Page 47 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

Lara opened her mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, she asked, “Pardon?”

“You have the same mother, or so he claimed.”

It was possible. Lara had left the compound when she was five, and while she remembered Keris, her memories were hazy and unspecific.

“And I don’t trust Keris—not by a long shot,” Aren said. “But I do have total confidence that he’ll do what it takes to stay alive, and for that to happen, he needs to take the crown from your father. And for that to happen, he needs Eranahl to endure.”

Lara listened silently as Aren explained Keris’s plan, which was overly complicated, in her opinion. But instead of focusing on herbrother’splot, the first question that came from her lips was, “My mother . . . Is she still alive?”

Aren was silent for a long moment, then he shook his head. “No.”

Grief stabbed her in the stomach, the long years since she’d seen her mother doing nothing to temper the hurt. “Do you know how she died?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.” Aren kicked the sides of his horse, moving ahead of her on the path.

A flash of anger seared through her veins, and Lara galloped past him, wheeling her horse around to block his path. “Don’t be petty, Aren. Withholding this just to piss me off is a low blow.”

“Big presumption that I care enough to piss you off.”

He looked away as he said it, and she narrowed her eyes, knowing he was trying to redirect her. Exhaling slowly, she asked, “Please tell me the truth.”

Silence stretched.

“What I know is what Keris told me.” Aren met her gaze. “He said your mother tried to go after you to get you back and that your father strangled her as punishment. And as a warning to the other wives not to cross him.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry.”

Lara couldn’t breathe. The world spun in and out of focus, and she doubled over, hands clenching into fists around the reins. Between her teeth, she snarled, “I hate him!”

“So does Keris. So trust that, if you trust nothing else.” He thumped his heels against his horse’s sides, bouncing ahead like an oversized sack of potatoes, leaving her no choice but to follow.

The swift pace and the necessity of remaining alert served well to distract her from the ache that sat heavy in her stomach as they rode along the winding path leading through the hills and mountains bordering the Red Desert. They passed the occasional farmer or shepherd, but the people paid them little attention, as both of them were dressed as Maridrinian merchants, Lara’s weapons all hidden.

They stopped near a stream at midday to eat and allow the horses to drink, but still Aren hadn’t said a word. So Lara jumped when he said, “How did you do it?”

“Do what?” she asked, despite knowing what he referred to. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have.

“How andwhendid you write your plan to infiltrate Ithicana on that letter I sent to your father? I wrote that just before we—” He broke off, turning to fuss with the saddle of his horse. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.”

“Aren—”

“I don’t want to know.” He clambered onto his horse. “Let’s go.”

Chest tight, Lara filled her waterskin in the stream, then mounted and rode after him. “I wrote it the night you were shot in the shoulder by those raiders.” As she said the words, a vision of him kneeling on the muddy path, bleeding everywhere as he tried to explain his dream for a different Ithicana—one not burdened by constant war and violence—filled her mind. “I wrote the message on every single piece of stationary knowing you’d eventually write something to my father.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He kicked his horse but hauled on the reins at the same time, and the irritated animal only snorted and pranced on the spot. “Move, you stupid creature!”

“The night we were first together, before I came out to you in the courtyard, I was in your room destroying the paper. All that spilled ink you blamed on your cat was my doing. And I counted all the pages. The letter you’d started and the rest—they were all there. I don’t know how one slipped past me, but please know that when I came to you that I believed I’d put an end to my plans.”

Giving up on the horse, Aren slid off the side and strode up the path. “It doesn’t matter, Lara! It still happened.”

How could it not matter? How could it not matter to him that she’d tried to stop her plans from ever seeing the light of day? How could it not matter to him that she’d turned her back on her father and a lifetime of training? How could it not matter to him that the invasion had been as much a shock to her as it had been to him?

Snatching up the reins of his horse, she cantered after him. “Aren, listen! I know this is my fault, but please understand that I didn’t intend for it to happen.”

He wheeled around, reaching into his coat and removing a page creased and worn from constant folding and unfolding, and Lara recognized it as that goddamned letter.

“I’ve read this every day since your sister shoved it in my face. Everyfuckingday, I read your plans and I see how you manipulated me. How every moment together was just part of your strategy to lure me in and make me trust you. To find the information you needed to destroy everything I cared about.”

Folly or not, that had been the reason she’d never told him she wrote it in the first place: because this was how she’d known he’d react.

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