Page 51 of The War Queen's Daughter

There’s something she’s not telling me. What is she hiding? Or is she simply masking her emotions behind the depth of her dark eyes?

I don’t know what to do with her when she’s like this, so I go on with my telling as if she hadn’t spoken.

I sketch out the bones of my attempts to woo and win the Overprince, but again, I hold back. She doesn’t know he’s already asked me to marry him, though she’s grinning wickedly when I admit she was right about my carnal knowledge of him. I hold off further insights, feeling a protective surge and the need to keep him safe. His surprising kindness, his fascinating knowledge of ancient texts and suppressed histories, the sweet openness that I’ve learned to adore, all she would see as weakness to exploit.

I really have changed. Because when it comes to the last detail, I don’t bring him up at all.

Zenthris is mine and mine alone, and whatever it is he’s up to, whatever I feel for him, that’s not for anyone else to take from me. That secret feels too precious, too dangerous, too personal to share, even with my aunt.

That secret I will keep.

As I finish, a question, one that has been nagging at me, finally pushes its way to the forefront of my mind. “Aunt,” I begin, my voice hesitant, “my father. Mother never talks about him. I know he died, but what was he like? And what of his family?”

She stares, no longer listening. I can see the wall she slams into place, the hard stop in her eyes. “You’ve been told not to ask about your father,” she says.

You truly have no idea who you really are.Zenthris wasn’t wrong. No, I really don’t.

Except now I have reason to believe that maybe I know more than I thought I did. But can it be true?

“My father,” I say, pushing back because that is who I am now, a rebel raised to never disobey. “My father was drakonkin.” It feels right to say it. Why did I fight against it? There’s no shame in it.

Is there?

Aunt’s eyes widen. She’s afraid. “Never say that again.” She lunges for me, grasping me by the throat with one shaking hand. She’s never attacked me before, never treated me this way. Her dark eyes are furious, wild, terrified. “Never, Remi. Promise me.”

I choke as her fingers tighten, but I don’t fight her. I just stare back at her, aching inside. And nod.

She releases me with a shaking sigh before roughly kissing my cheek. When she backs away, she’s pale, ashen under her tan. The silence that follows, as I swallow and fight the urge to rub at my throat, the door to the bath chamber slams open, and Mother emerges, naked and refreshed.

“Let’s not keep the Overking waiting,” the queen says.

If she notes the tension between us, she doesn’t say, and I let it go.

With the answer I needed delivered loud and clear.

Drakonkin. So be it.

Chapter 26

Mother goes without me. “I will speak to Gyster alone,” she says. “Remain, daughter. I’m sure we will have a lot to talk about when I return.”

Aunt goes with her, refusing to meet my eyes, and then I’m alone, left to pace the royal quarters.

I busy myself with assembling Mother’s armor as I used to do before I had my own to tend to. The familiar task of storing it in stacks of metal and leather, bundling it, and setting it aside takes me far less time than I hoped.

And my mind isn’t engaged, the practical and practiced task doing nothing to stop me from thinking, as much as thinking seems to be my problem lately. Getting me into trouble that I really should avoid.

I’m about to leave and go spar with someone in the exercise yard, to shed the now bubbling impatience I feel about who I really am, when footfalls echo through the closed door a moment before they burst open, and my mother returns.

Saying she’s not happy is like saying a thunderstorm might bring a little rain. Her vast fury slams over the threshold ahead of her, the sound of something cracking under the impact of her entrance reminiscent of bones breaking.

I’ve seen her raging, I’ve seen her go berserk on the battlefield, a one-woman army undefeated and untamable. But I’ve never seen her livid, shaking with it, eyes brimming with tears leaking out of her in protest of her vast and engulfing ire.

“Liar.” She’s barely coherent, her snarl not aimed at me, nor anyone present in the room, as she bends and flips the sofa in front of the fireplace up and over with a single, fluid motion. It crashes into the stone and breaks in half, held together with fabric as she jerks on one ornate leg, the squeal of its broken carcass loud as it gouges the marble floor. “Thief.” She straightens and heaves the remains across the room, shattering the glass windows, the heavy piece of furniture landing on the sill, half in and half out in the garden, exposed velvet fluttering bravely in the breeze. “He will pay for what he’s chosen to do.”

I think that’s what she’s said. I glance at Aunt, who shrugs at me, her scowl deep and her own anger right on the surface.

“Mother.” I know better than to interrupt her when she’s angry, but this feels different, and I am different.

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