Page 40 of The Stygian Crown

“Besides, I guessed the first time I saw you.”

She narrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

Calim crossed to the covered picture frame in the corner and pulled the cover off, revealing a portrait.

A raven-haired woman in a crimson dress filled the frame. She sat in a high-backed chair studded with rivets, one leg crossed over the other, her hands curled over the arms of the chair. Her dark eyes were hard and calculating within the fine bones of her cheeks. There was something disconcerting about the woman. Her face, the set of her eyes and sweep of her eyebrows over full lips made Kara’s blood run cold. It was the face Kara saw in the mirror every day, traced over with an artist’s dark brush strokes.

“The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? You startled me when I first saw you.”

Kara had forgotten Calim was in the room. She pulled her eyes away from the subject’s magnetic gaze, jerking as a shiver ran up her spine. She tossed her head to clear the needle-like pin-pricks running along her skin.

“Who is this?” Part of her already knew the answer, already denied it.

“Namirah. One of the few portraits that survived when Urian had everything of hers burnt.”

“Is this some kind of trick?” Even as she asked, Kara knew it wasn’t. The painting showed signs of age, and the frame’s metal filigree was choked with dust.

“This portrait used to give me nightmares as a boy. All those tales of Namirah the curse bringer, Namirah the wretched. Sometimes when I came here, I thought I could hear her whispering my name. That if I stayed here after dark, she’d crawl out from under the bedframe and grab me by the ankles.”

“And now?”

“Now I've gained...perspective.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“There have always been rumors that Urian and Namirah had a child. Why would Namirah curse Princess Laura, an innocent child, after all, rather than Urian or Genevieve?”

Trepidation curled inside her.

“But I never really believed it until I saw you.”

Kara snorted. “You think—” She gestured between the portrait and her, at a loss for words.

“Not their child, no, you’re too young for that. A grandchild, though. I’ve been looking into your late adoptive father.”

Kara bristled, prepared to defend Da, even to the king of bloody Teleria.

“Caliban McKenna. He was no simple soldier, Kara. He was one of Urian’s personal guard. He might have cut down your parents himself.”

“No.” Kara’s mind rebelled at the idea. Da wouldn’t.

“Perhaps he couldn’t go through with his mission once faced with killing a wailing babe, so he fled his post and took you and his family halfway across the world. Hid in a hovel in the Balmoran Mountains for twenty years. I received a letter from the man I sent to Mudbottom to investigate this week. The story’s a little too convenient, isn’t it? Baby on a wagon full of goods, parents lost to the battle moments before they could escape. Your parents were probably the reason the town was invaded to begin with.”

Kara shook her head violently. She felt like the world was crumbling out from under her. “That proves nothing. Those are just theories. Hypotheticals.”

Calim’s face slid into something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Kara, that blood rune outside is keyed to only open to royal blood and Namirah’s.”

A boulder dropped into Kara’s stomach. The roar of Widow’s Fall thundered through her ears. She sank to the floor and pressed her hands to her face. He was wrong. He had to be wrong.

Kara lifted her head, hope surging through her as she hit upon an idea. “Maybe I’m a distant relation from somewhere else in the line. Hell, even your parents might’ve had some hidden bastards.” And she’d taken the demon’s drip. There was no telling whose blood was in it.

Calim shook his head and began pacing the room. “My parents were a love match, and they died young. And you’re the spitting image of Namirah. I understand your reluctance to believe this, but I bear you no ill will. I’ve no interest in the so-called cleansing my grandfather perpetrated.”

Kara had grown accustomed to not knowing about her past, stopped hoping she’d learn something about her parents long ago. Da and Wesley were enough—had always been enough, before all this. It was easier that way. Far easier, if this was her dark legacy.

“I don’t want this.”

Calim nodded. “I don’t expect anything of you, so you know. But I thought it important to make you aware. Some may seek to harm you for your connection to her, if it ever came to light. And maybe you were…curious, about your past?”

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