Page 127 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
I’d made that blasted oath, the only one I would have ever accepted, before I’d known Evie was still alive. The plan had been simple back then. It would have solved so many problems, saved so many lives.
It could accomplish all of that, but the price was higher now.
Much higher.
“I had something you lack.” Adara began sharpening again. “Broken oaths demand your blood, whatever way they can obtain it.”
“You’re still alive.”
Silence.
“I am.”
The blade hissed underneath the stone.
“How?” I asked.
“Because my twin sister is not.” Stroke. Hiss. “I spilled her blood and broke my oath. As I said, you cannot do it.”
I sucked in a breath. Nobody had even known Adara had a sister, let alone a dead one that she had killed. The Grand General had always guarded her secrets well.
“Who was she?” I asked softly.
“Somebody nobody will miss.” From the way her neck muscles tensed, that was a lie, but I didn’t press on. “And whose murderous soul will be tortured beyond the grave by the lives she took.”
My mouth tightened. There was nothing I could say to that. To Adara. She regarded pleasantries as worse than cussing out her ancestors. Sentimentality has no business on the battlefield, she’d taught me that and enforced it with the Blood Brotherhood troops, with her knives if she had to.
I sighed. Whatever glimmer of hope–or madness–had possessed me quickly vanished. “You’re right. If that’s what it takes, the oath has to stand.”
“You took the oath with someone,” Adara said. “Any glimmer of conscience on that side?”
“You know there is.” Just from the tears Kaya had spilled these past two weeks, the oath was eating her up as much as it did me. Her kindness was too innocent sometimes.
“I’m asking because I had a sister. Both of you have parents. I doubt it would work, but there’s no reason not to try and that would solve everyone’s problems,” Adara said. “Have Kaya kill Banu and Valuta.”
“That is not possible,” I managed to say, even as a warning spasm rattled down my spine. I was getting dangerously close to revealing too much and the ancient magic of the oath sensed it.
“Ah, I see. The oath somehow protects those snakes,” she said.
Not for long. But I couldn’t say that. Even thinking it was clouding my brain.
“I should have murdered them when I had the chance,” Adara rumbled. “You can’t kill Zavoya and Eldryan, either.”
My hands fisted against the door. “I didn’t go after Evie and save us all from the wrath of the Council just to slaughter my parents on a hunch.”
“Then sacrifice your happiness, Dragon. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not about my happiness.” I doubted the gods had blessed me with it in this existence.
“It never was for you, was it?” Adara finally turned to me. There was something very close to compassion in her dark eyes. “All about duty. All about the lives you can save. I’ve trained you too well.”
“You did what my parents should have.”
Adara turned back to the fire. “You criticize them without knowing what’s in their hearts.”
“Too much, that’s what.” Too much love for each other. Ignorant, destructive love. “Now I have to deal with Banu and Valuta because of it.”
To appease the Northern Clans they’d offended with their marriage and to stop the carnage, my parents had agreed to have Banu and Valuta on their Senate of Sages, to prevent any future attack or slight. My parents should have sensed their foulness from the speed at which the advisors had forsaken their own Clans to swear loyalty to ours. But the snakes had gained my parents’ trust after they’d saved me from getting my heart carved out as a child. After that, they’d risen in the ranks. Now they controlled all the guards in Phoenix Peak and had their slimy hands in almost every business in the Capital. Killing them outright would turn them into martyrs and cause another blood bath.
