Page 3 of The Endless War

Quick as a viper, the Empress caught hold of Zarrah’s shirt and jerked her against the bars. Her breath seared Zarrah’s cheek as she shouted, “You’re going to the island because you betrayed Valcotta. Because you allowed yourself to be duped by a Veliant. Because you allowed the blood of the one who slaughtered your mother—my beloved little sister—to fill you with his seed.”

Zarrah cringed, trying to pull away, but she couldn’t get leverage with her wrists bound together. Wood creaked as though someone approached. She willed them to hurry, but the passageway remained empty.

“But despite all that you have done, I still love you.” Her aunt’s voice quivered with emotion. “You have been my everything, the daughter I never had, Zarrah, so while others counsel me to put you down, instead I am giving you a chance to earn back your place at my side. To prove yourself worthy of once again being Valcotta’s heir. Every hardship you endure, know that it is because ofhimthat you suffer. And every moment you survive, know that it is because ofmy lovethat you live.”

The anchor chain rattled, lowering into the depths, and Zarrah’s pulse throbbed with renewed fear. “You’re mad if you believe I intend to fight for your forgiveness.”

“They say love is a form of madness,” her aunt murmured. “And despite all the pain in my heart, there is no one I love more than you, dear one. Nothing I look forward to more than being reunited with you again.”

There was no denying the faint tug in Zarrah’s heart, a longing for a time when her aunt had been a bastion against every hurt, the warrior who had delivered her from the enemy and promised vengeance against those who’d torn their world apart. For all her aunt twisted words to serve her ends, it was the truths within them that held the most power.

Heavy footfalls echoed down the passageway, and then Berminappeared. Her cousin inclined his head to his mother. “It’s time, Imperial Majesty.”

Her aunt rose to her feet. “We part today, Zarrah. I hope you will take this opportunity to contemplate the decisions you have made, but more importantly, the decisions youwillmake when you earn your freedom from this place.” Not allowing Zarrah a chance to respond, the Empress turned on her heel and walked away, saying to her son, “The arrangements have been made?”

Bermin nodded, pressing his muscled bulk against the wall as though a cobra slithered past rather than a woman.

“Good.” The Empress glanced back at Zarrah. “Ensure she arrives at the prison alive. This isn’t an execution—it’s a test.”

Her cousin waited until his mother’s steps reached the main deck, then pulled a key from his pocket and approached the brig. “What did you do, little Zarrah? I’ve never seen her in such a rage. Not even Welran could calm her.”

It was so rare for her cousin to mention his mother’s bodyguard that Zarrah blinked twice before refocusing. “What did she tell you? What reasons has she given for imprisoning me here?”

“Nothing.” He unlocked the bars. “And no reason, beyond that you required punishment.” Her cousin’s large hands closed over the bars, the whole structure groaning as he leaned against it. “There was a whispered rumor among her guards that she’d accused you of betraying Valcotta to the Maridrinians, but that has since been silenced. In truth, as Empress, she need not have a reason for sending you here. Her whim is enough.”

This was Zarrah’s last chance to share the truth. The last chance Valcotta might ever have to learn that the only reason the war would not end was that their empress didn’t want it to. “I was trying to end the war, Bermin. There are like-minded Maridrinians who wish for the same. I warned them she intended to raze Vencia, and they were able to thwart the attack.”

He cocked his head. “Just as they thwarted the planned attack in Nerastis.”

It was the attack Bermin had been intended to lead, and she knew how desperately her cousin had wanted the glory of retaking thecontested city back under Valcottan rule. Denying that she’d stolen his opportunity would be an obvious lie, and even if he didn’t forgive her, she needed Bermin to believe she was telling the truth. “Yes. Innocents would have died by the thousands, and for what?”

“Honor and vengeance,” he answered without hesitation.

“No.” Zarrah shook her head wildly, knowing she was running out of time. “Hubris and greed. We keep fighting, not for the good of Valcotta, but to appease the Empress’s ego. The war doesn’t need to continue, Bermin. We could end it.”

His brown eyes bored into her own. “These like-minded Maridrinians … is one of them Keris Veliant?”

Truth or lie? Truth or lie?“Yes. He’d agree to peace, if we gave him the chance. But the Empress will never lay down arms. She’s obsessed with destroying Maridrina, and she doesn’t care what it will cost in blood and lives. There’s something wrong with her, Bermin. Something missing from her heart and mind that makes her—”

“Monstrous?” Bermin gave a cold chuckle. “That might be a revelation to you, little Zarrah, but I’ve faced that monster all my life. Suffered her cutting words and derision. Never good enough, no matter what I did. All made worse the day she made you hers, the girl she’d sculpt into the perfect heir, never mind her own flesh-and-blood son. She cast me aside like trash, yet you were blind to her nature until she turned her venom onyou.”

He wasn’t wrong. Over and over, Zarrah had seen how her aunt treated him and had said nothing. Done nothing. But the worst part, in hindsight, was that she’d believed her cousin had deserved the contempt his mother bore for him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.” Abandoning his grip on the bars, Bermin reached through and shoved her gag back into her mouth. “Perhaps if you’d cared about me, I might be helping you now.”

Swinging open the bars, he caught hold of her bound wrists and dragged her down the passageway and then up the ladder into open air.

It was night, the cold wind carrying the scent of pine and ice.

Zarrah squinted against the brightness of the many lanterns illuminating the vessel. The deck was empty, the crew all below while she was delivered to the prison’s guards, who waited by the ship’s rail.

Except it wasn’t the guards that drew her gaze.

Beyond, a cliff reared, its sheer face split by a gap perhaps half the width of the vessel on which she stood. A curved stone pier joined both sides of the cliff opening, fortified guard towers built where it met the rock. At the outermost point of the curved pier, a singular dock illuminated by torches jutted out into the sea like a burning tongue.

Devil’s Island.

The prison was infamous, the tales about the island itself as numerous as those whispered about the prisoners condemned to it. For all her elevated rank, Zarrah had never had anything to do with the prison, for any criminal whose capture she’d orchestrated was sent to Pyrinat for conviction. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard rumours about the waterway carved through solid rock that spiraled inward to encircle the prison itself, endlessly sucking the sea into its core but never allowing it to flow out again.

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