eyes. Sweat dappled her forehead. It was hot here in the sun, but the fire raging in her was even hotter.
Rohan tried to breathe around the horrible constriction in his chest. “Oh, sweet Goddess—why?” The question was a deathly whisper, harsh and hopeless. And with all the other truths revealed, he now heard the most terrible of all.
“For the son she gave you—the son that should have been mine!”
Panic leaped up and was beaten back with violent speed—for if she knew, he had to keep his wits, not give in to fear or rage or anything else that might destroy the sudden balance he sensed between them. It was a sick and twisted equilibrium, with Pol as its fulcrum: Rohan’s love weighted against Pandsala’s lies. But in understanding it, he found strength to preserve it.
For he must protect that balance at all costs. He had given her power and Princemarch and her pride, and she had responded with unswerving devotion to depleting the ranks of those who might oppose Pol. That this loyalty had taken so hideous a form was his payment for having used her so well, for having been so blind.
Blazing from Pandsala’s dark eyes was hatred that had never been directed at Rohan. It was not directed at him now. By rights his rejection of her for Sioned ought to have earned her hatred. It had not. How could she hate the man who had given her a life, the man whose son she had worked for these many years? No, Rohan did not figure on the list of her hates.
Her father, yes, for exiling her to Goddess Keep. Sioned, who had Rohan’s heart and body and mind. Ianthe, who had borne his son. These three she hated. But Rohan saw something more in Pandsala’s eyes. She hated them because he had spent more of himself on them than he ever had on her. Jealousy was the core of her hate. Jealousy of Roelstra, whom Rohan had battled; of Sioned, whom he loved; of Ianthe, who had carried his child. They had claimed him and Pandsala could not.
So she had claimed his son’s future. Murdered to show her love, twisted other lives to keep him safe. Created much of the world Pol would inherit, a legacy of blood and hate.
Roelstra’s daughter.
Andrade had warned him, all those years ago. So had Tobin, and Chay, and Ostvel. But Rohan had been too sure of his own cleverness. Too arrogant in his own power to consider what use she might make of hers. Too willing to believe that she would work to the best of her abilities for Pol’s cause in Princemarch.
Oh, yes, she had worked. To the best of her considerable abilities.
He could not speak, mortally afraid of saying anything to upset this terrible balance between them, which if overset might turn her against him and Pol. She held power over him that terrified and infuriated him. But he was as incapable of killing her now as he had been of killing Ianthe years ago at Feruche. Coward! he accused himself, and had to answer, Yes.
Pandsala’s low, intense voice clawed at him. “His eyes—they might be mine, you know, in shape if not in color. There’s something about him—things that don’t speak of her but of me. I saw it in him from the first. He should have been ours, Rohan, not hers! She doesn’t deserve him. I’ve seen how he looks at her with such love—love that should have been mine—”
“She—” He choked and like a swordstroke to his heart the knowledge was in him: She doesn’t know. And abruptly the balance shifted to him. That one truth was more powerful than all her lies. She believed Pol to be Sioned’s son. She did not know about Ianthe. And as the power surged in him, strong and deadly as Sioned sometimes described the flare of Sunrunner’s power, he knew he would use that truth as ruthlessly as Ianthe herself would have done.
“I’ve thought of him as ours,” Pandsala went on softly, almost dreamily. “When she’s not nearby I can believe he’s yours and mine. No mother in blood could love him more, want more for him. If you think what I’ve done is horrible, then think what his life would have been had I not acted. All those rivals that might have come from my sisters’ marriages—I rid him of most of them and I’m glad! He’ll be High Prince and faradhi and the most powerful man who