“So,” I said, lifting my eyes from the crown to Con’s intent gaze, “any plan we devise to rescue your sister should include rescuing all of them.”
“That … we devise? Lia, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. I can’t go with you, but you’ll let Me help you plan this one.”
He capitulated immediately, surprising me. “I would be grateful for your help. But … all of who?”
“All of the captive rulers,” I explained patiently. “Anure can’t be allowed to keep them captive any longer. This has gone on far too long already.”
He studied me, clearly bemused. “I didn’t realize we’d been allowing it.”
“We haven’t stopped it, either. It’s time we did.”
“Oh.” His mouth quirked in a half smile then went serious. “It won’t be easy.”
“No, but we can do it.”
“How do you know?”
“You told Me,” I replied with just a bit of impatience. I quoted, “Take the Tower of the Sun, Claim the hand that wears the Abiding Ring, And the empire falls. We’re two-thirds of the way there. We’re going to bring down this cursed government before it grows even more powerful, more depraved, and destructive enough to take the world down. And now I see the way to doing it.”
“You do?” He still seemed bemused, struggling to wrap his head around me not resisting him every step of the way, perhaps.
“Yes. All this time, I’ve played Anure’s game, and I paid the price.”
He winced. “Lia, I’m so—”
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, cutting off his apology. “We paid the price. Because Anure’s been a step ahead of us all along.”
“He played me at Cradysica,” Con admitted, folding his arms. “He knew exactly how to do it.”
I nodded. “But now I know how to defeat him. We’re going to use what he cares about to undermine his grip on the empire.”
Con shook his head. “That’s what makes the Imperial Toad such a difficult foe. He cares about nothing. I tried to be like that, and I couldn’t do it.” His gaze burned into me as he again swallowed back the words. That I hadn’t reciprocated, couldn’t tell him I loved him in return, lay between us, huge and invisible, with sharp edges I had to avoid, lest I carelessly cut either of us.
“That’s not true,” I said, using the deflection ruthlessly. “Anure does care about something. One thing.”
“The land,” Ibolya murmured, and I nodded at her.
“Yes. Anure cares about power, and control, and possession. It’s all he lives for.” I’d looked into his florid face and soulless, empty gaze, and known it. “He’s a man so bereft of anything meaningful in his life that he hoards everything he can grasp, trying to fill that pit inside. The land gives him some of that, so he cares about the one thing that allows him to keep it.”
Con stared at me with dawning understanding. “The captive royals.”
“Precisely. If we liberate them, then we take away Anure’s power.”
“And the empire falls,” he breathed. Then he frowned. “I hate to mention it, but what about his wizards?”
“I’m working on that,” I said with cool poise that covered the quaking fear in my heart. “Suffice to say that they must be dealt with.”
“You make it sound easy,” he commented, expression grave and not in the least fooled by my bravado.
“Not easy, no. But necessary.”
Abruptly, he grinned. “Well, you know me—I love nothing better than a potentially catastrophic plan.”
I rolled my eyes at him but couldn’t help the smile. “If we succeed, we’ll also have to restore the rulers to their lands,” I pointed out. “It won’t do the world any good if we destroy the empire and leave nothing in its place.”
“Restore the lands,” he mused with a hint of awe. “Restore Oriel.” The cautious, wary hope flickered in his face that he could perhaps reclaim the realm he’d been ripped from. A feeling I now knew well. Con hadn’t been king, so he hadn’t experienced the same level of profound loss as I had in being bereft of Calanthe, but part of him—the intuitive king in him—longed for that connection. More, I wanted that for him.
The consuming love I felt for him swelled in me, pressing to be spoken, but I pushed the words down with all the ruthlessness I’d practiced all these long, lonely years. For if the Rhéiane at Yekpehr wasn’t his sister, or, even more likely, if it was and she’d suffered too greatly, was too far gone to be recovered, then Con would have to return to Oriel and take his place there as king. Even if Rhéiane could be recovered, he would have to do that. He was Conrí, rightful king of Oriel, and everything in him would long to make that a reality.
Con couldn’t be king of both Oriel and Calanthe. If we managed to defeat Anure and free the royals, then there would be years of rebuilding. I couldn’t leave Calanthe again, and Con couldn’t stay here and let Oriel go to dust when his realm could be saved.
It was meant to be that our marriage bonds had dissolved. I could see that clearly now, also. All part of the cascade of the prophecy. The marriage had served its purpose—if it had even been needed in the first place, since Con had claimed my hand regardless—and we’d both eventually go our own ways. I loved Con with all my heart, and fiercely enough to spare him the agony of deciding between his love for me and his true destiny. If he believed I didn’t love him, he’d feel better about choosing Oriel.
That choice would be inevitable for us both. After all, kings and queens were born to sacrifice themselves for the land. The form that sacrifice took wasn’t always to bleed their lives away.
Sometimes the sacrifice required far more lasting suffering than mere death.
8
Lia dazzled them, naturally. She’d elected not to forewarn the court and palace at large of her plan to make an appearance. She wanted to simply appear, as if she’d never forsaken her duties as their queen.
No fanfare, no heartfelt welcome speeches that sound like hastily rewritten memorials, she’d said crisply.
I knew what she hadn’t said—that she feared she might not have the stamina to withstand a formal affair she couldn’t easily vanish from. Though her recovery from where she’d been the day before—or, far worse, the day before that—was remarkable, she was still far too thin, her skin pale and translucent, haunted shadows in her startlingly vivid eyes.
She also had to know what an impact her changed costume would have. No more hiding for her, though the revelation might be shocking to some. Even when she’d appeared greatly altered after our wedding, she’d still been in makeup and the wig of black hair, her eyes magically disguised to look human. No longer.
Court had adjourned for the day, but the people of the palace lingered to exclaim over the vistas revealed as workers removed the boards from the windows and arched galleries, the golden evening light streaming in. Enjoying the balmy weather, people filled the battered gardens and damp salons, breaking out the wine and liquor, nibbling on dainty delights as they exchanged the most valuable currency on Calanthe: gossip.