“She’d grown even stronger in the time we’d been apart. You and your brother had almost come of age, and time was running out for Morganya. She kept me imprisoned in my own mind for a year, making the poison for the Emperor this time. She came up with the plan to frame you on the night we were to administer the killing dose.”
Ana knew, too well, what came next. She’d relived it in her mind a thousand times over—the single night that had altered the course of her life forever.
“I was administering the final dose to the Emperor when you burst into the chambers and seized my blood.” Tetsyev’s voice shifted, as though he’d finally leveled his face to her. “With your Affinity, you broke the control that Morganya had over me. You didn’t know it, but you saved me.”
The moonlight. The alchemist, outlined against the open windows. The sobbing, so faint it had sounded like the wind. The silver Deys’krug on his chest.
Ana turned to face him at last. In the maelstrom of her thoughts, her mind latched on to a single sentence. “What do you mean, I ‘broke the control’ Morganya had over you?”
Tetsyev raised his eyes to her. He sat on the ground, his white robes dirtied with grime, his frame hunched and broken. “Morganya is strong, but she is not invincible. She can control only one mind at a time. And her control can be broken. When you used your Affinity on me, it cut through Morganya’s Affinity. You broke her control over my mind; you saved me, and then you condemned me, for in the moments after the murder, I was fully myself.”
She watched his pitiful face, her anger settling into cold, logical fury. “And you ran.”
He lowered his head. “I am a coward, Kolst Pryntsessa. That is something I’m not afraid to admit.”
Ana’s mind swirled, cold clarity cutting through the chaos of her anger.
Tetsyev spoke of a decade-long conspiracy in the making, orchestrated by none other than Ana’s aunt. And she was one step away from succeeding.
Ana needed to go back, with Tetsyev. Reveal everything to the Imperial Court. Sentence Morganya. Save Luka. And then, with Yuri, they would begin to reverse the wheels of a great machine that had allowed this empire to thrive at the cost of the Affinites.
But first, she needed her brother to live.
“An antidote,” she said. “I need you to make an antidote to this poison.”
“It exists,” Tetsyev said, and Ana’s knees almost buckled with relief. “I made one in case the tasters became too sick. It’s kept in the apothecary’s wing of the Palace, with the poison itself.”
There was a cure.
Luka would live.
“You must listen to me, Kolst Pryntsessa,” Tetsyev whispered in the silence that had fallen. “You face more enemies than you know. Morganya has allied herself with Alaric Kerlan and the Order of the Lily. He made a deal with her—that he would end Affinite indenturement once she took the throne, and in return, she would send him to conquer Bregon.
“I’ve gained Kerlan’s trust,” Tetsyev continued. “I served him from afar for all these years. Nearly four moons ago, Kerlan sent his Deputy to assassinate your brother.”
Ana’s blood ran cold.
“I foiled that attempt; I alerted the Imperial Patrols. They arrested the man and threw him in prison—but I heard he is back. And I know he’s looking for me. He’s here, tonight.” Tetsyev gave a shaky little laugh. “Funny how the Deities like to play with fates, Kolst Pryntsessa. If you hadn’t found me tonight, I would have taken my own life. I cannot live this life of lies and deceit any longer, constantly looking over my shoulder and sleeping with a poison under my pillow.”
Ana heard his words as though he spoke from very far away. A roaring filled her ears, and suddenly she was back in the dacha in the Syvern Taiga, Ramson standing opposite her with a smile like a wolf.
What is it that you want?
Revenge. I plan to destroy my enemies one by one and take back my position and what was rightfully mine.
The scene changed, and she was in Shamaïra’s dacha, the room swirling with intoxicating warmth and heady fumes. She remembered flipping Ramson’s wrist, catching sight of the flower tattoo. It had been a lily of the valley.
The Order of the Lily.
And, just like that, it all came together. It felt as though she had been walking in a thick fog, searching for something she couldn’t