Page 73 of Lies That Blemish
Virtue read the letter next to me, tears streaming down her cheeks and onto the paper. All these years, we’d blamed an innocent man for something he never did. Not just him—we’d blamed all of Imbria. I felt sick, but I had no time to process the fact that my father was a monster.
I’d just become empress at fourteen years old.
Stars help me.
Zara dropped to one knee beside me, and I mounted her, preparing to move my people from the home they’d always loved and known into a place they had always seen as enemy territory. Luksa had threatened Riverine? Then we had to evacuate our people, like Aisling said.
How was I going to do this without Aisling? Without Elaine? I wasn’t trained for this.
“I’ll be by your side every step of the way,” Kohen said. “I have a letter from your sister to the admirals in her Fleet. I’d like you to help me deliver it so that maybe they won’t shoot me down before I can hand it to them.” He smiled at the joke, and I chuckled, feeling a bit more lighthearted. I could see now how Aisling had seen something in him. If I put all the prejudices I had away, and rumors I’d heard of the Badshah family, Kohen had been so helpful it was hard to hang onto any lies I was raised with about him.
I had to trust what I could see from now on, not what I’d been told.
“Okay. Let’s go,” I said, and Virtue ran over to me, hugging my leg. “Be careful.” Her voice broke. “You’re all I have left.”
That statement hit me like a steam train. Victory was gone. Aisling was gone. Virtue and I were all that remained of the Everhart line.
With that, Zara ascended into the sky, and I took up my responsibilities, missing the days when my biggest worry was how my hair looked.
Chapter 23
Aisling
Whitney kept doingthat thing where she would pinch the outside of her thigh every so often. I was now convinced it was for a purpose, and I’d started doing it, too, practicing with certain thoughts as I did it.
I hate you, Ricov, you bastard. I hope you eat cow dung for the rest of your life, I thought as I inflicted pain on myself.
Ricov stared uncaring out the window, and I peered at Whitney. Her gaze flicked down to my thigh, where I had just been pinching, and she nodded once.
Aha!
So this was the way to keep him out. I felt immense relief at knowing there was a way to keep my thoughts to myself when I wanted to. I wasn’t breaking the skin, just enough to give my system a jolt of pain. A small price to pay to be able to strategize and think on my own. I’d have to let normal thoughts through every so often, so Ricov wasn’t suspicious, but I was feeling marginally better about my situation.
The drive took over an hour before we reached a remote stretch of land, where we pulled off the main roadway and into some sort of military installation. Throughout the drive, I’d allowed normal curious thoughts of the scenery to come through loud and clear and then inflicted small amounts of pain on myself to have private thoughts. Thoughts of escape, of getting word to Kohen, of my sisters.
I felt a bond with Whitney through our shared experience, though we hadn’t even had a conversation. Our sisters were both captive. We were in this together, even if we were on opposing sides of the war.
There were soldiers and creatures all over the military base as we pulled up to a gate. The trees had been hacked down so that it was just a wide-open field in the middle of the forest. No homes or towns stood nearby, and there was only a single large industrial building.
The guard at the gate saluted Maxim as we passed, and I watched as each soldier on base turned to face the red car, saluting as we drove by.
Their boss was here.
I found myself wondering if Elaine had pulled through surgery. If Virtue and Valor had made it to Imbria okay. If my people were being evacuated in the off chance this whole thing with Maxim ended badly. Which I was a hundred percent sure was going to happen. All these thoughts I kept to myself by digging my fingers into my palm.
“Why are we here?” I asked Maxim in a calm, curious tone.
Maxim peered at Whitney with a grin. “Sergeant Whitney has a big role to fulfill. Don’t you?”
She paled, fear flashing in her eyes. “Sir, with all due respect to your authority and final say, I still think having a weapon of this level of destruction is contrary to the ongoing survival of humanity.”
My stomach dropped at her statement. The survival of humanity was threatened by a weapon they had?Stars, was that the one from his letter?
“Your disagreement has been noted. But so long aswewield this weapon, Luska will survive just fine. I’m not worried about anyone else, and if you want your sister to remain safe, you will activate it for testing.”
Whitney nodded curtly, but I noticed the way her nails dug into her palm. I allowed my trepidation of this new weapon to leak into my thoughts so that Ricov wouldn’t know I was hiding them.
What was it? Was it the same bomb that Maxim had written about in his letter to me? The one that could flatten Amersea?
