In the end, Kiva found us.
We practically sprang apart when her raucous laugh filled the courtyard. Whereas my cheeks flushed red as fire, Ericen glowered at Kiva with a dark menace that would have once made me nervous. Now I knew when he was all bark and no bite.
Kiva dragged Ericen away to start training the lieutenants, and I returned to the mausoleum to activate the Sella road. Estrel joined me, and we chatted to pass the time. It took almost an hour for all the soldiers to pass through, as the road was narrow and only allowed for one through at a time. Estrel organized them with their captains and sent them toward Elaris.
A tall Jin soldier passed through, followed by a familiar face.
“Elko!”
She grinned, slapping me on the back hard enough to make me stumble. “Crow girl! Which way to Elaris?”
I blinked at her. “You’re going to fight? Does Auma know that?”
“My sister is not my keeper. Besides, I’m healed.” Elko pounded her first on her chest, then blanched. “Or at least I will be soon.”
Estrel leaned toward me. “I’ve got this.” She slung an arm around Elko’s shoulders, leading her a short distance away and speaking quietly to her. Elko cracked her knuckles, a grin curling her lips, before she clasped hands with Estrel and struck out toward the castle.
I raised an eyebrow when Estrel returned.
She shrugged. “I told her someone needed to stay behind and protect Caliza.”
With the last of the soldiers through for the day, we returned to the castle together, everything inside me light as a feather. It slowly faded as we rounded the castle and the graveyard appeared. The pale blue light of dusk filtered through the stone mausoleums and intricately carved headstones, glinting off the black metal gate.
I slowed, thinking of the headstone deep inside, presided over by the carving of a single crow, beneath which my mother slept. Estrel paused, looking back at me.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked.
Her face made it clear she knew I meant the Sellas. “It was your mother’s decision.” And loyal friend that she was, Estrel had kept her secret. I understood that.
“Why though?”
“She didn’t want to burden you with it,” she replied. “Your mother, she never wanted the responsibility of being queen. She was wild as a youth. Even you’d be impressed at the amount of trouble she caused.”
I raised a doubtful brow. The woman I’d known had been hard and unyielding as stone.
Estrel grinned. “I’m serious. Did you know Larisa once caught her sneaking out through the balcony of a visiting noble’s room, the same day your father had come with his family to discuss their engagement?”
I gaped. “No.”
“Oh yes. Larisa was furious. I don’t think your father ever knew. Larisa covered up the whole thing.” She smiled wistfully. “She was always cleaning up after your mother and me.”
I grinned, imagining my mother scaling the castle walls, dressed in nothing but her nightgown, and Kiva’s mother shouting at her to get down.
Estrel’s own smile faded. “She was crowned young, like Caliza. The responsibility, the demand—it weighed on her, wore her down. Though your parents loved each other, your father was more concerned with war than running a kingdom. Then he was killed in that battle with Illucia, and suddenly your mother was alone with two children, a kingdom, and a war.”
Once, Ericen had told me a similar story about Razel. She’d wanted to breed horses. But when Lord Turren and a group of his soldiers attacked Illucia, they murdered Razel’s husband along with her older sister and mother. Her father died shortly after, and she was made queen younger than even my mother.
The story the Rhodairen people knew was that Lord Turren had retaliated for my father’s death of his own volition. After, he was banished, his complicit soldiers were stripped of their crows. Then Razel had used the anger and humiliation that had festered in their hearts to turn them against Rhodaire. They’d betrayed us, helping her accomplish Ronoch.
Then she’d executed them.
“Did she order the attack on Razel’s family?” I asked, my chest tightening at the memory of the night in the throne room, when Razel had stood with a blade pressed to Kiva’s throat and told me that my mother was not as innocent as I believed.
Estrel let out a quiet breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “She was so broken, so angry after your father’s death. She—” Estrel hesitated, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
I nodded. Maybe I would never know.
Who would Razel have been if she hadn’t had her family ripped away from her? Who would my mother have been without an army of responsibilities slowly draining her dry?
Perhaps the two of them hadn’t been so different, as Ericen and I weren’t so different.
I’d told Kiva once that the cycle of revenge between our kingdoms needed to end, but I wasn’t sure I could be the one to break it.
I wasn’t sure I could forgive the woman who’d taken everything from me.