Page 30 of The Stolen Throne
“Tabra?” She doesn’t move. Ignoring a hiss of warning from those behind me, I’m across the space and dropping to my knees at her side. “Tabra?”
This time, at the sound of her name, she struggles to angle her head my way. Her eyes are glassy and dull, and she frowns as she looks at me. I see the moment recognition dawns.
“Meren?” she whispers.
Goddess, she doesn’t even sound like herself, her voice hardly an audible rasp. Tabra is sunshine and kind smiles and has a lilting way of talking that I hate having to mimic because it’s so bloody cheerful. She’s sneaking out of the palace to feed the poor with baskets of food. She’s knowing the name of every person who works inside the palace walls, but also all about their families. She’s sparkling glass flowers and joy and light.
This is not her.
I offer a tentative smile, trying to blink back the sting of tears and not let her see. “Hi, sissy. It’s me.”
She starts to smile back, then her eyes go wide, her gaze darting past me to the others in the tent before returning to me. She leans closer, with a clink of metal chains, and lowers her voice. I have to turn my head to hear. “You can’t be here. They’ll know.”
She thinks I’m revealing our secret? I straighten enough to look at her. “It’s okay. They’re friends.”
Tabra frowns again. “Not all of them.”
What does she mean?
“Meren…” She’s searching my face like she doesn’t quite believe I’m real. “I don’t feel very well.” I can’t help the tears that escape, and her face falls when she sees them. “I made you sad.”
I wipe the wetness away with an impatient swipe and shake my head. Then I take her hand in mine. Hells, I could snap her bones if I hold her too tight. She’s that frail. “No. I’m just worried.”
“About me?”
I nod.
She tries what I think is supposed to be a smile, except her chalky, cracked lips tremble. “You always worry too much about me.”
I huff what I hope she takes as a laugh but is really despair escaping me. “Have they been taking good care of you?”
“Yes. They’re very kind.” Even chained and dying, her heart is for others.
“I’m glad. And I’m here now.”
“Grandmother won’t like that these people know about us.”
I still. She doesn’t remember? Grandmother died. Tabra took the throne. I disappeared. And she married Eidolon before I could get back in time to stop her.
Do I tell her?
“Tabra—”
In a blink, her expression changes from glassy to feral so fast, astonishment sends the hairs on my skin standing straight up. With a strength that’s unbelievable after barely moving her head visibly taxed her, she lunges for me. In the same instant, an arm wraps around my waist and yanks me out of her reach.
“Careful.” Reven’s voice is a rumble in my ear, but he lets go and steps away before I can respond. Losing his heat at my back leaves me cold and clammy as I stare at my snarling sister, who suddenly isn’t my sister at all.
Her face is contorted with rage, teeth bared as she growls a sound that has to come from the very pits of the damned.
“Tabra?” Her name escapes me in a squeak.
Cain puts a shoulder between me and Tabra. “Don’t take it personally. She sometimes does that to anyone who gets close—”
“Tabra!” Achlys’s broken cry is nothing short of gut wrenching.
No one is fast enough to stop her as she pushes through the tent flap and rushes to my sister, dropping to her knees in the sand next to her where I’d just been. Tabra lunges again, the same way she did at me, only she lurches to a stop just as fast, staring at her handmaiden’s face, searching Achlys’s features like she’s trying to understand why they might be familiar.
“I’m here,” Achlys whispers. “I’m here, tesara.”
