I try not to feel as hopeless as Zosines is making the situation sound. Memnon has single-handedly defeated worse odds. It’s not over yet.
“What else?” I ask.
Sweat has begun to bead on his forehead, and his breathing is coming in short, shallow pants. “The royal family and any loyalists were to be killed. We can’t have anyone avenging the fallen king and causing unrest.”
Terror rolls through me then. Tamara and Katiari, Memnon’s mother and sister, are certainly at the top of the list.
“What do you get out of it?” I ask.
The corners of Zosines’s mouth twitch and spasm as though he’s trying to hold a gloating smile back. “I would be king.”
Ah, there it is. He sold his dearest friend out for power.
His mouth continues to twitch.
“Anything else?” I prod.
Finally, he adds, “You. I would get you as a war prize.”
My eyebrows lift. Me? It’s such a preposterous thought.
“Why?” I finally ask.
The look in his eyes shifts, turning…covetous is the best word for it. I’ve seen that look from him before. I just never paid it much attention. The man has six wives—already more women than he must know what to do with. If he had it his way, I would be the seventh.
Revulsion moves through me. He clearly never thought this through. I’d curse him to death sooner than he could lay a finger on me.
The distant sounds of commotion grow louder. I think…I think I hear the massive palace doors groaning open. Shit.
“Besides you,” I say, “is anyone else coming for me?”
Zosines laughs. “Everyone is coming for you. Memnon and your allies are dead. Those who would follow you have perished. Some still sit in that dining hall, their corpses rotting away in their chairs. Their bodies will remain unburied, their flesh left out to rot. But if you come with me, I can save you. I can make you queen once more.”
Queen? That’s what he intends? If it weren’t for the truth spell, I would doubt his words, especially now that I have buried a dagger in his side.
He must want me for my power. He must think that his benevolence sparing me from certain death tonight will make me feel indebted to him. Such are the ways of Sarmatian warriors. That’s just not my way.
“This is your only chance to live,” Zosines adds.
His words are punctuated by distant battle cries. The soldiers are inside.
I search his eyes. “You think I am scared of the Romans? Of death? Or that I would cling to my throne if Memnon didn’t sit beside me?” I shake my head. “I would follow him to the ends of the earth. I would follow him even into death. But I think you shall go there first.”
With a flick of my wrist, the power that encircled us now rushes for his head.
Snap.
His neck breaks, and my magic releases him, his body going limp on the ground.
I glance up when I hear the sounds of furniture crashing and wood splintering. The soldiers must be raiding the bottom floor of the castle. The cries of the encroaching legion are getting louder.
I straighten. I need to get going if I wish to stop Eislyn before it’s too late, but first…
I look down the hall to where Tamara and Katiari’s room is. The curtains of the portiere are partially ripped away. My heart beats faster and faster. There’s no time left, but I need to be sure.
Ferox steps in close, his head nudging my hand so that my palm rests on it.
I’m here with you, the gesture seems to say. I draw in a deep breath then head toward their room. Halfway there, I can hear the slow drip of something.
I’m not even to the doorway when I see Tamara’s body in the shadows of her room, her torso slumped against the wall, a bloody, gaping wound in the center of her chest where someone ran her through with a sword.
My knees nearly give out, and I have to stumble the rest of the way to Tamara to stop myself from falling. I pass through the still-intact wards shielding the room and fall to her side, cradling her cold body in mine. Her head slumps listlessly against me, and though the shouts and screams are closing in, for a moment, I cannot bother with them.
This is a Sarmatian queen, a woman who led armies into battle and made life-and-death decisions on behalf of her nomadic peoples for years before Memnon took over. She deserved more than a traitor’s blade through her chest.
I continue to hold her body against mine, even as I hear boots on the stone stairs. My eyes scan the room, looking for Katiari, Memnon’s younger sister, dread coiled in my belly. I have to cast an illumination spell to see the rest of the room.
Beneath the soft orange glow of it, I see the slumped body of Katiari. She lies on her back, four arrows jutting from her chest, a pool of blood beneath her.
Carefully, I release Tamara and move to my sister-in-law’s side, touching her skin lightly. It has the same deathly chill clinging to it as Tamara’s does. The Sarmatian princess is gone as well.
A disbelieving breath shudders out of me. She was not just a sister by marriage but by love and choice as well.
I am a child again. Soldiers have invaded my home, killed my family. My sobs turn into an anguished cry.
Roman sympathizers did this. Rome once again took from me.
I can hear them at the end of the hallway, knocking over braziers and ripping at the hanging tapestries.
Poisonous rage builds in my veins, devouring my grief and turning it into something darker, deadlier.
I am reliving old pain, but I am no longer a child, and these men shall suffer.
Another cry rips from my throat, but this one sounds feral, wrathful.
I rise, Ferox near my side. I place a hand on his head.
I whisper a spell aimed at my familiar. “Impenetrable armor for your body,” I incant.
My magic billows over the great cat, coating him in a protective ward. Heedless of the few seconds I have left, I turn the same spell on myself, my power moving down my form and readying me for battle. It won’t hold forever, these spells never do, but it will protect us for now at least.
There are a dozen or more sets of feet rushing toward the end of the hall where we are, likely drawn in by my scream.
Quickly, I place a curse on my mother-in-law and sister-in-law’s bodies. “Skin like death, liquefy the innards of any who dare touch these corpses.” My voice breaks on that final word. My mind knows these women are gone; my heart cannot fathom it.
I cast the bodies one last grim look. The soldiers will try to desecrate their remains. I smile malevolently at the thought of the pained death that awaits such fools.
My power gathers beneath my skin, my muscles and joints throbbing from it. Rage makes even that pain feel good.
I glance at my familiar. “Ready yourself, Ferox. Everyone beyond this room is an enemy. Kill whatever you can.”
I step out of the room as the first of the Roman soldiers closes in on me. This soldier is a youthful man with rich, golden skin and thin, lithe legs.
His eyes widen a bit when he sees me, and he slows just a little. Behind him are more than a dozen others. I raise a hand, my magic gathering.