Page 80 of Twin Crowns

Rose took a sip of tea to settle her nerves. “How did you become so powerful?”

“Sixty years of practice and vengeance.” Banba smiled, her teeth yellow in the firelight. “You truly know nothing of witches, do you, Rose? I thought—I hadhoped—that somehow our stories would have reached you in the palace.”

Rose put down her tea and stared hard at Banba. “You underestimate Willem Rathborne. He has scrubbed the palace, scrubbed all of Eshlinn, of any truth to do with witches.”

Banba sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. The last time I underestimated the Kingsbreath, he killed my daughter.”

Rose stilled at the mention of her mother, at the flash of pain in the old woman’s eyes. “Thea said my mother knew she was going to die.That a seer told her so.”

“The seer was my sister, Glenna,” said Banba with a confirming nod. “Before the war, she lived in the Amarach Towers in the south. It was in those skies that she foresaw Lillith’s fate. But the vision did not sharpen in time. She didn’t see the man who wielded the dagger until it was too late.” Banba closed her eyes, the lines in her face deepening as the memory aged her. “Glenna couldn’t save Lillith, nor indeed herself. Like so many of our kind, my sister was killed in the bloodbath that came after.”

“Oh,” said Rose quietly. She could think of nothing else to say to pierce the loss that seemed to fill up the space between them, dark and heavy as a thundercloud.

Banba snapped her eyes open. “You think I am powerful, Rose. If only you knew how we witches used to be.”

The fire seemed to crackle in agreement. And a kernel of curiosity awoke in Rose. “Tell me,” she said, leaning closer.

Banba lifted her hand and a cool breeze stirred about the room. The fire began to dance. Flame shadow crawled across the wall, and in it, Rose glimpsed the figure of a woman wearing a crown.

“A thousand years ago, Eana blossomed under the rule of Ortha Starcrest, the last true witch queen. We were at the height of our power, then—not bound to just one strand of magic. The crafts were not separate. There were no warriors or healers, tempests or enchanters, no seers. The witches held all the strands of power as their own—they had everything. Theywereeverything.”

Rose could scarcely imagine power like that. It sounded almost... otherworldly.

The shadows danced, and in them, another woman emerged, side by side with the first. She, too, wore a crown. But when Rose blinked, she disappeared, leaving her wondering if she had imagined the second figure entirely.

“Ortha Starcrest was a good queen, a fair queen and a wise one,” Banba went on. “But that was not enough to pacify the Protector and his followers, who feared her power, who had spent long years plotting against the witches. They found a way to curse Ortha, to splinter her magic into five separate strands, leaving only one—enchantment—for herself.”

In the shadows, Rose saw a five-pointed star shatter into pieces. A queen stripped of her crown as she fell to her knees. “They weakened her.” Rose glimpsed the Mother Tree rising alone over the desert, and she felt the sudden urge to weep. “And then they killed her,” Banba said.

“They stole our queen, they stole our throne, and then they stole our kingdom.” Banba’s face darkened and so, too, did her voice. “Our magic remained broken, splintered forever into five separate crafts. A paltry echo of what they had once been. We were driven out of our own country, forced to live in the frigid corners of Eana, with nothing but the memory of what we once were to keep us warm. To keep us fighting.”

Banba closed her fist and the shadows went out.

Her green eyes flashed. “Reclaiming the throne is the first step to reclaiming the fullness of our power. The witches will return to our former glory, and the rivers of Eana will run red with the blood of all those who tried to stand in our way.”

Rose looked away from the intensity in her gaze. “It sounds as if youwish you could be the one on the throne.”

Banba cackled, but offered no denial.

Rose squirmed uncomfortably. Something else was tugging at her. She stared into the flames, trying to find what she had glimpsed before. “I swore I saw another shadow beside Ortha just now. Another woman.”

Now it was Banba who looked away. “Ortha Starcrest had a twin, too. But we do not speak of her.”

Later, when the moon was high and Banba’s snores echoed through the little hut, Rose crept out into the night. The wily old witch had told her that a strong ruler must sometimes be cruel, but Rose knew that there was just as much strength in mercy. She intended to be a just queen, agoodqueen.

It didn’t take long to find Rowena. Her golden hair was like a candle flame in the dark. She was hanging halfway down the cliffs. Her wrists were bound to the rock above her head, her feet dangling loose above the churning sea.

Her head lolled to one side when she spotted Rose creeping along the path toward her. “Here to finish me off, Valhart?”

Rose removed Thea’s tackle knife from her tunic. “Maybe.”

And for a moment, she relished the fear that clouded Rowena’s face, the power it gave her. Then she knelt down and grabbed hold of Rowena’s arm as she cut the rope around her wrists. Rose held on tight to Rowena as the binds fell away and then hauled her up, over the cliff edge. Rowena clambered onto the path. She rubbed her chafed wrists, staring up at Rose with a wild look in her eyes. “I could knock you off again, you know.”

“You could,” said Rose carefully. “But I don’t think you will.”

“My allegiance is to Wren.”

“I’m not asking you to choose.”

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