Page 62 of Enchanted Shadows
To Krew she said, “My mother knew. As did your father. Yourfather wouldn’t claim me, so naturally my mother had to name me aKname to match the two of yours, to toss it in Theon’s face any way she possibly could.”
You could hear a pin drop in the room. This wasn’t some joke. Little things about Zara were now making more sense. Her hesitations to lead. How she was always hiding. How she had watched Krew closely the time he had been near the team.
“I healed you,” Keir stated again.
She nodded and took a deep breath. “That was when everything began to unravel actually, but I think I need to start at the beginning.”
“Wait.” My eyes were on Princess Kessara and Princess Kessara only. “Then you are Enchanted.”
“Both of my parents were strongly Enchanted,” she stated without emotion. “I am dually Enchanted just like Prince Keiran.”
So she had not one Enchantment, but two?“What?”Of all the things to get to me about all of this, I was more than a little pissed she’d lied to the team. Lied tome.
She turned her blue eyes on me. Eyes that I couldn’t stop watching because I couldn’t believe that they were brilliant blue now and not the brown I had grown used to. Yet it was the same face, the same mannerisms. “You have every right to be pissed at me. Can I start at the beginning?”
I took a breath and let it out. “Yeah.”
“Theon Valanova and my mother, Queen Alexandria Zavatari, were bonded. Not soul bound, but heart bound, in the middle of their affair.” She swallowed. “My mother suspects it was an affair done out of ulterior motives. Theon wanted to be able to wield shadows.”
“But he didn’t get that in the bonding,” Keir argued. The man was doing well for being told his mother was cheated on and he had a half-sister; then again, they already knew the dead king hadkilled Katarina in stealing her Enchantment away from her. So cheating, I supposed, was merely the cherry on top of his behavior to their mother.
I noted Princess Kessara’s hands were shaking as she said, “No. He did. Theon was dual Enchanted just as I am. My mother is not. He apparently didn’t will enough of his power to her. If he did any at all.”
Keir, Krew, Jorah, and I looked to one another in shock. He’d had Katarina siphon her magic into the sword. There was no way he had shadow magic as well, right?
I suddenly wanted to bring that asshat back to life if only to kill him all over again. He’d taken shadow magic from Kessara’s mother and killed Keir and Krew’s mother in an effort to take all of her power too. I was sensing a theme.
Theon Valanova had been nothing more than a power-hungry idiot.
Princess Kessara continued, “He likely didn’t understand how to use his second Enchantment correctly, but from what my mother understood before their relationship turned volatile, he was working on using his weaker Enchantment to move his stronger one faster. Thinly veiling it in shadow. As I understand it, the color of his palm magic was black anyway, so it might have been hard to notice and differentiate between the two.”
I was going to fall the hell over. I wanted to logically deny all of this as fake or some sort of ruse. It was too outlandish. But every bit of it made sense with what we had seen in this room that day four years ago. The dead king’s Enchantment was always fast. So damn fast. I stilled when I considered that Rafe had pushed the king into the sunlight from the windows when he’d attacked. We hadn’t known. But Rafe had. He’d not only distracted Theon and snapped his focus on his stronger Enchantment, but somehow that wolf had known about the other power lying in Theon’s blood.
“Rafe,” I said out loud. “He knew.”
“Was just thinking the same,” Krew agreed. “He knew what we didn’t.”
As if we didn’t owe the wolf enough. Damn, I loved those wolves. I vaguely remembered Rafe sniffing Zara’s hand in those first days. He’d known she was Enchanted then, but he’d somehow known she wasn’t a threat. Interesting.
Kessara stopped for our interruption, but Jorah kindly urged her, “Sorry, Princess. We only mean your theory tracks with the day we killed Theon in this very room. Please continue.”
“So, my birth parents had a falling out shortly after the bonding. My mother wanted to unite their kingdoms. Theon wouldn’t have that. From the little my mother has told me, they got into a huge fight when she told him she was pregnant with his child, just three years after the two of you were born. Said he wouldn’t disgrace his legacy with a half-blood. After that, my mother was unwelcome here. She was never allowed to return. I was never allowed to come either. Though the disease ended all travel between countries, travel between Agria and Wylan was done long before that. I don’t think Theon ever even knew I took on both of their Enchantments. We were banished to Agria. The affair treated as if it never happened at all.”
I did quick math to note that at three years younger than the rest of us, that put her at roughly 28 years old.
It was Keir’s cold voice who offered, “All those times he threatened Krew and I that he could make other heirs. He said it damn well knowing he already had one.”
“He never acknowledged me at all,” the princess said back. “I never even met him. So that is a bit of a surprise.”
I scoffed. “Trust me, honey, you didn’t miss out on much.”
“Was your stepfather a kind man?” Jorah asked. “Please tell me you at least have one decent father?”
Princess Kessara took a moment to answer that. I wondered if anyone had ever asked her that before. “He was not unkind? I’m not sure what you know of Agrian culture. My mother as queen gets to choose from her children who will rule next. I am the oldest. Because I have two Enchantments, I am considered powerful. But when she wed my stepfather, they agreed I would never rule Agria. In case anyone ever found out the truth of my lineage. Lest it cause an uprising.”
I let that sink in. Funny that in Agria, Theon’s offspring were deemed unfit to rule, when Keir and Krew were nothing like their father and each kings in their own right.
The princess hastily added, “I want it clear that I’m not upset about that part in all of this. I don’t want to rule. Not there. Not here. That part I’m fine with. I promise you, Amos can attest to this, that I am not here with motivations to wear a crown.” She inhaled deeply. “But the fact that I am oldest and more powerful than my brother Damek was the main reason for his contention toward me. I do not wish to rule, I merely wish to exist in a world where my power is not the reason I am used and manipulated. I wish to be more than a board piece. And I wish to have a say in my life. Something I never had until I joined the team of women here.”
