Page 31 of The Stolen Throne
I recognize the word from the old language of Tropikis. She called my sister her treasure.
Tabra’s eyes grow wide. “Achlys?”
I try to push aside the cloying hurt that she would attack me but not her handmaiden. Granted, Achlys is more than that—her closest confidant and friend, her heart, her love. But I’m her sister. We shared a womb. We share secrets and lives in a way no one else could possibly understand.
Tabra takes a juddering breath, and her expression crumples as she wraps her bony arms around Achlys’s neck, then sobs and sobs and sobs.
I close my eyes against the sight of them, more tears clogging my throat. I want to put my hands over my ears, too. The sounds coming from my sweet sister are pitiful…and agonizing. She’s trying to talk between heaves but is hardly coherent. I only make out one word. Voice.
“We should continue our discussion elsewhere,” the zariph says behind me.
Someone tries to tug me away. Cain, I think. But I can’t.
Except, over Tabra’s head, Achlys meets my gaze and nods, telling me without words that she’ll stay and keep her safe. I don’t want to leave my sister, though. I’ve left her so many times.
But I have no choice. I have to go rule in her stead.
My amulet warms. Not a spark like before, more like comfort, and I get the feeling it’s trying to tell me it will be all right. Then it goes quiet again.
Needing to do something, even if it’s not much, I pull my power forward. Warmth and tingling cascade through my skin like fizzy bubbles, coalescing in my palm with the soft yellow light of a Hylorae. From the ground between my feet, particles of sand shoosh and shift, coming at my call. They lift into the air, swirling and floating, twinkling in the dim light.
I haven’t used my power for much since I got it back. This feels…good.
At a whisper of my direction, like soldiers obeying a commander, the sand fuses, forming into a ball, and then I command it to heat. The glow in my palm manifests as tiny fire sprite–like embers lift into the air like my own private collection of stars that flare bright, then fade away. The ball of sand turns a gleaming orange as I morph it into a new state of being, a clear, molten mass.
With a flick of my fingers, I form the thick liquid into a petal. Then again. And again. Until a glittering version of a snapdragon flower forms. Thanks to the sand of the salt flats, this one shimmers with iridescence, like I tucked a rainbow inside it.
I pluck it out of the air and, not getting too close, set it in the sand within reaching distance of my sister, whose face is still buried in Achlys’s neck. I allow my gaze to linger on her a moment longer before facing the zariph, who now watches me with even more calculating speculation in his gaze.
I lift my chin, every inch the royal Omma and Grandmother trained me to pretend to be. “I will meet with the leaders of the Vanished.”
Then I walk straight past him, out of the tent.
14
Reunions
Outside Tabra’s tent, I stop, because honestly, I need a minute. I’m surrounded by people, and yes, Reven is here, but he’s not, so it doesn’t count. Cain has to be careful in his role as zariphson. The Vanished are beholden to the zariphate.
I’m all alone in what I have to do.
Again.
Immediately, the entourage following before and after stops with me. After months in the palace as the queen, I’m used to this. Even so, probably because of my surroundings, it suddenly strikes me as wrong. Out of place. Like when you stub your toe in the middle of the night because the furniture isn’t where you remembered.
The zariph stops at my side. “We have much to discuss. You can meet with the Vanished after, if you wish.”
As though I’m a little girl to be patted on the head and told to run along? Ass.
With every eye trained on me, it’s not the ideal time for me to lose my cool, even though that’s exactly what I want to do. Is the man seriously trying to pull that right now? After what I just went through? I am not in the mood to put up with power plays and diplomacy.
And I outrank him.
I sort through at least three different ways to handle this in my head. Pitch a fit like a diva? No. Try to argue him around in a persuasive manner? No. Remind him who I am? Definitely no. Queens don’t do any of those things, even if I really, really want to.
Instead, I ignore him and search the faces around us. For once I’m not looking for Reven, who’s standing right outside the tent. My gaze lands on Horus nearby. Perfect.
The lanky older man is dressed in traditional Wanderer garb. He’s traded out his blue clothing—an indicator that he’s from a zariphate in the Lazuli Desert—for the tawny-colored clothes of this zariphate. However, the loose-fitting garments are still draped around him in the style his old southeastern zariphate prefers.
