Page 13 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.” Bron turned to warm her skinny backside against the fire.

Cresta’s brow furrowed as she leaned against the wall, and though she said nothing, Lara felt the distrust radiating off her sister, and she suspected she knew the cause.

“When did you realize that Marylyn wasn’t on our side?” Lara asked, accepting a steaming cup from Ensel. “Was she angry from the moment she woke from the drugs?”

“We wereallangry at you from the moment we woke up, Lara. Or at least after we determined you weren’t among the dead,” Cresta said. “Do you have any idea what it was like, waking up surrounded by smoke and flame andcorpses?I still have nightmares more nights than not.”

“You were gone.” Sarhina stared at the wooden table between them, eyes distant. “I woke with the worst headache of my life, so sick with nausea I could barely stand, but all I could think was that you were gone. That you had died fighting.”

Lara’s stomach hollowed. “But the note—”

“Looking in my pocket for a note wasnotthe first thing I thought of doing.” Sarhina lifted her head to meet Lara’s gaze. “The first thing we did was dig through the bodies, trying to find you.” She turned her hands upward, revealing palms marred by pink scars. Scars from burns. “We all have them. Even Marylyn.”

“I’m sorry.” Guilt flooded her. “It was the only way I could think of to get you all out of the situation alive.”

“I don’t suppose you considered telling us Father’s plan?” Bronwyn asked from where she stood next to the fireplace. “That would’ve been a good place to start. Then at least we would’ve woken knowing what was what.”

“Obviously I thought of that. But when have us twelve ever agreed about anything without fighting over it for days?” Lara took a mouthful of her tea, wincing when she burned her tongue. “We would have fought over what to do. Then fought over who should go to Ithicana. Then gone back to fighting over what we should do again. There wasn’t time for it, so I made the call.”

“And we’re all alive because of it,” Sarhina said, shutting down the argument the way she always did. “But to answer your question, Marylyn didn’t say much on the subject until we were out of the Red Desert. Then she said nothing at all, only disappeared in the night. Our first clue that she’d betrayed us was when Father’s soldiers started hunting us.” She spit across the room into the fireplace. “Traitorous bitch.”

“She wasn’t who we believed she was.” Though Lara still felt sick whenever she thought of her sister’s death. Still felt the snap of Marylyn’s neck reverberating up her arms. Still saw the light go out of her sister’s eyes.

“She was Father’s creation,” Cresta murmured. “More than any of us.”

They were all silent for a time, the only sound the crackle of the fireplace and the soft noises Ensel made as he prepared dinner, calloused hands methodically chopping carrots for stew. He was deaf, she’d been told, but Sarhina had been quick to add that he could read lips on a moonless night, and Lara felt his gaze on them as she asked, “How have you remained hidden from Father’s men?”

Sarhina shrugged. “The people of this region are no friends of his—or of Serin’s. When an outsider arrives asking questions, we get a warning. If they get too close, we deal with them. But it’s not sustainable. Serin knows we are in these mountains, and it’s only a matter of time until one of us gets caught.”

“I assume you have a plan for that?”

“We planned to part ways for good come the end of the storm season. Take ships north and south to places away from Serin’s reach.”

Lara glanced at Ensel, then Sarhina. “Even you?”

“Not me. This is my home now.”

A home that would be under constant threat, because all of them knew their father would never stop hunting.

Needing to ease the tension that had built in the room, Lara asked, “How did you two meet?”

A soft smile formed on Sarhina’s face as she looked to her husband, who was watching her lips move. “After we stripped the compound of what we needed, we headed east out of the desert. Once Marylyn left, we decided it was safer if we split into smaller groups, so Bron, Cresta, and I went deeper into the mountains.

“We didn’t have money, so we were hunting what we could and stealing the rest. Mostly from travelers on the road who looked like they could spare it, but sometimes we had to take from the hamlets. Or go hungry.”

Lara’s guilt flared anew knowing that her sisters had gone hungry while she’d eaten her fill on the finest food to be had. That they’d slept in the rain and the cold and the dirt while she’d soaked in Midwatch’s hot spring.

“We had been sneaking into Renhallow on and off for about a week,” Sarhina continued. “Picking vegetables from the gardens. Lifting the occasional chicken.”

“Four chickens, love.” Ensel murmured, then returned his gaze back to vegetables in front of him. “You lasses know a hundred ways to kill a man, but not how to snare a rabbit.”

Sarhina’s cheeks colored. “At any rate, I was about to make it five, but Ensel had rigged a trap outside the coop, and I stepped in it. Found myself dangling upside down with an arrow pointed at my face.”

Ensel smiled. “I thought I’d caught myself a wraith. Little did I know that I’d caught myself something far more dangerous.” Stepping away from the stove, he bent his head to kiss Sarhina, who said, “He won me over with his charming compliments, and I decided to stay.”

And now Lara was here to take her away. To risk her sister and the life of her unborn child in order to rectify her own mistakes. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, rising to her feet. “It’s not right for me to ask you to help. You’ve moved on with your lives.”

“Have we?” Sarhina’s gaze was unblinking. “Who are you to be the judge of that? And even if we have moved on, that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten what Father and Serin and the rest did to us. No amount of time or distance will allow us to forget it.”

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