In her chambers, Annoura swept her arms across another elegant desk, sending crystal candle lamps, books, and statuary crashing to the floor. She shrieked in wild, mad grief and flung herself at her bed hangings, snatching great handfuls of sumptuous fabric and ripping it free of its mooring hooks. Plaster rained down upon her and the puddles of velvet she threw to the floor.

“Your Majesty, calm yourself!” pleaded the minister who had brought her the news of Dorian’s death. “Your Majesty, please. You’ll make yourself ill. Think of the child!”

“Get out! Get out!” She grabbed part of the broken vase from the floor and heaved it at him, narrowly missing his head. One of the delicate, carved chairs from her vanity followed the first missile. The minister dove out of the way a split second before the chair crashed against the wall where he’d been standing and broke into splinters.

“I’ll fetch Lord Hewen,” he quavered, and pelted out the door.

With the minister gone, Annoura spun on the Ladies-in-Waiting who were huddled in the corner of the room, some weeping, some gaping in shock at their queen’s utter loss of control. “You too!” she shrieked. “All of you, get out! Get out, damn you!” She grabbed the broken candle-lamp stand from the bedside and advanced upon them, jabbing and swinging the lamp stand like a halberd.

Squealing, the ladies fled. An antique porcelain teapot exploded across the gilded door as it closed behind them, drenching the wood, walls, and plush carpet near the threshold with steaming tea and filling the room with the scent of jasmine.

Annoura went through her apartment like a cyclone of destructive grief, shrieking Dorian’s name, smashing and rending everything she touched. She ripped pages from books, shattered perfume bottles, tore curtains from windows, smashed mirrors, and slashed paintings. Not a single moveable or breakable object escaped her fury of grief.

When there was nothing left to destroy, nothing more whole than the shattered pieces of her heart, she curled in the ruins of her destroyed bed and wept.

Ser Vale hurried down a servants’ stairway to the under-palace, where an entire invisible city worked industriously to keep the palace operating smoothly and Their Majesties’ courtiers well served and sated.

Lord Hewen, the royal physician, had been in to see the queen. Vale’s informants told him she was sleeping fitfully. There were no obvious signs of distress with the child, though Lord Hewen had not performed more than a cursory visual examination for fear of waking the queen. The ministers wouldn’t even allow a single servant in to tidy the mess Annoura had made of her apartments for the same reason.

Vale was perhaps the only person in the court for whom the news of the king’s death was neither surprising nor unwelcome. He expected similar news to arrive any day from Great Bay, and once it did, Vale’s star in the Celierian court would go sharply on the rise.

It was time to tie up loose ends.

Celieria ~ Kreppes

5th day of Seledos

“I’m worried, Rain.”

Ellysetta paced the floor of her room in Kreppes Castle. Ever since she’d stood on the Fired battlefield outside Kreppes and realized that one of her dreams had come true, fear had been a constant companion, eating away at her peace of mind, tormenting her as fiercely as any nightmare ever had.

She’d kept the fear to herself these last days. Rain had been so busy. He and Lord Barrial had spent most of their time scouting Great Lord Sebourne’s lands in search of Mages, and at Gaelen’s suggestion, Cann had summoned his dahl’reisen friends and asked them to check all the remaining Sebourne inhabitants for Mage Marks. In the meantime, armies from the surrounding border estates were sending troops to secure the lands until the new King Dorian could decide what to do with them.

But Moreland was secure now, and Rain was back. Ellysetta couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“I’m worried that if that dream came true, some of my others might, too.” Like the dream she’d had last month about Rain dying by Ellysetta’s hand while Mage-claimed Lillis and Lorelle danced in a shower of his blood. “I’m worried about all those people I killed and how I felt when I killed them.”

Ellysetta dragged her palms over her face and eyes, as if that simple gesture could shut out the world. But shutting out the world—pretending it wasn’t there—never solved anything. If she’d learned nothing else, she’d learned that. Hiding from the monsters only made them stronger.

“Hawksheart said I was the double-edged sword. He warned you that I have just as much capacity for evil as I do for good. I believe him, Rain. And I’m so afraid—so terribly frightened—that the evil is winning.”

“Shei’tani…”

“Nei, Rain. Listen to me. There’s something dark inside me—and it isn’t all the tairen, and it isn’t all the High Mage either. You want to pretend it’s not there, but it is. Some horrible, vicious part of me was glad to kill those people… I thrived on murdering them. Worse, I didn’t just want to kill them. I wanted to make them suffer. I wanted to hear them scream and beg for mercy. I wanted to see the terror in their eyes and know I put it there!”

“Ellysetta, they’d just killed Rowan and turned our own people against each other. They made friends slaughter friends. Your Rage was understandable. Do you think I felt any different? What do you think Steli would have done if the Eld had turned tairen against tairen?”

Ellysetta bit her lip. She knew what Steli would do. The fierce white tairen would shred, scorch, and maim every living creature on the battlefield. “I’m not Steli, Rain.”