Page 248 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Ead could not tear her gaze away. “How?”

“I cannot tell you the mysteries of starcraft, Eadaz. All you need know was that sterren gave me a foothold in his mind. Through an enchantment, I made him believe I was the princess who had rebuffed him. Half in dream, his memory blurred, he could not remember what Cleolind had looked like, or that she had banished him, or that I had ever existed. His desire made him malleable. He needed a queen, and there I was. I made him lust for me, as he had for Cleolind on the day he saw her.” A smile touched her lips. “He took me back to the Isles of Inysca. There he made me his queen, and I took him to my bed.”

“He was like your son,” Ead said. Disgust coiled in her belly. “You raised him.”

“Love is complex, Eadaz.”

Margret pressed a hand to her mouth.

“Soon I was with child,” Kalyba whispered. Her hands came to her belly. “Birthing my daughter took a great deal of my strength. I lost too much blood. Finally, as I lay racked with childbed fever, close to death, I could keep hold of Galian no longer. Clear-eyed at last, he threw me into the dungeons.” Her voice darkened. “He had the sword. I was weak. A friend helped me escape . . . but I had to leave my Sabran. My little princess.”

Sabran the First, the first queen regnant of Inys.

All the scattered fragments of the truth were aligning, explaining what the Priory had never understood.

The Deceiver had himself been deceived.

“Galian ripped down every likeness of me that had been painted or carved and forbade any more to be created for the rest of time. Then he went to Nurtha, where I had raised him, and hanged himself from my hawthorn tree. Or what was left of it.” At this, the witch grasped her own arms. “He ensured his shame would go with him to the grave.”

Ead was silent, sickened.

“I watched a house of queens rise in his place. Great queens, whose names were known throughout the world. All of them had so much of me, and nothing of him. One daughter for each, always with green eyes. An unexpected consequence of the sterren, I suppose.”

It was almost too strange a tale to believe. And yet magefire had not burned away that face.

Magefire never lied.

“You wonder why Sabran dreams of my Bower?” Kalyba asked Ead. “If you will not believe the truth from my lips, believe it from hers. My Firstblood lives within her.”

“You tormented her,” Ead said, voice hoarse. “If all of this is true—if all of the Berethnet queens are your direct descendants—why would you make her dream of blood?”

“I gave her dreams of the childbed so she would know how I suffered birthing her ancestor. And I gave her dreams of the Nameless One, and of me, so she would know her fate.”

“And whatisher fate?”

“The one I made for her.”

The witch turned to face them then, and her face fractured. Her skin divided itself into scales, and her eyes became serpentine. The green bled into the whites and burned. A forked tongue lashed between her teeth.

When the last piece of the puzzle fell into place, the very foundations of the world seemed to tremble beneath Ead. She was in the palace again, cradling Sabran, blood slippery on her hands.

“The White Wyrm,” she whispered. “That night. It was you.Youare the sixth High Western.”

Kalyba returned to her true, Sabran-shaped form once more, a faint smile on her lips.

“Why?” Ead asked, stunned. “Why would you destroy the House of Berethnet when you made it? Has this all been a game to you—some elaborate revenge on Galian?”

“I have not destroyed the House of Berethnet,” Kalyba said. “No. That night—the night I struck down Sabran and her unborn child—I saved it. In ending the line, I earned the trust of Fýredel, who will commend me to the Nameless One.” There was no amusement or joy in her now. “He will rise, Eadaz. None can stop him. Even if you were to plunge Ascalon into his heart, even if the Long-Haired Star returns, he will always rise anew. The imbalance in the universe—the imbalance that created him—will always exist. It can never be righted.”

Ead tightened her grip on her sword. The jewel was icy cold against her heart.

“The Nameless One will let me be his Flesh Queen in the days to come,” Kalyba said. “I shall give him Sabran as a gift and take her place on the throne of Inys. The throne Galian took from me. No one will know the difference. I will tell the people that IamSabran, and that the Nameless One, in his mercy, has allowed me to keep my crown.”

“No,” Ead said quietly.

Kalyba held out a hand once more. Margret placed hers on Ascalon, still buckled into the saddle.

“Give me the sword,” Kalyba said, “and your oath will be fulfilled.” Her gaze flicked to Margret. “Or perhapsyouwill return it, child, to undo the wrong your family did me by hiding it.”

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