“I saw you with your father today,” Violeta said. “You looked so happy.”
I had been happy; now I was confused and a little angry. I wondered how she felt, having my father in her country, an enemy who agreed with Dragos’s agenda, the king who had killed her family.
“I was happy to see him. He was all I had for so long, since my mother died when I was born.”
He had been my world, and there had been nothing beyond that.
Now, that was not so. Now, I had Adrian, and soon I’d have a whole nation.
“Then I am glad he is here to watch you become queen of Revekka,” she said, and despite my conflicted feelings around my home and my father, I was thankful for Violeta’s words.
The last piece of my outfit was a black circlet. It was heavier than I expected and had black obsidian gems twisted around it. As I placed it upon my head, I wondered just how happy my father would be seeing me as queen.
“If there is nothing else, my queen?”
“No, nothing else,” I said. “Thank you, Violeta, Vesna.”
The women left, and I turned from the mirror and crossed the room to store my blades inside the drawer, since they could not be hidden on my person in this dress. But as I went to put them away, my eyes fell to the book I’d taken from the library—the one in which the strange blade was hidden. I had yet to open it again, to pick up the knife, for fear of reliving the encounter with Dragos once more, but something drew me to the book, and as I opened it, I realized it wasn’t a book at all but a journal. The words were so precise, it looked like print.
I would be content, if I were free to conjure spells and teach, but Vada says my gift is too powerful to waste. She puts too much faith in these would-be kings, men who say they should rule a kingdom because their blood is different, though they bleed red like the rest of us. She thinks they will use our magic to predict drought and famine, but my king—he has the heart of a conqueror.
Another entry read:
Today the king asked if the High Coven would support an invasion of Zenovia. I asked him how that would help his people, and when I did, he said I was here for my prophecy, not my opinion.
He does not understand that they are one and the same.
The High Coven did not agree to support the king in his wish to invade, and though I believe the right decision was made, I am filled with such dread for my present and future. King Dragos will murder me. I have foreseen it.
I shared this woman’s dread, and it kept me turning pages.
My days in this life are waning. I do not have the heart to tell Adrian.
Our love will damn this world.
I felt numb with shock. Suddenly, I could connect every instance when Adrian had spoken about the witches, defended their magic, talked of their wish for peace. He had done so with such reverence, and I had never considered that it had been because he loved one of them.
He had loved Yesenia.
It was not that I didn’t believe what Adrian said about High Coven. This did not change what I had learned—what Violeta had said or the accounts I’d read in the library from Dragos’s reign—but it hurt to know that I held the journal of Adrian’s lover. That she had written in these pages, that she had professed her love for him here, and that everything he was doing now—conquering my world—was still for her.
She was his world.
And if she was his world, what was I?
Once again, I found myself asking a question I hadn’t in a long time—why me?
I let the book fall from my hands, my shock leeching the color from my face as I struggled to reconcile this new information with how Adrian looked at me, with the words he had spoken to me. I had to reason that he could also care for me and love her, but why did that suddenly not feel like enough?
I thought I knew myself, but I didn’t. I’d once been Isolde, princess of Lara, a woman who could not be swayed by pretty words or a pretty face. A woman who would not marry and would rule just as well. Then I’d been betrayed by my people, and I’d come to rule a land of monsters—a sparrow among wolves indeed.
This Isolde, the queen of Revekka, had been blinded.
A knock at the door grounded me, and I bent to pick up the book.
“Are you ready, Isolde?” Ana asked as she opened the door, and then she paused. “What’s wrong?”
I could not recover enough to lie.
“I know about Yesenia,” I said, because I was certain she knew too. She was Adrian’s cousin, and she had existed just as long as he had.
“Isolde—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”