Highness.

I physically jolted at that word. Jesmine saw it. Her eyes narrowed.

“Let me make one thing very clear. I respected Vincent as my king and my leader. But he does not hold my loyalty. The Hiaj clan holds my loyalty. Until the day I die.” She jabbed a finger at me—at my chest. “I don’t know how you got that. I’m as surprised as any other that you have it. But it’s not my place to question that. You are the Hiaj Heir. That makes you my queen. And that means my loyalty is yours.”

Maybe I had misjudged Jesmine. I had never trusted her before. I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I trusted her right now.

I didn’t know what to say. Thanking her didn’t seem appropriate.

So I was grateful when she surveyed me again and moved on to another topic. “Did he do it? The marriage?”

“Yes.”

She hissed. “Our queen married to a Turned Rishan slave. Vincent would have—” She shook her head.

“Better this than dead,” I said.

She shrugged, as if this was a small consolation.

“I told you he was trouble. Pretty trouble. But trouble.”

Fair enough, I thought, begrudgingly.

“What is your plan?” I asked.

“What are your orders?”

I was not at all prepared to give orders.

I tried to speak as Vincent would have. “I would like to hear your recommendation.”

“We are losing men, and rapidly. We’re outnumbered. We need to regroup.” She peered into the room. “If you wish, highness, I can send warriors here to—”

“No.”

The last thing I needed was for Hiaj soldiers to get caught trying to rescue me. Tortured. Killed. Who knew what else.

I had to think like a leader.

“I don’t want any more bloodshed than there already has been,” I said. “Not until we know what we’re dealing with. Retreat.”

Jesmine’s lip curled. “So we let him take it. Let him take the House of Night.”

We could build something better, Raihn had whispered to me.

But this did not seem better.

“And let the Bloodborn—”

“I know,” I cut in. “I know.”

It was one thing to hand this country to Raihn.

Another to hand it to Septimus.

This country hated me. I hated it, in some ways. But it was still my home.

“I need time,” I said. “Time to learn. Time to gather information. Keep yourself safe until then.”

“And you?”

“He won’t hurt me.”

Jesmine gave me a cold stare. “That marriage is to protect him. Not you. Your doors are locked from the outside. Your windows are cursed.”

“He won’t hurt me,” I said again, because I didn’t know how to explain to her how certain I was of this.

“This is bigger than him,” she said. “If I may speak frankly, highness—you are not a prisoner. You are a queen. I have broken the unbreakable before.”

She pulled open her shirt—revealing her scar. “I was bound to a man who sought to control me too, once. I nearly gave my life to break that bond. But I’m free now. I could free you, too.”

Yes. I had underestimated Jesmine.

And maybe that was why I was more honest with her now than I ever intended to be.

“I don’t intend to lead anyone into a war we can’t win. I don’t intend to fight for the sake of fighting. And maybe I have a Mark on my skin, but I don’t know what that means. The world knows me as human. The Hiaj know me as human.”

I knew myself as human.

“If you want to fight for this House, we are ready,” she said. “I won’t pretend it will be easy. I won’t pretend that some—maybe many—won’t want to accept your rule.” Her lip curled. “But Raihn Ashraj’s people don’t want to follow him, either. He was a slave to their king. Turned. Abandoned his clan for centuries. Do you think his people don’t remember those things? They’ll be reluctant to go on their knees for him when they feel it should be the other way around.”

Despite everything, my heart ached to know that they thought of Raihn that way.

“They are waiting to usurp him, too,” she went on. “And that’s only if the House of Blood doesn’t slide a knife into his back first, and then we are all fucked before his own people even have the chance to turn on him.”

A bang rang out in the distance, a puff of smoke rolling from the distant eastern walls. Jesmine’s face snapped to the sound.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine for now.”

“You can find me when you need me,” she said urgently. “Don’t rely on him to protect you, Highness. He has his own threats and weaknesses. You have teeth, too. Yours are sharper than his. Just tell us when to bite, and we fight for you, and you alone.”

Another bang. Another flash of light in the distance.

And Jesmine gave me no time to tell her anything else before she disappeared into the night, scaling the castle walls with the ease of someone who had centuries of experience slipping through the locked windows of powerful men.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

I was escorted to the throne room at nightfall the next day. I listened to the door click four times before it swung open. Raihn stood there, Cairis at his side.

“Four locks?” I said as we walked through the halls. Cairis trailed far behind. I wondered if I should expect him to always be lingering near us, now. “How flattering.”

“I know better than to underestimate you.”

“Where are we going?”

He gave me an odd look, like this was an obvious question. “To work, of course.”

“Why? Aren’t I your prisoner?”

Another strange look—this one I couldn’t quite decipher.

“You aren’t my prisoner,” he said. “You’re my queen.”

I had grown up in this palace. I knew every crevice. I had slipped through each secret hallway in the bright hours of day, when no one could disturb me. But everything was different now. New faces in the hall. Paintings torn from the walls. The face of my father shredded and disfigured, just as it had been in life.

Raihn led me to the throne room. There were so many people here. All Rishan. All of them looked at me with utter disgust. I knew what it was to walk into a room and know that everyone there wanted to kill me. That is what it was to be prey in a world of predators.

This was different.

These people wanted to kill me not because I was weak, but because I was powerful.

Raihn excused himself to go speak to Ketura, who shot me a wary glare when his back was turned. I walked through this familiar-unfamiliar room. I crossed it until I reached the double doors that overlooked the ballroom.

All the paintings—paintings of Hiaj legend and royalty—had been destroyed, smashed to pieces over the marble floor.

Only one still remained, that small painting I had always so admired: the Rishan man, falling, reaching for a savior that would not reach back.

“I am so glad we have the opportunity to work together once again.”

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. The smell of tobacco smoke wafted over me. I turned to see Septimus leaning on the opposite doorframe.

I didn’t feel like playing today.

“Work together,” I said. “What a polite way of talking about slaughtering a kingdom.”

“Slaughter? That’s harsh.”

“It’s what you want, isn’t it? Looks like it, from what I’ve seen.”

He exhaled a puff of smoke. “Then you’re not looking at much of anything, are you? Perhaps the same impulses that drive my people are the ones that drive you to murder in your human slums. After all, your people weren’t the only ones used as pawns in our goddess’s little games.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, because something about the pointed stare, full of anger he mostly managed to hide, reminded me of that first trial—of the look of horror on the Bloodborn contestant’s face as he realized that he was fighting monsters that had once been his people. Both the humans and the Bloodborn had been used and discarded.

“You didn’t hesitate to use Angelika as a pawn, either.”