Page 58 of The War Queen's Daughter

It’s almost too much. I’m about to weep because she’s alive and well and safe, somehow. I hadn’t allowed myself to wonder about her.

But the moment I let myself squeeze her hard enough that my ribs scream back, I inhale.

“Amber,” I hiss in her ear. “Traitor.”

She lets me go, the glint of her eyes just visible in the gloom. How she managed it, I have no idea, and she seems whole, healthy, unhurt. She can tell me her story of escape later. Right now, we have work to do and a betrayer to kill.

Before we ride for Heald and trigger my mother’s plans and burn this fucking shithole to the dirt it rose from.

She doesn’t speak, lips a line, those glittering eyes on me. Why aren’t we leaving? What is she waiting for?

“Aunt?” Something is wrong, more than I knew before, and I will weep, now if she doesn’t speak.

“It would have been easier, Remi,” she says, her words cutting through the dark, cutting through me, a blade through silk, “if you’d just drowned in the bathing pool.”

No.

Please.No.

I sob in the same instant I strike. It’s my only choice.

She shouldn’t have given me the warning.

Because, of course, it was her. No wonder those hands that choked me felt familiar.

She knows she’s risked too much, and I may never know why she decided to speak. But there’s no more talking, not when I lash out and she counters my move with a smooth and effortless one of her own as I pivot sideways out of her reach and drop to the floor.

To sweep her legs out from under her.

As she did to me in the pool, where she tried to drown me.

It’s small in here, tight, but all the more brutal a battleground for the narrow confines of the cell. If she brought a weapon, she doesn’t use it, though she is a weapon, as am I.

There’s no time to think, to assess, strategize, plan, only to act and I do, over and over, the blows flowing from one blurred motion to the next, her shoulder hitting the wall as she grunts from the impact, my hip rebounding from the bunk as she tosses me down. Over and over we hit each other, too good to miss, but too good to fall to blows.

She taught me everything I know. Everything. I’m unbound, the raw need to inflict the hurt she’s caused on her at war with the memory of the aunt I love, trust, adore, admire.

Loved. Trusted. Adored. Admired. No longer.

Never again.

She’s slower than I am, barely, her age a factor. But she’s more experienced and, despite my training, she’s better. I know it, have sparred with her many times in the past, and realize that she’s held back all this time. For this moment? For the chance to kill me?

Aunt—no, Vivenne—has failed before and, by fire and ash, she will again. Except I’m hurt and she’s fresh, I’m half frozen and she’s limber, her movements swift, practiced, honed by countless years of battle.

She ends it with a blow I don’t see coming, and I’m crashing to the ground, her body weight upon me, fingertips pressed to the hollow of my throat. One thrust and I’m dead.

A thrust she doesn’t take. Hesitation defeats her, her eyes locked on mine, not with malice, but with a profound, heartbreaking sadness I choke on as much as the pressure she leans into but doesn’t complete.

It’s enough. For the second time, Vivenne fails her task to kill me. Only this time, I’m ready when she falters.

Panting, furious, and needing nothing more than to take her with me to face my mother in the next life, I jerk forward, taking the hit she hasn’t completed, and crack her nose with my forehead.

Her fingers slide as I do, off the mark, bruising me but not crushing my throat as intended. She’s half-blind from pain, and I’m on top of her, pinning her face down with my limbs trapping hers before I grasp her tightly wound braid and slam her face into the stone.

Once. Twice. Three times, before she goes completely limp.

I lay there and weep into her hair, sobbing my agony, my loss.

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