Page 43 of Daughter of the Drowned Empire
“Wha—” I coughed, my throat still too dry to speak. I was ready to throw up a second time, but I had to know. “What did they find?”
The examiner was no longer paying attention to me. His job was done, and he turned to Brenna. “Turion, I’ll need you to release me. Help her grace dress and offer moonleaves. The burning and the dryness will cool by evening.” He bowed. “Your grace.” The hungry look in his eyes returned as he carefully locked the box. “This was fascinating. I must speak to your Arkasva and the Imperator.”
“Wait!” I reached an arm helplessly, as if I could stop him, force him to tell me what they’d seen and what it meant. What was wrong with me? Was I safe? Had this implicated my sisters in any way?
My heart pounded as the men exited the Stronghold, leaving me alone and in the dark once more. I rolled onto my side, my stomach roiling as I heaved and vomited.
Brenna helped me dress, and I sipped slowly on water, followed by tea treated with cured moonleaves. Everything ached. Every breath and every movement shot pain through my limbs. I waited, slumped over, Brenna standing guard outside. An hour passed, then another. The timekeeper rang the bells calling midday, and as the final ring faded, Aemon returned.
“Lady Lyriana,” he said, “come with me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To hear the Imperator’s verdict.”
“You can’t say more than that?”
Aemon shook his head slowly. “Come, your grace.”
I stepped into my sandals, though I couldn’t bend over to lace them and needed Brenna’s assistance again. I took Ramia’s necklace, which had been sitting on the night table since my arrest, and clasped it around my neck. My chest ached when the metal made contact, but the coolness of the piece soothed my burning skin. My diadem had been with me since my imprisonment, and Brenna helped arrange it over my forehead.
For the first time in a week, I stepped outside just as the sun emerged from the storm, fiercely retaking its reign in the sky.
“There’s the red again,” Brenna said. “Batavia red.” She tugged at my braid, bathed now in sunlight. “I think of your mother,Ha Ka Mokan, every time you’re in the sun.”
“Her soul freed,” I said, throat still dry. I tried to smile, knowing she meant to be kind, but my stomach sank. I’d always thought the red meant something special, that the color gave me some deeper connection to my mother, to my bloodline. I thought it meant I was destined to be powerful like her and my ancestors. It meant nothing.
Brenna, Aemon, and I arrived at a seraphim port. The giant bird lay on its belly, its bright blue carriage doors open. Brenna helped me inside, and then we were launching into the sky and soaring over Bamaria across the city of Urtavia to the Temple of Dawn. We approached the nearest entrance through the red ray, and the Red Watcher of the Light stood waiting to bring us to Auriel’s Chamber in the Temple’s center.
Aemon stepped onto the stage, his expression darkening, and all at once, he was the Ready, the deadliest warlord in Lumeria. My father sat on his Seat of power, his golden wreath around his head, his black Arkasva robes elegantly falling to his sandals. Arkmage Kolaya and Aunt Arianna stood on either side of him. Arianna’s eyes lit up when she saw me, her arms lifting as if she meant to wrap me up in them. But she neatly folded her hands before her waist.
Walking up onto the dais from behind was the Bastardmaker and then the Imperator.
“At last,” he drawled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ISANKTOtheground, meaning to curtsy, but I didn’t have the strength to hold myself up. Instead, my knees hit the floor in a blindingly painful smack.
Turion Brenna bowed low beside me. The sun danced patterns of color and light on the floor as she reached for my arm and helped me to stand. My legs shook with the effort, my feet wobbling forward.
The eternal flame crackled, appearing white over Imperator Kormac’s blonde hair. He leaned forward, his chair creaking beneath him. “Already falling to your knees?” he asked with a smirk. “Before I pass judgment?”
“Your highness,” I said, through gritted teeth. I could feel his aura clawing at the walls, lupine, feral, ready to strike.
“Arkmage Kolaya confirms the Birth Bind has been removed,” he said. “Which means your power is unbound, and yet you failed to produce any signs. Considering the taint in your bloodline of vorakh, we had reasonable suspicion to believe you were concealing your magic.” His eyes flicked toward my father, accusation in his expression. “Or you had someone concealing your vorakh for you. But we now have the results from Ka Maras. I witnessed the findings of the nahashim’s search myself. And it has been concluded that you have no power.”
I bit my lower lip. The urge to cry was overwhelming. I’d known this for a week and had been unable to think of anything else, but hearing it now from the Imperator’s mouth made it somehow more real. I realized what I was about to lose. My body numbed. The truth seemed to come like the rising tides, flowing again and again.
“Don’t look so sad, Lady Lyriana,” he crooned. “All the charges against you have been dropped.”
“Is there…any explanation?” I asked. “Could anything have affected me to cause this?”
“Nothing more than an anomaly,” said the Imperator.
Something broke inside of me. I was an anomaly. Powerless. Weak. A failure.
“And this ends the investigation?” I asked, my heart breaking. I wanted him to say no, say they’d find the reason, fix this. And, I needed him to say yes. To know his eyes were no longer on my family. On my sisters.
