I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me and—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “I know what that kind of friendship means, even if Mine turned out to be only an illusion.”
“Do You know that for sure?” Sondra asked, recovering enough to employ the honorific again.
“I don’t. I’d rather hoped for that closure, but I think I’ll never know. And then I wonder—which is worse? If she was truly the friend I thought and either turned on Me or was turned, or if she was false all along.”
“Yeah.” Sondra idly swirled some sand, not looking at me. “Some things we don’t need the answers to.”
“And some answers we simply can’t have. I’m making peace with that.” I gestured to the model of the throne room, glancing at Con to make sure he was still absorbed. “Here’s a question I’d like the answer to: Why does he really want a model of the throne room?”
She looked to Con, too, then back. Sondra wouldn’t lie to me. “Because that’s where he’s likely to find Anure.”
I nodded, unsurprised. “Then he still plans to kill Anure.”
Sondra gazed back steadily with regret and understanding. The short hair set off her elegant bone structure but ruthlessly revealed the stained and pitted skin of her face, particularly stark in the bright morning light. But her eyes, shades of blue with darker flecks and lavish gold lashes, retained all the beauty of her life before Anure. “Did You really think he’d be able to let that go?”
I’d hoped that it would be enough for him to destroy Anure’s hold on the land, to rip his empire out from under him. Foolish me. “What is he planning?”
“Maybe ask him?” Sondra sounded uncertain, as she almost never did.
“I’m asking you, as your queen,” I pressed, using that edge ruthlessly, even if I did stop short of royal command.
“That’s really unfair, You bitch,” Sondra muttered, eyes flashing with irritation.
I nearly laughed—only Sondra could call me a bitch while using the honorific—but I managed to keep a straight face, even narrowing my eyes in regal menace.
She blew out a breath. “I don’t know this from him, all right? But Brenda told me that when Con came to rescue us, he also brought a vurgsten weapon. Agatha made a trigger for it, so he could carry it around inert, then take it to the throne room and set it off personally. The only reason he didn’t do that was because he had to carry You out.”
That sounded so like Con. “I’m surprised he didn’t go back,” I murmured, studying the throne room model, “thinking Me dead.”
“He tried,” Sondra said bluntly. “He would have, but Ambrose stopped him. The trigger—maybe it’s changed, but I understand it’s pretty much suicide to use it.”
I processed that, unsurprised on some level, and also deeply disturbed. Imagine if I’d risen from the dead on the yacht to find Con had, in his grief thinking me lost forever, killed himself trying to take out Anure. It sounded like a tragic ballad.
“Thank you for telling Me.” And yet it seemed our story was doomed to tragedy regardless. Con planned to risk himself anyway, despite his protestations of love for me.
As if sensing my thoughts—or my gaze on him—he looked up and grinned wolfishly, violence and vengeance glinting in his golden eyes, that sparkling anticipation he got only when contemplating destroying his nemesis. Nothing else meant as much to him. I’d be a fool to delude myself otherwise.
“All right, everyone,” he called out, silencing the room. “I think we can solidify this plan.”
* * *
Lia asked Ibolya to have adult-sized chairs brought in. Ibolya stayed, apparently officially transferred to my service—which felt weird, but that was how Lia did things—and Dearsley begged off on the discussion, going to execute the plans he and Lia had been so intensely discussing. We pulled our chairs up to the sand table, which put the models of the citadel more on eye level. I don’t know about the rest of them, but I had a crick in my neck from bending over the thing. We still loomed too high, but it was better. I ended up pacing as I talked, anyway, noting Lia’s amused half smile as I did.
Caged wolf, I heard her say in my head. Yeah. That was me.
Now that we made real plans to return to Yekpehr, to finally and completely destroy Anure’s foul regime, victory seemed possible again. I thought I’d set aside the craving for revenge. I’d figured it