now, and Avalkyra straightened, releasing her hold on Veronyka’s shoulders. “As many as need to. Any and all who are foolish enough to stand in our way.”
“Even if that means Phoenix Riders and animages? Even if that means Pyra?”
Sudden rage reared up inside Avalkyra, and she turned away.
“You must know how some of them see you,” Veronyka pressed, while Avalkyra’s rage blistered and burned. “The great Avalkyra Ashfire, the Feather-Crowned Queen—but also the person who single-handedly destroyed Pyra and the Phoenix Riders, and left animages all over the empire to be outlawed and placed in bondage.”
Avalkyra whirled around. “You would lay all the ills of the world at my feet?”
Veronyka shrugged. “If you want to be queen, that comes with the territory. These are your people.”
“I am queen.”
“Then it’s your duty to protect them. All of them—friends and enemies alike.”
Avalkyra laughed coldly. “Spoken like the child that you are. Shelter my enemies until they grow powerful enough to overthrow me? You do not feed and care for a snake until it’s powerful enough to strangle you. You cut off its head.”
“And once all your enemies have been eradicated—animages and Phoenix Riders alike—then what?”
“Then I rule.”
“Over what? The ashes of the empire?”
“What do you want from me, Veronyka? Softness? Do you wish me as pliant as sweet summer grass? I’d never have survived if not for my strength,” Avalkyra spat out, that searing rage clawing its way up her throat.
Veronyka slowly shook her head. “If you don’t eventually bend, Val, you’ll break.”
“What did you say?” Avalkyra asked sharply. Those were the words spoken by Pheronia all those years ago inside Avalkyra’s underground base near Rushlea. “Are you trying to threaten me?”
Veronyka sighed. “What I’m trying to do is see if there’s any hope for us. You say you want to rule together, but if you refuse to change, to compromise or sacrifice—”
Avalkyra boiled over. “You want to talk about sacrifice?” she shrieked. “I gave up everything for her! I could have won that war a thousand times, but a thousand times I pulled back. I hesitated. I gave her a chance to see reason—I gave her the mercy you beg for. I gave her my life and I gave her my death, too, and still it was not enough.”
Avalkyra’s breath thundered in her chest, her ribs rising and falling like the beat of a war drum.
“I am not her,” Veronyka said quietly. “I am not the sister you tried to save.”
Avalkyra felt a spasm cross her face, no matter how hard she fought against the surge of emotion.
She was angry. She was outraged. Veronyka was a sentimental fool.
And she was right.
Avalkyra kept trying to align her past with her present, kept casting Veronyka into the role played by her other sister. Her first sister. Her true sister.
Her Shadow Twin.
But Veronyka was the real shadow—the echo of the past. She was… what exactly? A second chance? A shot at redemption?
Veronyka was an Ashfire, but she was no ally.
She was a rival for the throne, the same as her mother had been, but things were different this time. Avalkyra was different.
She schooled her features into blankness and fixed her gaze on Veronyka.
“And I am not the same person who went into those flames. Cross me, Veronyka, and I will not hesitate. Not this time.”
“So that’s it, then?” Veronyka asked bleakly, disappointment etched in well-worn cuts across her features. She looked like her mother.
No.
She looked like an enemy.
“Get in line behind you or get out of the way?” Veronyka finished sadly.
Avalkyra drew herself up, pleased that Veronyka finally understood. “Exactly.”
They stood like that, face-to-face, Ashfire to Ashfire, for several long minutes.
Unease crept in; Veronyka sounded defeated, but she didn’t look it. Instead, her eyes were alight and her expression had shifted to one of grim resolve.
Suddenly Avalkyra longed for the days when Veronyka was young and innocent, when she was trusting and vulnerable and unwilling to fight back.
But as she looked at Veronyka now, Avalkyra saw not the child she had been, nor her mother, Pheronia—she saw a new threat. Someone intelligent and powerful and without her mother’s shortcomings or her aunt’s dark past.
A strange, unfamiliar fear gripped Avalkyra’s heart as she realized that if the Phoenix Riders—and the empire—wanted an Ashfire to rally around, it would not be her.
It would be Veronyka.
Bitterness twisted her from the inside out. Avalkyra couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let Veronyka grow in strength and support. She had to nip her glorious ascension in the bud.