightly that I’m rising on my tiptoes to keep her from pulling my head off my body.

“A prince for a warrior queen’s daughter.

An alliance I was promised, just another lie told.

” She lets go of me, and I gasp and retreat from her, blood rushing to my head from the assault I knew she didn’t intend.

“The competition was not meant to be this time,” Aunt tells me quietly.

“But we were informed it would, as a courtesy to the other kingdoms. Just a formality. Your mother held you back on purpose. A show of strength, a protest. Had the Overprince chosen another, things would have gone very differently than they have.”

“Same result,” Mother snarls.

“If he married another,” I say, my head pounding and not just from her mighty hands, “we’d be marching here with our army.”

“I’d be on the throne and Gyster in the grave by now,” Mother says. “This last chance Amber has convinced me to try, one final attempt to make him honor the promise.” She snorts, a warhorse releasing stress after a battle. “I’m tired of diplomacy.”

“Altar will marry the princess of Sarn,” Aunt says. “Whether he agrees to it or not.”

Of all the choices, though the least of my surprises today.

“He will not .” Mother’s monster returns with vengeance long denied.

She focuses on me, her eyes boring into mine, filled with a renewed, almost manic intensity.

“I’ve implanted assassins in their courts, with orders to twist the necks of every one of their children to secure you the throne.

I’ve embedded troops in this very Citadel, lying in wait for my order to end the Overking and his brat.

” She’s saying things out loud she shouldn’t say in a place with no privacy, and panic won’t stop her, not mine, not the flicker of it on Aunt’s face.

“But that won’t be necessary.” Mother’s voice drops again.

“All my plans, my moves on this board, will go unneeded. We will have this place without bloodshed.” She’s on the edge of the blade of her own making, but my mother isn’t far gone enough to act on what will be a violent and decisive overthrow.

We all know why. Such a choice, that moment of relentless decision, will cost her everything to maintain.

Because taking the throne and keeping it are two different things, and though I have no doubt she’s thought all of that through to the bitter end and will be fearless if and when the time comes, my mother is a queen first and a warrior second.

“I wish now I’d had more faith in you, told you everything.

My daughter.” She nods abruptly. “That I remedy now. Your orders, Remalla, are clear. You are to increase your influence over the prince. You will charm him. You will persuade him. You will represent Heald’s interests with more aggression than you have ever shown.

You will convince the boy to marry you. This is not a competition you can afford to lose.

This is a demand. You will secure that union, or by the fire I will have this Overkingdom under my fist.”

I should tell her the truth. Instead, I bow my head to her.

It’s the worst time to say anything other than, “Yes, Mother.”

“Who was my father?” I don’t look away and, to my surprise, neither does she. Aunt’s fury means nothing, her reaction a peripheral bit of noise as she snarls something I don’t hear.

While the queen of Heald’s fury fades and she softly, tenderly, kisses my forehead.

“For that you are not ready, my daughter,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, yet it carries the weight of ancient secrets, of burdens I cannot comprehend. “You’re not prepared for everything, after all.”

Cryptic and dismissive, a barrier she’s determined to keep between us despite what she just said. Because it’s not me who’s unprepared. It’s her.

Why? She’s decided my next words, whether she knows it or not, as I absorb her continued deceit. The treatment she hates from Gyster? She’s adopted as a weapon against me.

“My queen.” I salute her and spin for the door. I suddenly can’t escape her fast enough, dodging Aunt’s touch as she reaches for me as I stride past. Just a twitch of my arm to keep her from making contact.

I can’t stand either of them right now. Not for another second.

But the irony of it all is, of course, that I seek the one person they want me to in that moment, and I’m almost in tears when I knock on Altar’s study door.

He’s there, opens the way to me, not surprised to see me. “Remalla,” he says, pulling me inside, into his arms. I squeeze him so hard he gasps a protest, to which I immediately apologize.

“No,” he says, blue eyes intent. “I can only imagine.” He leads me to his desk, seats me on his stool, pours me a glass of wine, and forces me to sip before he speaks again.

“I understand I’m about to be forced to marry Vae of Sarn.

” His lip curls. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.

” He leans into the desk, scowling at the book he’d been reading before I knocked.

It’s the same one, the history of dragons and their drakonkin.

I stare at it in dull horror, Altar lost in his own thoughts and unaware of the impact that book has on me.

“I have no doubt my father decided my fate then and there. Your mother is… formidable doesn’t even begin to describe her. ”

“She won’t stand for it.” I meet his eyes at last.

He strokes my cheek. “Nor will I.”

“Your father won’t give you a choice.” I might be defying my mother in ways I never thought possible before, but actually standing against her publicly? How can he think he will survive such a thing?

“Marry me, Remalla,” he says. “It’s our only option.”

He’s right. Mother will be thrilled, Heald will be saved. The Overkingdom will collapse under the collective apoplexy of its nobles and citizenry for a while, and Gyster will likely try to have me murdered, but yes, this is the only way.

“Ask me again,” I say. “Tonight. There will be a dinner.” He nods, then smiles, slow and accepting. “Ask me and I will say yes.”

Altar kisses me, soft, sweet, stirring that slow and delicious feeling inside me.

I leave him then, though I wish to linger, because I have plans of my own to make.

It’s not until I’m in my quarters, past the gauntlet of princesses who are clearly enjoying the fact that my mother has retreated from the Overking’s audience in apparent defeat, that I realize there are things I haven’t told the man I’m to wed.

Important things that he must be privy to.

Like Zenthris. And the fact that my father was a drakonkin, of whom I know nothing at all.

Then again, do these things matter? I’m to wed Altar. My connection to the gorgeous rogue ends now. Why doesn’t it feel like it’s going to be so simple as a choice made?

As for my parentage, I know Altar won’t care.

So, the stirring anxiety I feel about these two secrets—that I don’t want to be secrets from him, or anything kept from him now, for that matter, as odd as that new understanding is—lingers with me as I prepare for the dinner that will change my life forever.