The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,187
send him. And if I don’t make it back—” He shrugged.
He was enjoying this. It was a game, theater. He wanted to draw it out, squeeze all the game pieces a little tighter in his fist.
I knew Rafe and Kaden were both a heartbeat away from signaling the archers. The sacrifice of one child for the beast himself. A child who could die anyway. A child who would likely die anyway. And our prize was in our grasp. But it was a choice that came with a price, one the Komizar had already calculated. The air was taut with the decision. He stood there, unafraid, knowing, and I hated him more deeply. How much was I like him? Who was I willing to sacrifice to get what I wanted?
“The Komizar’s fate will come later,” I whispered. “Do not lay a hand on the beast yet.”
I rode out to meet him, but when I was still ten yards away, I dismounted and waved Yvet forward. Her wide frightened eyes turned to the Komizar. He nodded, and she walked toward me.
I knelt when she reached me and held her tiny hands. “Yvet, do you see those two horses far behind me with the cloaked soldiers?”
She looked past me at the thousands of troops, her lip trembling, but then spotted the two dark cloaked ones. She nodded.
“Good. They will take care of you. I want you to go to them now. I want you to run and not look back. No matter what you see or hear, you will keep going. Do you understand?”
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Go,” I said. “Now!”
She ran, stumbling through the grass. The distance seemed like miles, and when she reached them, Kaden scooped her up and handed her off to another soldier. My stomach jumped to my throat. I swallowed, forcing the bile down. She made it, I told myself. I wrenched my breaths to a slow rhythm and turned back to face the Komizar.
“See?” he said. “I keep my word.” He waved me forward. “Let’s talk.”
I walked to meet him, looking for lumps, bulges in his clothing, a knife waiting to pay me back. As I drew closer, I saw the lines in his face, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the toll my attack had taken on him. But I also saw the hunger burning in his eyes. I stopped in front of him. His gaze rolled leisurely over me.
“You wanted to talk?”
He smiled. “Has it come to this, Jezelia? No niceties?” His hand reached up as if to caress my face.
“Don’t touch me,” I warned. “Or I will kill you.”
His hand returned to his side, but his smile remained chiseled on his lips.
“I admire you, Princess. You almost did what no one else was able to do in the eleven years of my rule. That is a record, did you know? No other Komizar has ever ruled that long.”
“A pity it’s about to come to an end.”
He sighed dramatically. “How you still hang on to things. I care about you, Jezelia. Truly, I do. But this?” He waved his hand toward the troops behind me as if they were too pitiful to consider. “You don’t have to die. Come over to my side. Look at all I have to offer.”
“Servitude? Cruelty? Violence? You tempt me so, sher Komizar. We’ve talked. You can go back now.”
He looked past me at the troops. “Is that the prince back there? With his hundred men who stormed the citadelle?” His tone was thick with mockery.
“So the Viceregent has come running to you with his tail tucked between his legs.”
“I smiled when he told me what you’d done. I was impressed that you rooted out my moles. How is your father?”
“Dead.” He deserved no truths from me, and the weaker he thought we were, the better.
“And your brothers?”
“Dead.”
He sighed. “This is all too easy.”
“You haven’t asked me about Kaden,” I said.
His smile disappeared, and his expression darkened. I knew him well, too. Kaden was a blow he couldn’t hide. There was something in this world he had loved, after all. Something he had saved, nurtured, but it had turned on him. Something that pointed to his own failure.
A small rush of pebbles suddenly streamed down from the cliffs above. He looked up surveying the empty ruins, turning to look at the other side. The silence of held breaths gripped the valley.
He looked back at me and grinned. “You thought I didn’t know?”