Page 74 of Crown of Betrayal and Blood

Another guard runs into the room, holding a metal tube in one hand. “Open her mouth!”

I have no idea what he plans on doing with that, but the other guards seem to recognize it. They fight harder to keep Leesa in place, twisting her arms behind her.

One grabs her jaw. He squeezes until she can no longer keep her mouth closed.

I’m numb as they force the tube between her teeth. The guard pulls a tablet from his glove and drops it down the tube. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the same medicine I was given as a child to dampen my magic.

Leesa kicks and thrashes, but her fighting proves useless. They hold her nose and clamp her jaw shut so she has no choice but to swallow or suffocate.

“Good.” Bastian’s numbed gaze fixes on Leesa. Is he seeing her as I do? Not as the monster she’s become, but as the woman who once laughed with and loved him?

I can sense the drugs taking hold. Confusion clouds Leesa’s blackened eyes as she tries to use her magic and nothing happens. Maybe it’ll bring her back to me.

But it won’t change what’s happened. Too godsdamned late for that.

There’s blood everywhere. On the tablecloth. Spattered across the once-immaculate walls of the dining room. And I can’t tear my eyes from Blair’s unmoving form.

Sterling strides over to Leesa, his eyes never straying from her.

Four guards follow, hands on their swords.

One of them speaks up, a tinge of disbelief in his tone. “Your Highness, she?—”

“I know what she did.” Sterling’s gaze hardens as he glances at Blair’s body, his jaw clenching. “We couldn’t have done anything to stop her.”

A commotion rattles the doorway, and another guard bursts in, half dragging Healer Luci by the arm. Her belt pouches jiggle and her dark blue robe is hiked up to her knees as she struggles to keep up with him.

She shakes the guard off like an irksome fly as her eyes land on the fallen figure before us. She rushes to Blair’s side, her yellow and purple stained hands searching for life. Her head bows, showing glimpses of pale blond hair under her head wrap.

She closes his eyes with a gentleness that belies the violence of his end. Then she murmurs something, most likely a prayer much like Agnar’s.

As she rises, Luci’s gaze locks onto Leesa. She freezes, her blue eyes brimming with fear. The healer’s fingers sketch a sign in the air.

The same ward against evil she made when we spoke of my sister’s…problems.

A dark, hollow cackle escapes Leesa, one I’ve never heard from her before. It stirs a primal fear in me, lifting the hair on the back of my neck and sending goose bumps rushing up my arms.

“Why did you kill him?” Agnar’s muscles coil as he steps toward her.

Sterling halts his friend’s advance by placing a hand on Agnar’s shoulder. “Enough.”

“Leesa?” I approach, voice trembling less from fear and more from the heartbreaking realization crashing over me. Those black eyes—so unlike hers—meet mine, and I’m staring into an abyss. “Why?”

Her lips twist into a smile that chills me to the core. “I do as I’m bidden.”

My blood freezes, and I have a foreboding sense of dread that her unnerving declaration is the death knell of the sister I knew.

In that moment, I understand what Queen Aero meant about the corruption she was fighting. Corruption didn’t refer to the drachen themselves, but to the blighted souls trapped inside drachen-infected bodies.

Leesa’s eyes, inky pools devoid of my sister’s warmth, latch on to Luci with malicious delight.

“You’re just too slow, stupid little healer,” she taunts, a serpent’s hiss underlining each word. “Lynnea called for you, begged for your help. Had you hurried, maybe you could’ve saved her from me too.”

My heart skips, stumbles, then hammers with dread as the implications of Leesa’s words sink like stones in my stomach. The realization is a physical blow, doubling me over with its ferocity.

She killed our mother.

Leesa murdered our mother after we returned from the Lost City.

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