64. THE LAST MISTAKE

Tyentso’s story

The D’Lorus estate, the Academy at Alavel

Right after Relos Var left with Urthaenriel

“Why are you asking?” Tyentso told her father. “We both know perfectly well where you’re going to start.” She didn’t look at the boy. It was its own kind of tell, if you knew what to look for. Now, Gadrith did.

“True,” Gadrith allowed. Then: “What’s his name?”

“Leave him alone!” Kalindra screamed. “He’s a child, and he’s not her son!”

“Shut up, Kalindra,” Tyentso said, hoping with all her might that the woman would get the fucking hint. “Trust me when I say my father does not care, and he won’t believe you.” Her gaze sharpened on her father. “But she has a point: he is a child, and that’s barely an appetizer as far as tenyé goes. Are you really so petty that you’d make a tsali out of Tave’s souls for no other reason than because he’s my child?”

“Tave?” Gadrith asked.

Tyentso sighed. “It’s his nickname.”

“Charming,” Gadrith said. “But no, I won’t kill him. I could use a new apprentice to replace the one I lost.”

Tyentso didn’t hide the shiver that washed over her that time. That had always been an option too—that Gadrith would decide to gaesh the child and take him away to experience whatever horrors the monster had perpetrated on Thurvishar. Since her plans had hinged on Gadrith trying to kill the boy, this complicated matters.

But not irreparably so.

She’d just have to fall back to plan B.

“So, what happens next?” She squinted at her father. “Fight me for the Crown and Scepter? Try to put a third ‘hey, I killed an emperor’ notch on your belt? Because I’m not Gendal, and you don’t have the Stone of Shackles this time.”

“You forget I too wore those artifacts,” Gadrith said. “And I’ve sent them someplace where you cannot use their powers. I don’t think you’ve grown so proficient in just a few months that you can beat me.” He pursed his lips. “Especially not when you’re blinded by rage and grief.”

Tyentso rolled her eyes. “Oh sure. Because that’s going to work. You should have left with Relos Var, Gadrith. You could have walked out of this alive.” Her gaze flickered over him. “Alive by certain definitions, anyway.”

Gadrith looked decidedly unimpressed. “You doubt my will?”

Tyentso laughed her very best evil witch laugh—the one she’d spent some damn energy on back in the day because it had always amused her to no end to give the sailors nightmares. “Oh no. I know you’ll do it. I don’t doubt your determination, just your intelligence. I can’t believe you thought you could extort me into doing what you wanted by threatening other people. I’m not Kihrin, Gadrith. Whose fucking daughter do you think I am?”

The faintest whisper of confusion showed on his face, as he tried to decide if she was lying. He gestured over his shoulder at the boy. “But he’s your—”

“He’s not my son,” Tyentso said with a scoff. “He’s some stray I picked up and had Caless patch up to look like a D’Lorus. Go check if you don’t believe me. You think a kid that adorable could possibly come from our bloodline? Please. In fact, the first time I ever saw this moppet in my life was yesterday evening. But you know how it is. I wasn’t sure that you’d really believe I’d cave if you were only threatening the Milligreests. It all depended on how much attention you’d been paying, and I couldn’t be certain.”

Tyentso pointed to each in turn. “I mean, Qoran dumped me knowing full well that the witch-hunters were on their way. Jira’s the bitch he wouldn’t leave for me. And as for the others—” She shrugged and ignored the increasingly dark look on Qoran’s face. Sure, they’d been getting along since she took the throne, but he knew what he’d done.

Jira, on the other hand, was giving her an inscrutable look that Tyentso couldn’t quite interpret. It was either a grudging respect or she was contemplating exactly how many times she could stab Tyentso’s liver in the next five seconds. She’d almost freed one of her hands too, although it looked like she’d dislocated a thumb in the process.

“Why would I care about the others? But it had to seem authentic, or you’d never have fallen for it. So I thought, what if you found out I was hiding a ‘love child’ with the Milligreests? And that worked like a peach. You didn’t even question why I handed over Godslayer without so much as a single lightning bolt tossed at your ass.”

“Wait,” Gadrith said. “What do you mean?” He tilted his head. “That wasn’t Urthaenriel?” He started to look genuinely horrified.

He was no doubt starting to consider the possibility that he might have unintentionally lied to Relos Var. It was tempting to confirm it, just to see if it triggered the gaesh loop. But no, finding out it wasn’t the real Godslayer (although it had been) would have just compelled him to keep looking until he located the real one.

Behind him, one of the children let out a tiny, soft gasp. Tyentso made a point not to respond or look back, but she was reasonably sure that she’d seen a wisp of shadow curling like fine mist near the couch.

Perfect.

“Not your problem,” Tyentso told her father with her most annoying smirk plastered on her face. “That’s going to be Relos Var’s problem. I mean, come on. You can’t tell me that you’d be unhappy to see someone fucking with him, would you?”

Gadrith looked supremely torn.

But finally, he shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to distract me anymore.”

“I wasn’t trying to distract you.” Tyentso scoffed. “I fucking well succeeded.”

She magically grabbed the enchanted portal she’d kept open through the entire talk with Relos Var and the second conversation with her father after. An instant later, she’d flipped it, pushed it to the floor, and enlarged the circumference. Oh, and stripped the invisibility spell, because she wanted that bastard to understand what she’d done.

Even if Gadrith had known how to block portals (she assumed he did), he couldn’t do it with the number of portals he’d needed various people, himself included, to open to make this whole transfer happen. To prevent that from being a problem, he’d spread out the hostages, so none of them were close enough to each other (save the toddlers) to grab with a single well-placed portal spell.

Or that was the theory, anyway. Tyentso assumed no one had bothered to tell Gadrith about the time Relos Var had opened a single portal that covered the entire damn bridge spanning Demon Falls to Atrine. Or that the secret to opening a larger-than-normal portal was just to dump more tenyé into it.

So she made the portal the size of the room. Fuck Gadrith. Some of those books were hers, anyway.

The portal didn’t catch her father. She hadn’t wanted it to; that had been the whole point of giving him enough warning to protect himself. Which he had. As soon as she opened it, he’d warped part of the wall to create a platform for himself, ensuring that he didn’t fall through. She’d done something similar, although less wall and more magical barrier. But that wasn’t important.

What was important was that none of the Milligreests were in danger anymore. She’d taken precautions. The room she’d cleared out for them back at the palace was lined with a solid two feet of cotton-stuffed pillows, just to make sure the babies didn’t hurt themselves when they fell. Hopefully, no bookcases fell on anyone, but that’s why Jarith was tagging along.

Tyentso may have been a monster, but even she had limits.

Their absence left her alone in a very large, very empty room with her father.

Tyentso grinned as lightning played over her hand. “Now that we’ve put the kids to bed, where did we leave off?”