The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

His eyes brightened.

“You sold my life for a single copper. I’ll let you buy yours back right now for the same. Give me a copper. It’s little enough to ask.”

He looked at me, bewildered. “Give you a copper? Now?”

I extended my palm, waiting.

“I don’t have a copper!”

I withdrew my hand and shrugged. “Then you’ll lose your life, just like I lost mine.”

I turned to leave but stopped to tell him one last thing. “Since you plotted with the Komizar, you’ll die by his justice too. And just so you know, he likes those facing execution to suffer first. You will.”

I left and heard him calling after me, liberally using son in his appeals, and I knew if I hadn’t left my knives behind, he would have been dead already, and that would have been too easy an end for him.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

“Sit,” I ordered.

“Where?”

“The floor. And don’t move. I want to speak with her alone first.”

I looked at the soldiers who had accompanied me. “If he moves so much as a toe, you are to cut it off.”

They smiled and nodded.

* * *

I walked through my parents’ living quarters and opened the door to their bedroom chamber.

My mother lay in a disheveled heap at the foot of the bed, looking like a child’s rag

doll that had been emptied of its stuffing. My father lay in the center, pale and immobile. Her hand rested on the bedcovers that swallowed him up, as if she lashed him to this earth. No one, not even death, would sneak past her. She had already lost her eldest son, her other sons were missing and in grave danger, and her husband had been poisoned. How she had managed to gather the strength to stand with me yesterday I wasn’t sure. She had drawn from a well that looked empty now. There is not always more to take, I thought. Sometimes so much can be taken that what is left doesn’t matter.

She sat up when she heard my footsteps and her long black hair fell in disarray over her shoulders. Her face was gaunt, her eyes veined from tears and fatigue.

“It was you who ripped the last page from the book,” I said. “I thought it was someone who hated me very much, and then I realized it was just the opposite. It was someone who loved me very much.”

“I didn’t want this for you,” she said. “I did everything I could to stop it.”

I walked across the room, and when I sat beside her, she pulled me into her arms. She held me fiercely, a quiet sob lifting her chest. I had no tears left, but my arms locked around her, holding her in all the ways I had needed to in these past months. She said my name over and over again. Jezelia. My Jezelia.

I finally pulled back. “You tried to keep the gift from me,” I said, still feeling the hurt. “You did everything you could to guide me away from it.”

She nodded.

“I need to understand,” I whispered. “Tell me.”

And she did.

She was weak. She was broken. But her voice grew stronger as she spoke, as if she had told this story in her own mind a hundred times. Maybe she had. She told me about a young mother and her child, a story I had only seen from my vantage point.

Her tale had seams I hadn’t seen; it was colored with fabric in shades I’d never worn; it had hidden pockets heavy with worry; it was a story that didn’t hold just my fears, but hers too, the threads of it pulling tighter each day.

When she had arrived in Morrighan, she was eighteen, and everything about this new land was foreign to her—the clothing, the food, the people—including the man who was to be her husband. She was so filled with fright she couldn’t even meet his gaze the first time she met him. He had dismissed everyone from the room, and once they were alone, he reached out and lifted her chin and told her she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Then he smiled and promised her it would be all right, that they could take their time getting to know each other, and then he delayed the wedding for as long as he could, and he courted her.

It was only for a few months, but day by day, he won her over—and she won him over too. It wasn’t exactly love yet, but they were infatuated. By the time they married, she was no longer looking at the floor but happily meeting the eyes of everyone—including the stern gazes of the cabinet.