Page 65 of The Crown's Fate
“Say yes.”
She was horrible. She’d killed villagers on the steppe, soldiers, his father... . But she’d done it out of love. Misguided love. But love. How could Nikolai deny her one last act of love and mercy as her dying wish? Especially when this harmed no one. Not anymore.
Nikolai dropped to his knees before her. “All right, Mother.”
Her tears flowed now, a slow and painstaking trickle like tar. Aizhana circled her bony fingers around Nikolai’s shadow wrists, where they were exposed between shirtsleeve and glove.
“I love you, Nikolai,” she said, her throat dry, her voice strained. “Know that everything I have ever done has been for you, and that I am proud of you. Not because you are an enchanter, but because you are intelligent and passionate and strong. And because ... because even though you may never truly love me, you showed me tenderness. You let me into your life.”
Aizhana closed her eyes. She nestled her head against Nikolai, and then she began to send her energy into him. It started as a thin stream, cold and sharp, and Nikolai gasped as he received the energy she’d gleaned from parasites that fed on rot and death, and from the bodies of all the people she’d killed.
Deuces ... It was thick and sticky black. Like her tears.
Like the shadowed feeling that had been roiling inside him ever since he broke free of the steppe dream.
“It was you,” he said as Aizhana’s grip on his wrist grew tighter. “You transferred energy to me when I was unaware.That’s how I had enough power to escape the Dream Bench, and to enchant the Neva fete, and to free myself from the painted egg.”
“For the first and second, yes, I gave you my energy while you were asleep. For the egg? I don’t know about an egg. That was your friend Renata.”
“Renata? But how could she make me so strong?”
“I passed Galina’s energy on to her.”
“What?” He ripped his hands away from Aizhana. She cried out as if the loss of the connection caused her physical pain.
Nikolai staggered away, shaking his head. “You forced Renata into your service! And Galina isn’t abroad, is she? Oh, devil take me, you killed her, too.”
Aizhana swayed and buckled to the splintered platform. Her skin was so dry now from gifting him her energy, it crumbled in flakes off her face. The sinews in her neck strained, and the golden light in her eyes was like a candle flame about to expire. “You expected less from me?” she rasped, every word now taking enormous effort. “It had to be done. She deserved it.”
“No, she didn’t.” A complicated cocktail swirled through Nikolai, a mix of gentlemanly horror with the desire to heap misery and trauma upon Aizhana. Galina had not been particularly kind to Nikolai, but shehadtaken him into her own home and spent years training him. She deserved a better end than what she had been given.
Aizhana stretched her hand out to him. Her arm trembled from the effort. “My son. Please. Let me give you what remains.”
He looked down on her. She recoiled. His disgust musthave been palpable, even on his shadow face.
Nikolai turned and started toward the door.
“Wait! Have mercy.” Aizhana’s chains rattled against the platform. “Don’t leave me!”
Nikolai stopped in front of one of the alligators. “I left you a long time ago,” he said without turning. “But because I’m a gentleman, I’ll grant you a measure of mercy and not force you to face your death publicly on the gallows.” He stepped over the beasts to the door.
He uncast the charm on the ropes, and the alligators’ mouths snapped at their freedom. He clapped his hands, and the platform on which Aizhana lay disappeared, hurling her onto the stone floor. He exited the cell and shut the door, reengaging all the locks behind him.
It was gentlemanly mercy to spare her from the gallows, but the darkness from her energy, now raging inside Nikolai, qualified how that mercy was delivered. Ameasureof mercy, he’d said.
Aizhana’s shrieks echoed out of the room above the snapping of alligators’ jaws. Or perhaps it was the snapping of her brittle bones.
Vika whirled from the sconce, eyes wide.
He averted his gaze. “I’m finished. I’ve said my final good-bye.”
“Nikolai ...”
He shook his head. He stalked away.
Vika just gaped and let him.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
