Page 137 of Crown of Darkness
“Summonher?” Andraste demands.
“Or deliver me to her in chains? Why areyouhere?”
There’s something about her expression that alerts me. “I wouldn’t deliver you to her in chains. I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to… see you. And I’m alone.”
“How did you know I was going to be here?”
“Thornwood sent a raven to the castle, and you’re lucky my people were the ones who intercepted it. Some of his men recognized you in the woods. If Mother knew—”
“So shedidn’tsend you?” Betrayal’s not in my sister’s nature. She’s never once revealed a hint of insubordination. “You’re trying to tell me you’re here of your own volition? That you didn’t tell the queen I was in the country?”
“If she’d sent me, I would be backed by an army. I know who walks at your side. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Talk? You knew Lysander was going to try and kill me and you led him right into that fucking tent,” I snap.
“I tried to warn you! What was I supposed to do? Tell her no? At least if I did it myself, I could... manipulate matters.”
“Yes, but you always did play the game far better than I ever have. You had some purpose in being the one to present Lysander to us, and you have some purpose in being here now.”
“Because she’s goingmad,” Andraste snaps.
I draw back.
“Ever since you married Evernight, she’s been spiraling. I could see it happening, but I thought that if I just kept her distracted, then perhaps I could manage her moods. Perhaps she wouldn’t be as destructive as I feared.”
“You may as well have tried to hold back the tides.”
“What was I supposed to do?” she snaps. “You left me. You married theenemy,and Mother lost her mind. You know what she’s like. How could I rein her in? I’ve never had the power to match her—that was always you, wild and erratic, but burning like a wildfire with promise.”
It takes me aback. “I’ve never—”
“Been able to control it,” she snaps. “You nearly shook the castle down around our ears the night that Mother sent Nanny Redwyne away, and you were eleven.”
And there it is, an elusive memory trickling through me.
—anger, screaming, the walls shaking, and guards grabbing Nanny Redwyne as they haul her away—
I suck in a sharp breath.
Fae children are gifted with magic, but they don’t truly come into their own until they’re well into their teens. To display so much power at the age of eleven is an anomaly.
Or maybe it’s not, because maybe it wasn’t the fae half of my heritage that nearly tore the castle apart.
“Yes, you. The prodigy. Mother’s little pet. The one she favored out of the pair of us until she began to fear you,” she grates out, fists clenched at her side.
That doesn’t sound like my recollection of events at all.
Or wait....
Maybe… it does. Because she loved me once. Mother loved me once.
And then all of a sudden, she didn’t.
Andraste’s face hardens. “I don’t have anyone else to turn to. You know what the court is like. They’ll eat each other alive the second they think there’s a chance to get ahead. If I show one ounce of weakness….”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you struck a deal with Mother.”
Andraste merely shakes her head with a tired sigh. “I had to, Vi. I had to fall in line with her.”
