Page 184 of Sharpest Court

Footsteps pounded from the hallway, and Stian paused.

Then Valeria blasted into the throne room, hair flying from her bun. Dashiel and Lye rushed in behind her, taking in the scene with wide eyes.

Stian’s expression shifted instantly. If anybody would stand by him, it would be Valeria. “Your Highness,” he rasped, shoulders sinking. “Thank the gods.”

“Thank Alissa.” Valeria lifted a piece of parchment—the note I’d left for her, detailing my discoveries. For a moment, she appeared devastated at his betrayal. But when she looked at his wounded arm, her features hardened again. “The gods would have had better aim.”

Stian’s face froze.

Then Dashiel and Lye barreled forward, and I could have sobbed with relief as they grasped the healer between them. Finally, I allowed myself to snap the compass shut.

I didn’t realize I was close to collapsing until Valeria hooked an arm around my waist, keeping me upright.

She looked down at me, her eyes bloodshot. “Are you all right?”

I was nodding when armored bodies clanked into the room, swords held high. My stomach swooped as Stian straightened.

“Take them into custody,” he snapped.

But the guards didn’t move. They were no longer fumbling for leadership now; instead, a new purpose seemed to hum around them.

“They don’t answer to you,” Lye said, his voice like steel.

One guard procured a gilded document from her pocket. “We found this on the minister’s body,” she explained. “After Her Imperial Majesty was injured on Banarrat, she sent a testimony to her chosen successor. It seems that the minister intercepted it, in the hope that the empress would not make a full recovery.”

I startled. This was why Arun had been so swept away with power, so resentful. Because clearly, she had not chosen him.

“Who did Rheya name as successor?” I croaked.

It was Dashiel who answered, jutting his chin a little to my right. “You’re standing next to her.”

I whipped toward Valeria and saw the confirmation in the grim set of her mouth. Rheya had made Valeria heir to the empire, running the power back into her predecessor’s bloodline.

And in the empress’s absence, Valeria held the reins.

She looked to the guards—her guards—and said, “Take the healer into custody.” A shadow crossed her face. “I need to see my brother.”

The guards swept into action, and Stian thawed from his shock. “Your brother is only alive because of me,” he hissed as they dosed him with dullroot. He appeared frantic now, because he hadn’t just failed his king. He had failed his son. “Alissa.” His voice was gentle once more, desperate. “Please understand. I was trying to do what was best for you. Any good father would have done the same.”

I held his gaze. “Maybe,” I said darkly, looking him over. “But you are not my father.”

He tensed, his eyes narrowing with a quieter, lasting fury.

And in the moment before the guards pulled him beyond the threshold, he looked so much like Erik that I wondered how I’d never seen it before.

54

I spent the next few days counting Keil’s labored breaths in the silence.

The first time I saw him, I’d wanted to sob. He looks as though he’s sleeping, the physician had said outside the palace bedchamber, where he was being treated. She’d been lying. Where Keil should have been all gold and glow, he now appeared washed out, his powerful chest rising and falling too quickly for someone in restful sleep.

Val and I took turns at his bedside, the others filtering in at intervals, bringing us sweet tea and buttered bread with blackcurrant jam. More than once, I longed for the comfort of my mother’s coin. But soon, my acute fear dissolved like salt into my blood, becoming less urgent but more pervasive. The world bustled around us while we sat and stared and waited, none of us saying what we were all thinking—that Stian had always been the best of these physicians.

The current physician was departing from a late-afternoon assessment when Val drifted inside and collapsed into an armchair. “That went well.”

“What did you learn?” I asked.

Having made the recovery Arun had dreaded, Rheya was due back from Banarrat next week with the soldiers’ alliance in hand. But until then, Valeria was the acting empress. And Arun’s intelligence agents now fell under her command.