Page 74 of Only Cold Depths
Beatrice shrugged a shoulder in agreement. “For a while, everything was fine. Nerezza seemed content to keep quiet and keep climbing the Regal ladder. But then . . .”
“What?” I asked.
My grandmother looked at me, sorrow sparking in her eyes. “Then Liesl told me there had been an accident at your academy—and that you had been killed.”
Shock sliced through me. Even though Nerezza had claimed she thought I was dead, I had never considered Beatrice might have believed it too.
“And you just believed Liesl? Without any proof?”
“Of course not,” Beatrice snapped. “I sent my own investigators to the academy, but they confirmed Liesl’s story. There had been an accident in one of the student labs, and a young girl—you—had been killed.”
Once again, sincerity rang through her voice. She really had believed I was dead.
Confusion swirled through me. “An explosion in the chemistry lab killed a girl I knew. But why would Liesl lie and sayIwas the one who’d died?”
Beatrice held her hands out to her sides. “My best guess is Liesl was trying to protect you from some plot Nerezza was considering. As soon as I realized you were still alive, I had my investigators go back over everything, but they haven’t come up with any answers about why Liesl did what she did.”
I thought back to that time. Liesl had been visiting me more than usual, but one day, soon after the lab accident, without any warning, she made me pack my things, leave my friends, and go to a new academy on a different planet. I’d been so upset I’d called Liesl all sorts of awful names, and she hadn’t visited me for several months afterward. I had always thought Liesl had stayed away because she was angry, but what if she had been trying to protect me from Nerezza?
Beatrice cleared her throat. “I noticed Liesl’s name on the passenger manifest for theVelorum. I’m sorry for your loss, Vesper. Truly.”
As soon as I’d realized Liesl had been on theVelorum, I’d started wondering what she had been doing on the doomed spaceship. Later on, in the Techwave facility, Nerezza had revealed that Liesl had been trying to blackmail her for more money. Nerezza had responded to her cousin’s threat by using a Techwave cannon to shoot theVelorumout of the sky, killing Liesl and everyone else on board.
“It doesn’t really matter why Liesl claimed I died. She’s gone, so we’ll probably never know the answer.” A bitter laugh erupted from my mouth. “I bet you were happy when Liesl told you I was dead. That solved a lot of problems for you.”
“No,” Beatrice said in a low voice. “I might not have known you, but I still grieved for you, Vesper.”
She stared at me, her gaze level with mine, and needles of sorrow shot off her and scraped along my skin. A little more of that brittle shell around my body cracked away, and I bit down on my tongue to steady my emotions.
Beatrice twisted a blue opal ring around her finger. “I saw your reaction to Nerezza during one of the Regal balls. How you tried to hide from her. That’s when I first started to suspect who you really were. Then, when Adria and Dargan Byrne brought you back to Corios for the midnight ball—”
“With Zane’s help,” Kyrion cut in.
Beatrice cleared her throat again. “When you confronted Nerezza at the ball, I finally realized Liesl had lied to me and that you weren’t dead.”
“Howdidyou figure out that Wendell was Vesper’s father before the ball?” Zane asked, looking at Kyrion. “I found Daichi’s back door into the Regal archives, but he didn’t match my DNA with Vesper’s untilafterthe ball. So how did you know Vesper was my sister?”
Kyrion jerked his chin at Zane’s sword. “There’s a tinyZcarved into the pommel of Vesper’s stormsword. It looks exactly like theZs on the hilt of your sword.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed, and his index finger rubbed over one of theZs. “In other words, you just guessed.”
Kyrion rolled his eyes, and Zane’s hand flexed like he wanted to draw the sword and gut the other Arrow with the blade.
“What do you want?” I demanded. “Why are you all here?”
“Because you’re my daughter, and I want to get to know you,” Wendell said in a soft voice.
“We all do,” Beatrice added.
“Speak for yourselves,” Zane drawled. “I already know my little sister quite well. Thanks to her relationship with Kyrion, Vesper and I have had several run-ins over the last few months. Vesper and I also had a little chat in my tower library a few weeks ago, via her astral projection.”
I studied the three of them in turn. Beatrice cool and aloof, Wendell open and eager, Zane mocking and sardonic. This was my family. The thing I had always wanted most.
After so many years of wondering, they were right here in front of me. It would be so blastedeasyto just give in, accept them at face value, and trust they were here for the right reasons. But Nerezza had shattered my trust, and thirty years later, I was still trying to put the jagged pieces back together.
I looked at Beatrice again. “Tell me something. If I hadn’t confronted Nerezza at the ball, if Wendell and Zane hadn’t learned the truth, would the three of you be sitting here? Or would I just be a footnote to you? A mistake that conveniently got lost in the ether of the galaxy?”
Her faint wince was all the confirmation I needed. The Zimmers weren’t here by choice, and that made all the difference. That cold, hard truth snuffed out the tiny, fragile spark of hope in my chest, then seeped deep into my bones, but for once, I was grateful for the numbing chill.
