“What?”
“I have a diadem that Castemont gave me.” I rose, rushing to the bathing room to grab it, nestling the replica of Katia’s very own on my head.
I emerged to see Solise’s dropped jaw again. “Is that…”
I nodded. “Yes. A little too perfect, considering the circumstances.” Her face was grave as she straightened the straps on my gown and smoothed the skirts.
My mind was still circling around the fact that Solise washere.“Tell me, is your sister here?”
“No,” she said, narrowing her eyes at my question. “I’m not even sure if she’s alive. I was halfway to Skystead when I was captured.”
“Skystead?” I whispered, my own eyes narrowing as I wracked my brain for why the city sounded so familiar. Skystead.Skystead.“Solise, what is your sister’s name?”
“Ingra,” she murmured, questioning in her eyes.
“Ingra of Skystead,” I whispered. Bile shot up my throat and I fought to keep it down, my mind spinning, swirling, spiraling around the threads of my life that somehow had knit themselves together. Her sister wasn’t married to a traveling bard…her sister was a traveling soothsayer.
A knock sounded at the door.
We looked at each other, a river of unspoken words between us. I wanted to crumble right there, to tell her everything that had happened, to tell her about how I had met her sister, how I had found my father’s cloak and still had no answers. But I knew now was not the time.
“Remember, Petra,” Solise said, voice low. “You’ve always been a warrior,” I choked on my tears. “Fire burned and ocean tumbled.”
???
“You tell him who you are,” Miles growled in my ear from behind his mask. “Tell him you’re the Daughter of Katia.”
“I amnotthe Daughter of Katia,” I snarled back, words thick with unsorted emotions. We stood outside the throne room, the stone antechamber heavy with masked guards.
He leaned in, the cold metal of his ram’s head mask grazing my cheek. “You will tell him you’re the Daughter of Katia and you will do what he asks of you, or your burned body will be hung from the city gates. Understood?”
I didn’t have time to answer before the doors swung open. Miles straightened next to me, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. “Enter.” The word echoed as we stepped across the threshold.
Taitha’s throne room was nothing like Eserene’s. Everything had been constructed from the same gray stone; the floors, the walls, even the vaulted ceiling seemed to be made of stone. It was dull and cold and void of any sign of opulence, anything I had ever known a castle to be. Sconces sat on pillars at the edge of the hall, and a chandelier much too small for the space loomed overhead. Masked guards were stationed around the room, a cluster of guards in front of the throne.
The throne.
It was a massive chunk of the gray stone, the throne itself carved into it. The seat and back had been smoothed and polished, but everything else about it was jagged and raw. I had never seen anything like it, the sight so jarring that I didn’t immediately see the figure nestled in the stone.
A rugged, handsome honey-brown face atop broad shoulders peered down at me as we approached him. He sat lazily in the throne, ankle over knee, slouched against the left side of it. As I got closer, his features began to take shape, a straight jaw, high cheeks, and then I saw them.
His eyes were the color of molten sapphire.
My gut pooled with ice. I knew those eyes. They were unmistakable. I’d memorized their shape, the way the light set the blue ablaze. I’d gazed into them so many times and it had still not been enough. It never would have been enough.
In the dusty, unfamiliar light of a foreign castle, I met Calomyr’s father.