Page 81 of Sands of Atonement

My mind raced and raced.

He was always on business trips. He fought harder than any other warrior I knew. He fought too well, as if he had been secretly trained by elites.

But he had a harem. He had a lover, didn’t he?

My fingers brushed over the soft edges of the flowers, the jasmine scent filling my nose.

A lover who was religious. Who was never pregnant.

No, it couldn’t be a diversion or an alibi, so he was never caught.

Or could it be?

I suddenly felt very much out of my body. Could he be the one who murdered my family? The one behind everything?

I had a feeling that he had killed them or the Atrove had. Little had I known that the two were one and the same. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

I placed the vase down with shaking fingers. I had to get out of here. If Ezra were truly part of the Atrove, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I knew the truth. It’d be the moment he’d been waiting for since we were children.

Spinning on my heel, I turned to leave, but froze when a figure loomed behind me.

My heart leaped into my throat.

“Ezra,” I breathed.

But Ezra didn’t speak. He wasn’t Ezra, not the same Ezra I had come to understand. His face was cleanly shaven, and I could see his sharp, angular face.

No.

He was someone entirely different. A whole other level of ruthless and dangerous. The air within my lungs was pulled out, and I couldn’t breathe. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me to run.

And so I did.

Chapter 21

Eshe

Perhaps just as shocked as I was, Ezra didn’t think I would run. For the briefest moment, I caught him off guard, giving me a moment longer to get out of here.

My lungs and legs burned as I pushed past him and through his chamber’s threshold. I heard his footsteps behind me, and I internally screamed at my body to move faster.

Down the short end of the tunnel and toward the blue water, I sprinted as if my life depended on it.

Because it did.

I knew Ezra would kill me for what I had just found out. This was dangerous intel. To know an Atrovian and not report it was treason. The fact that he was the Qahl was even more reason why people, especially the surrounding Qahls, would want him dead.

He was the most powerful Qahl with the Atrove behind him. They would all want him dead for the influence he held.

His heavy footsteps echoed behind me in the dark limestone tunnel.

I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his presence thickening the air.

It almost felt like a nightmare, where no matter how fast I was running, I wasn’t getting any farther from him.

Run, I begged my body.

My head was thrown back forcefully as my scalp screamed out in needling pain while Ezra’s hand wrapped in my hair. The slippery limestone quickly gave way, and I fell backward. I grunted as my back hit the unforgiving limestone.