Page 5 of The Stolen Throne
“We’ll have to wait,” Cain whispers. “Somewhere no one will see us.”
We both look around. There aren’t many places to hide one of us in this breezy, wide-open space, let alone two of us. Not that I can see.
“Wait. The hidden room,” Cain says. “There’s got to be one, right?”
I know what he’s talking about. In the rooms Tabra lived in when she was princess, there was a secret chamber for Meren, the hidden twin. The queens of Aryd have been concealing their second-born twin sisters for centuries, generations. Makes sense the queen’s chambers would have a space like that, too.
We split up, pressing against the walls until I get to a section that looks as solid as the rest, but when I push against it, a hidden panel springs open silently.
“Here.” I wave him over.
Cain grabs a candle.
As if that’s going to protect him from the Shadows if they break free. Or me if I accidentally lose my temper. We’re about to lock ourselves in a small room together, though, so I decide not to point that out.
Before closing the door, I pause and look across the room toward the passage that leads deeper into the palace. To where Meren is celebrating. Now that I’m here, I don’t know if I can make myself wait. She’s so close.
I’ve waited months. Months I’ve been forced to exercise patience I don’t claim to have. Months of roiling terror for her as I waited and planned and prayed to the goddesses that she wasn’t dead or being tortured. Months of being drip fed news about her.
I’m not sure what I’ll do when I finally see her. Hopefully keep my head and get all three of us out of here safely. But the fact that I can hardly make myself wait in her room until she returns should be a warning.
I will do anything, kill anyone, sacrifice everyone—including myself—to get to her. To keep her safe.
Because she is mine.
“What are you doing?” Cain snaps.
I don’t answer. Instead, I close the door, and we wait.
2
The False Queen
Meren
Fear is like sand.
It’s impossible to get rid of once it touches you. The tiny grains in small amounts might only chafe, but if it’s left to build, to collect more and more, those grains turn into massive dunes that are exhausting to scale, or worse, become quicksand that will swallow a person whole.
I sit stiffly on my onyx throne, an inane half smile pinned to my mouth as before me, my kingdom dances.
Highborn authoritates currently in favor with the crown—my sister’s crown—are dressed in fancy costumes that mimic flowers that only grow for a single day after a rain in our desert dominion of Aryd. The dancers swirl by in a kaleidoscope of color, blurring together until all I see are flashes.
Cunning eyes turned my way, always watching.
Smiling mouths that look more like bared teeth.
Jangling laughter that sets my nerves on a knife’s edge.
They’re all here to celebrate my nineteenth birthday. Mine and Tabra’s. Only my twin—the true Queen of Aryd—isn’t here. I am. And they all think I’m her.
A large hand lands on mine. Gently, or so the people looking on will think. What they don’t know is there’s always purpose in the way Eidolon touches me, and I have to try hard…so bloody hard…not to flinch. I force myself to face him.
Turquoise eyes.
I don’t like meeting his gaze. His eyes remind me too much of—
I cut myself off from thinking the name and focus instead on the man at my side right this second.
