The corner of her lips twitched. Her repthaen it came, was finally full of some kind of emotion—it was just a pity that it was real anger. “I’m still young, Raed—and that place is filled with the old and broken. You just left me there.”
That was when the Pretender knew and understood why his sister had turned on her own kin. He knew, because he was responsible. He knew, because he had chosen to leave the Dominion and take the chance, since they were close, to reunite with his family. They rarely visited the mainland, but a loyal lord, who lived on a remote peninsular, invited them to celebrate the harvest with him. The risks were very low—at least from their enemies.
Back then the Rossin Curse had been merely a quaint legend—something that they chuckled about over family dinners. It was sheer chance that he had spent his youth from the age of ten aboard a ship, learning to lead and to fight and surrounded by the open water that geists could not traverse.
When the Rossin took him, right during just such a meal, there had been no more laughter. Raed remembered the tearing sensation deep in his flesh, hearing the baying of the Beast and the screams of those around him. He even recalled the feeling of the bullet’s strike as the more quick-witted of his father’s guards tried to stop him. The worst memory, however, was of the jaws of the Rossin closing around his mother, the scent of her fear and the taste of her blood.
Raed clenched his teeth, ravaged again by those sensations, as if they had occurred only yesterday. He had awoken aching, screaming and covered in the lifeblood of the one who bore him. His father had been destroyed, but out of some kind of guilt of his own had sent his only son out onto the world’s oceans. They had all learned that day the true sting of myth.
And now here was Fraine, looking at him with the same rage but untempered by any remorse. Raed could have spoken in his defense, said something about the Curse or the Beast or how he had no choice. Instead he remained silent, his jaw locked around any reply.
“You robbed me of my mother,” Fraine said, as Tangyre squeezed her shoulder. “And then you abandoned me. I wanted a life, but instead I was trapped with Father.”
At five there would be only flashes of memory for his sister, but he suddenly could see through her eyes: an island full of the elderly and damaged. Zofiya was silent, swaying slightly, and barely taking any notice of the little family drama being played out.
“You were safe there,” he finally croaked out. “And we thought it was better you were safe than—”
“What I had there was not worth saving.” Her hand went to her sword hilt, and abruptly Raed realized she was dressed for war. So mesmerized had he been that he had not noticed her Imperial dress. The dress of purple and dark blue of their family, including the Rising Star Crest of the Rossin heir.
“This is insanity, Fraine! Why are you wearing that?” Raed lurched forward, only to have his feet knocked out from under him by Zofiya.
But it was Tang who replied, “As heir to the Rossin name, Fraine will have excellent marriage prospects. Especially once the Empress stands on the throne. She will cancel the price on her head.”
The thing behind Zofiya’s eyes shifted, and Raed felt himself plunge deeper into madness. “Empress?”
The smile on her face was stretched. “With your sister’s backing, the rebel Princes will fall into line. I will rule, and in return my Bright Lady will help your sister by taking care of the Rossin. Once the faithful have gathered tomorrow, you will die; he will die with you and not be passed on to her.”
Raed pressed his lips together lest a cry escape him. When suicide had tempted him, it was the thought that Fraine would suffer the Rossin if he did, which stopped him. Apparently none of this mattered to her—he was simply the man who had killed her mother and any chance of a happy life.
“I want to watch you suffer first. I want you to know real loss.” Fraine got up, brushed off her pants and gestured to the guards waiting in the darkness. Raed managed to struggle to his knees just as his crew was dragged through the sand dunes; all were bound, and many looked as though they had put up a fierce fight.
Abruptly he knew what their fate was. “No!” Pulling his feet under him, he charged at the guard nearest him holding the silent and bruised Snook. The Young Pretender never reached them.
Other guards sprang from the shadows. Raed fought back with forehead and shoulder, but they knocked him down quickly, and with rifle butts and fists kept him down. The Young Pretender swore, snarled and wished for the Rossin to take him, but nothing happened. He had the wind knocked out of him, and when they were done, he was left staring at the stars.
“Get him up.” Fraine’s voice reached him like he was underwater. It should have come as no surprise to him that it was Isseriah who tugged Raed back up onto his knees. Under the rule of a new Rossin Emperor it was certain that the rebel had been promised his earldom back. Raed had no more venom, but he spat at the traitor’s feet.
Bruised and heartsick, the Young Pretender looked at his five crew members: Snook, Laython, Balis, Nyre and the young blade Iyle. They looked back at him with clenched jaws, dark eyes and resignation. They knew as well as he what was coming.
“It has been a pleasure to sail the waters with you, my Prince.” Snook tilted her head up, the light washing over her narrow, sweet face. She had never used his title as Aachon was wont to do. That she did so now poured cold horror through him.
“Long live Prince Raed,” she cried, and the other four crew members repeated her call as if their lives depended on it—but it made not one jot of difference.
“It’s been my honor,” Raed choked out.
He was held tightly as, in one practiced move, all five guards slit all five throats. Not one of them cried for mercy. The gushing of blood flooded over the sand, and then they let the bodies drop. Like that, they were no longer human, just bundles of meat he had once known, loved and sailed with.
Raed bellowed, reaching for the rage of the Rossin, not caring what happened after—but all he found was emptiness. This was his crew. They had followed him for years, and he’d taken them to their deaths far from the oceans they loved. Like everything else, it was his fault.
“I see now, Brother”—Raed glanced up as his sister’s words fell on him like rough stones—“that you do in fact have a heart. That is, until they cut it out of you.”
What could he say to his sister? No matter how many times Raed told himself that it was the Curse, the Beast, the Rossin that had torn their mother to shreds, he could not shake the guilt that it had been him in some way.
For Fraine, the Young Pretender could find no words. She was not the little sister he had carried on his shoulders, but neither was he that carefree lad anmore. The Rossin had killed both of them along with their mother.
Fraine and Tangyre looked down at him for a second. Raed wanted them to stop looking at him, wanted it to be over with. Every bone and muscle ached in his body, but it was not as terrible as the pain in his soul—if he had a soul.
His sister looked across at Zofiya. “Will it be painful?”
The Grand Duchess hummed a little tune under her breath, her eyes on the looming mound that blackened the horizon. “They will all be gathered tomorrow, and the Bright One will descend.”
Zofiya’s laugh cracked halfway through, and even in his pain Raed could hear there was less and less of herself in her voice. He knew all about being eaten up from the inside. “Oh, it will hurt. The Bright One will devour his heart and brain and through them the Beast inside.”
In the firelight Fraine swallowed hard, for a moment looking pale, but she regained her composure and nodded. “Good . . . I want him to suffer just as our mother did. I want him to know pain and fear before he dies.”