Page 12 of Heart of the Summer Queen

I rise, though it’s difficult with how numb my legs are. “She was here the whole time.” I don’t look at him as I speak. I can’t. “You forbade me from entering this chamber.”

The king offers no justification for his cruelty.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing can excuse what he’s done.

“You feared what would happen if I learned the truth,” I continue. “That after seeing my sister’s body, I would refuse to marry you and you would not gain what you seek. You hid the truth out of selfishness, believing I would forget you stole my sister. But you were a fool.”

I wait for his wrath for all the insults I have paid him. But he just mutters, “I do not deny that I have made many mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” I exclaim, whirling to face him. White-hot anger pulses through my veins. “You call freezing my sister and lying to me a ‘mistake’?”

“I did not lie to you,” the king says. “You never asked me for the truth of your sister’s fate.”

I take a step forward, my feet digging so hard into the floor I’m sure they’ll leave an imprint. “So, it’s my fault?”

“Adara,” he says quietly, “that isn’t what I said.”

I inhale. Exhale.

Then, “If I’d asked you for the truth, would you have told me?”

There’s just silence.

“Get out,” I snarl, though this is his palace and not mine. Though he could end me in a single breath. Now I have nothing left to lose, what use is there for fear?

When he says nothing and makes no sign of moving, I say again, “Get out!”

His eyes narrow, and I expect him to punish me. To chain my wrists, to drag me away from this room, to prevent me from everseeing my sister again. Instead, he lowers the torch to the floor and turns away, vanishing into the darkness.

For a long while, I kneel beside my sister, my hand around her fingers. If only all my love and grief could melt her free. The torchlight flickers, and the shadows dance around us.

All these years, I have wished to see my sister’s face one last time, believing it would mend the rift in my heart, but seeing her hasn’t sewn a single seam between the broken halves. It has pushed them apart, breaking me though I can break no further.

After losing Dalia, I spent countless nights weeping until I had no tears left. And yet here I cry as relentlessly as I did the night the Winter King seized her, my pain as raw as ever.

Minutes pass into hours, my knees digging into the floor. All I want is to see the color return to my sister’s face, to see her lifeless lips smile again.

A while later, footsteps approach. My mind vaguely registers the distant sound.

I don’t turn to see whether it is the king returning, my attention remaining on my sister. Dalia is all that matters. But it isn’t his shadow which looms over me. It’s my maids who have arrived, though he ordered days ago for them to no longer serve me.

“Your majesty,” Elona says, nudging my shoulder.

I don’t move. My hand stays around Dalia’s fingers.

“You can’t stay here all night,” Kassia adds gently. “What will not resting achieve?”

I know she speaks in good will, that she worries for my health and rightly so. I have eaten or drunk almost nothing for days. But her question triggers something deep within me. Anagonizing realization of how bleak my current situation is. No matter how long I kneel here, holding my sister’s hand, I cannot revive her. My determination is not enough.

Nothing is.

“You knew,” I hiss, wielding my words as if they were a dagger. My maids aren’t responsible for Dalia’s fate—the king is—but right now, I’m hurting so much I can’t suppress the urge to lash out. “All this time, you knew what happened to my sister. You knew she was here.”

They lower their heads.

“You betrayed me.” The pain in my chest is so intense it’s as if my heart will erupt. “You knew she was in this room, and yet you refused to let me in. You told me there was nothing in here, despite knowing what lay behind these doors. And what the truth would mean to me.”

“The king strictly forbade you from visiting this room,” Kassia says.

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