Page 53 of What Blooms from Death

My turmoil must have been obvious on my face, because his brow furrowed with concern.

“Chaos? What is it?”

“Your kingdom is fine,” I told him, frowning. “Because as far as most people believe, you are still alive and ruling it.”

Chapter Thirteen

Aleksander

“She could be lying,”Zayn said, looking uncharacteristically flustered.

“What reason would she have to lie about something like this?”

“She could be trying to sow animosity in us, towards our kingdom and the Keepers who have been stewarding the throne since our unceremonious exit.”

“…I don’t think so.”

“They would not have replaced you with some…body double,” Zayn insisted, scrubbing the remains of our campfire out with his boot. “It’s preposterous to even think of.”

“Is it? Perhaps they panicked when I disappeared and they could think of no better alternative? Maybe they thought Elarith had already seen enough death with my parents, and the death of a third royal family member might have sent too many of them over the edge. We’ve talked about this ourselves over the years, haven’t we?”

It was one of the fears that had haunted me most during my time stuck in this cursed hell—wondering what had become of my kingdom and its people.

My mother’s death had already destabilized Elarith to an alarming degree. Father’s passing had been yet another shift in the foundation of our once illustrious kingdom, and I’d barely been keeping order, honestly—which was the only reason I’d agreed to an arranged marriage with a foreign princess in the first place. A union of kingdoms to help stabilize things. That had been the plan. Eldris was supposed to have been a peaceful, easy target—one with understated power that we could mold to whatever use we needed.

I’d had a foreboding feeling about the ordeal from the start, but I’d trusted the Keepers of Light to know what was best for Elarith, just as my father had, and his father before him, and his father beforehim…

If only I’d listened to myself.

But how could I have seen any part of these past seven years coming? And my advising council replacing me with an imposter…thatwas certainly not a possibility that had ever crossed my mind.

“According to Nova, they’ve been building a narrative thatsheis the one responsible for her parents’ demise and the dark curse surrounding Rose Point,” I told Zayn. “This so-calledKing of Elarithhas declared himself a steward of the Eldrisan throne. So, we’ve gained control of that kingdom after all—though not in the agreed-upon way.”

Irritation flared hot in my veins.

But atwho?

The imposter? The Light Keepers? Myself?

I couldn’t decide who I hated more in that moment.

Zayn shook his head. “It’s borderline treasonous that they would evenconsiderusing a puppet version of you to continue ruling.”

I tried to offer a reasonable response, even as suppressed rage cut a hot, twisting path through my insides. “What would the alternative have been?Youwere next in line to the throne after me. And you disappeared that night, too, in case you forgot. Wren would be after you. Hardly a capable ruler seven years ago, was she?”

Wren was his younger sister, and she’d been scarcely a year old when we disappeared. After her, the line of succession grew considerably more blurry.

He started to argue several times, but ultimately, he merely shook his head, massaging the space between his eyes, and said, “What a godsdamn disaster this all is.”

“An understatement.” I used a stick to absently spread out the smoldering ashes of the fire as I considered everything. After a minute, I said, “And it seems like impossibly bad luck, doesn’t it?”

Zayn tilted his head curiously, reading the unspoken implications in my tone, as he usually did; we’d always been close enough to do that. And nothing made you even closer than seven years stuck together in Hell.

“…You don’t think it was allbadluck, do you?” he asked.

“I know the Eldrisan King had misgivings about marrying his daughter off to me. Perhaps there was fear he wouldn’t go through with the arrangement.”

“So you believe the Keepers arranged for someone to murder him?”

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