Veronyka fought to keep her voice steady. “Your arrow?” she whispered.
Val rounded on her. “Yes, Veronyka! My godsforsaken arrow!” she screamed, so loudly that Veronyka flinched. “Does that really surprise you? Does that shatter your illusions of me, your sweet, caring aunt?”
Veronyka supposed it didn’t. When she thought back to the vision of her mother’s death, she’d felt Val’s desperate sorrow—the confusion, the regret. She hadn’t meant to shoot Pheronia. She hadn’t done it on purpose.
And there had been something else there, when her hand had pressed against Pheronia’s pregnant belly….
“You didn’t learn anything,” Veronyka said, her voice trembling slightly.
“Excuse me?” Val barked. She was ready for a fight, whether Veronyka gave it to her or not.
“You loved me, Val,” Veronyka said, her words stronger now. “We have a bond, remember? You loved your sister’s daughter because you still love her, even though she’s gone. You loved me the moment you knew I existed. I felt it.” Veronyka knew Val understood her meaning—she’d felt it with shadow magic. “And even now, in this new life… you found me. You fed me, protected me, and kept me alive.”
Confusion flickered across Val’s features, before her expression hardened once more. “So I could use you now! All I ever loved about you was your Ashfire blood.”
The words landed like a blow—just as Val had meant them to—and Veronyka turned away. It didn’t matter that Val was lying to herself as well as to Veronyka, that she’d said the words with the sole purpose of inflicting pain. Frustrated tears stung Veronyka’s eyes, and she didn’t know if she was angrier with Val or herself. What did it matter if somewhere, deep down, Val loved her? Veronyka didn’t even know if she still loved Val. How many times could a person hurt you and your love for them endure?
Then again, surely only love could make words like hers cut so deeply? Love didn’t stop people from hurting each other—love made it easier. Avalkyra had loved Pheronia even as she’d killed her. And Pheronia had loved Avalkyra, even when she walked out of that mine, turning her back on Avalkyra forever.
Even as she lay dying, Avalkyra’s arrow embedded in her chest, Pheronia had loved her sister.
If Avalkyra Ashfire was capable of killing the person she loved most, what did that say about her now, a lifetime later? The person Veronyka saw her in shadow magic dreams was not the same person standing before her. They might look the same, talk and act the same, but Val had been through so much since then. There was poison in her heart, a darkness so thick and consuming that no amount of fire could burn it away.
The fact of the matter was, it made no difference whether they loved each other or not. Veronyka had vowed to stand between Val and the throne she so desperately coveted. Love would not protect either of them.
“What about your bondmate?” she asked, still turned away from Val. “The phoenix you rode here? There is no bond without love.”
Unless… could a bind work on a phoenix, too? Had Val found a solitary firebird and used a bind to make her subservient?
Val snorted at the question. “Conflating love with the bond is the same as saying that iron loves the heat and the hammer that turns it into steel. Without those things, it is lesser, but it does not love them.”
No wonder Xephyra chose me over you, Veronyka thought, but didn’t say aloud. She was tired of having this same fight over and over again. Instead she applied herself to washing, scrubbing at her skin with savage jerks and dumping half the rinse bucket over her head.
When at last she stood naked and scrubbed raw, Val toweled her off roughly and helped her dress, her touch stiff and impatient. She sighed at the way Veronyka’s chest failed to fill out the low-cut design and at the dripping spikes of her cropped hair, falling just past her chin. Val tugged and clawed at the strands, and it took everything in Veronyka to stand there and suffer her ministrations. She just closed her eyes and mirrored with Xephyra, the sight of that nocked arrow a reminder of what was truly at stake.
Finally Val managed to twist a few braids just behind her left ear, leaving the rest of her hair to hang loosely behind. It was by no means elegant, but Veronyka didn’t hate it. At least she wore braids