Page 70 of Vicious Is My Throne

I didn’t think I’d heard him right. “You mean she was a member of the king’s court with Solok,” I said slowly.

“Carex Centaria, may he rot in the deepest part of the Great Beyond, gave Torin to Solok as a gift, to keep the Axe happy and content.” Cosimos reached for something on the table, but his hands shook so badly he dropped the small, golden ball.

It rolled across the table, stopped only when Cosimo caught the chain between his fingers.

“She survived two hundred years of agony before she was able to extricate herself from that…nightmare.”

He braced his hands on the edge of the table, head lowered so I couldn’t see his face.

“I knew what was happening, of course. Even locked away in the amulet, I knew.”

“But you couldn’t do anything about it,” I finished for him.

Gods, if that had been Anaria. Unbidden, a memory came back, Solok gripping Anaria by the throat in that woodland clearing, taunting us about how he was going to take her to the king.

And he’d held her in the Citadelle dungeon. For four fucking days. A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

Had he touched Anaria? The possibility was…Fuck, he could have.

She’d never talked about those days before she’d escaped. And I’d never asked. Never asked her one godsdamned thing about what she’d gone through.

Cosimo lifted his head, but the shadows in his eyes were darker than the blight at the foot of this mountain. “I’ve got what we came for. Now let’s go find that pendant and save the fucking world.”

29

ZORANDER

Ivomited in a side alley, heaving what was in my stomach until there was nothing left.

“I am never time traveling again.”

“I’d say you get used to it, but you don’t,” Coz muttered, his tan throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. “Now stick to the plan and we’ll leave here with the pendant and our lives.”

We watched my soldiers approach Trubahn’s barricade, my shout of warning dying in my throat as they were blown backward through the air, the sight even worse the second time around.

“Keep your head down, Commander,” Cosimo ordered. “Stick to the shadows. Whatever you do, don’t let our past selves see our future selves. And don’t interfere.”

“So you’ve said. Multiple times,” I complained. “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

“Must I explain everything ad nauseum? Fine. Anything we change now affects the future. Even the smallest thing could be devastating. Like end of the world devastating.”

I rolled my eyes. “We could save a lot of lives tonight. Prevent Southwell from burning.”

“We could also doom this entire realm,” Cosimo countered. “Now, do exactly as I say and with some luck this will work.”

I had to admit, this experience was…odd. There was the past-Cosimo, halfway down the street sending tendrils of blue power over the barrier, revealing the trap we’d missed before.

Trubahn’s reanimated body advanced jerkily into sight as our past selves froze in horror.

My now-self wasn’t doing much better, watching the reanimated mage with his clawed-out eyes, dragged unwillingly down the street by some unseen force.

I tried to block out the sound of my own voice, the shock that I felt watching the mage stumble over the cobblestones, choking out pleas for help, hands outstretched like claws.

And the smells…the choking stench of rot, the burn of ozone, the cutting reek of dragonfire. Worse than before somehow.

Everything mixed together into a noxious fume until I could barely breathe.

“This is…I thought tonight would be better the second time. Because we already lived through this. Somehow, this is worse.”

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