The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles 2)

“Not wise in this wilderness to be so lost in your reflections that you forget your back. The hyenas prowl this late in the day, especially for little morsels like you.” He glanced to where I had been looking, a long horizon and endless dipping hills. “What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Am I not free to own anything? Not even my thoughts?”

“No,” he answered. “Not anymore.”

And I knew he meant it.

He studied my face as if waiting for a lie, waiting for something. I remained silent. Seconds ticked by, and I thought he might strike me. He finally shook his head. “If you need to take care of personal matters, my men and I will turn our backs for a few minutes. I know how your kind are about your privacy. Be quick about it.”

I watched him walk off, wondering at how he had backed down. Wondering about everything. He had saved Kaden, sent food for the hungry, was tireless in knowing his kingdom, from personally retrieving governors to meeting with distant hillfolk. Could I have been wrong about him? I remembered his cruel taunt, You did well, Chievdar, when he pulled Walther’s baldrick from the captured booty. He knew it would bring me to my knees. But it was more than that that fed my doubts about him. It was his eyes, hungry for everything, even my own thoughts. Be careful, sister. My brother’s warning burned beneath my ribs.

And yet, when we stopped at the last hamlet and I saw him embrace the elders and leave gifts, saw the hope that he left behind, and remembered it was he who had saved Kaden from the savagery of his own kind, I wondered if anything I felt in my gut really mattered.

And Morrighan raised her voice,

To the heavens,

Kissing two fingers,

One for the lost,

And one for those yet to come,

For the winnowing was not over.

—Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. IV

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

KADEN

After four days on the road, I decided the gods were against me. Maybe they always had been. No such luck that the governor would be coming my way, half sloshed and late. The brothel in the last town hadn’t had the pleasure of his visit yet, and that was a stop he never missed. He was still somewhere on the road from here to there—or he hadn’t left yet at all.

Damn Governor Tierny. I’d wring his neck when I caught up with him. Unless someone else had already done that job for me.

The weather was miserable, cold winds by day, cold rain by night. The men who traveled with me were surly. Winter was coming early. But it wasn’t the icy winds that were leaving me raw. It was my last night with Lia. I had never told anyone, not even the Komizar, what my mother’s name was.

Cataryn.

It was as though I had raised her from the dead. I had seen her again, heard her voice again, as I told Lia about her. Saying her name aloud, something tore inside of me, but then I couldn’t stop telling Lia more, remembering how much my mother had loved me—the only person who had ever loved me. That wasn’t something I had wanted to share with Lia, but in the dark, once I had said her name, it all poured out, right down to the color of her eyes.

And my father’s eyes. That memory stopped me. I hadn’t told her everything.

Lia. Like a whisper on the wind.

At first I had thought that was all it was, the wind and long hours riding alone. When Lia had first told me her name in the tavern, it had reminded me of the hush I heard riding across the savanna, Lia through the canyons in the desert, Lia, the cry of a distant wolf. Lia wheedling into my heart before I ever laid eyes on her. And then Lia as I stood over her in the darkness of her room, my knife in hand. It was a whisper I finally couldn’t ignore, though I had managed to choke it from my life from the moment I met the Komizar. The knowing had only brought me pain.

I had used it the way Lia had. I had told the lady of the manor she was going to die a slow and horrible death, though I had seen no such thing. I was eight years old and angry that it was my own mother who was dying and not the petty one of my half brothers, a woman who had never shown me any kindness. That was when my first beating came. It was at the hands of my father, not the beggars. They only left scars atop the ones he had already laid deep.

Which one was it, Kaden?

His name was one I would never give up, not even to Lia—but it would be my name on his lips as he lay dying. My name would be the one he uttered as he gasped his last breath, knowing he had been betrayed by his own son. It was a thought that had warmed me for years. Our plans. That moment had always been implicit in them.

We rounded the pass and had started to make our descent into the valley when we saw them coming toward us. I stopped our procession until I was certain who they were. I sighed and signaled us forward again to meet them. We must never grow lazy. But the governor of Arleston had. There would be no neck to wring. He was dead. The squad of men heading our way bore the flags of Arleston, and the man leading them had to be the new governor. A sturdy man, but not young as challengers usually were. I didn’t care. He was headed in the right direction, knowing his duty, and that was all that mattered. I could return to the Sanctum now. I could return home to Lia. The last stray governor had been found.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

RAFE