The Promised Queen (Forgotten Empires #3)- Jeffe Kennedy Page 0,120

anger at the trick they’d pulled on us. They had such potential to destroy us utterly. It seemed so close to betrayal that I couldn’t see how the scales balanced. Had their assistance been worth more to us than the great risk they posed? I could just imagine Con’s ire at hearing this. “Was it worth it?”

“It was worth it to uss,” Merle hissed, a black feather wafting down to settle on the ice, floating with regret.

“What Merle is saying is that we made the choice out of selfishness, at its core,” Ambrose said, meeting my gaze like a prisoner ready to accept a sentence of execution. “We admit that, but we have also attempted to balance that self-interest with altruism.”

“We lacked the power to free oursselves,” Merle agreed.

“And though we deeply regretted our role in Anure’s conquest and reign,” Ambrose said slowly, adjusting his grip on the staff, “we’d also originally entered into that cabal of our own free will. Neither of us deserves rescue—or we didn’t, to begin with—so all we could do was leverage circumstances to arrange our rescue, and attempt to deliver enough value to be worth the rescuing in the end.”

“Con doesn’t know any of this,” I said, not really a question, just clarifying. “Did you influence Me to rescue the royal captives just to free yourselves?”

“No.” Ambrose said that firmly and clearly, Merle shaking his head earnestly. “The royals must be freed to return to govern the lands. Once that’s accomplished, we can begin to redress what we’ve done.”

“Why tell Me now?” I asked. “More to the point, why didn’t you explain this up front?”

Ambrose gestured to the icy pond that didn’t truly exist. “We are in a safe bubble of space. We couldn’t speak of these things in a non-astral realm at all. This place is one of our fabrication, where the others cannot find us. We had to wait for You to find Your way to joining us.”

“You could have taught Me,” I pointed out. “That would’ve been direct.”

Ambrose smiled ruefully. “No, I couldn’t. You had to find Your own way, Euthalia. And You wouldn’t make this risky venture into the unknown without the proper motivation.”

“Fear?” I asked.

Merle hissed a laugh, and Ambrose shook his head. “Love.”

Oh. I trust that You will follow your heart. Perhaps I wouldn’t have tried this if not for Con, who’d found my heart and taken it with him. “I suppose we have to proceed as planned,” I finally said.

They both pressed hands to hearts, bowing to me.

“We help as our bondss allow,” Merle told me. “That hass not changed.”

“Good, because a great deal rests on you. If you betray us…” I trailed off. I didn’t know what threat I could level against them. “I will do everything in My power to destroy you.”

“At the risk of being trite, Your Highness, that has been a contingency plan for us, all along,” Ambrose confided. “A fail-safe, if You will. We wanted You involved so that, if all else failed, someone with Your power would be motivated to destroy us, rather than letting us continue down our current path.”

I didn’t even know how to take that. “You wanted Me to love Con enough to destroy you in retribution if he fails.”

Ambrose spread his hands. “Would Your Highness have been moved by less, thinking back to Your life before Conrí came to Calanthe?”

I didn’t have to think. Or rather, I’d been thinking about nothing else these last days, how I’d been before Con, with my frozen heart and my endless stalemate. I’d dressed every day for a battle that raged far beyond my fertile shores, never digging deeper into my own nature or what more life might hold.

“Was there really a prophecy?” I asked. I’d meant it to sound like a demand, to call them out for dishonesty and manipulation, but the question came out nearly plaintive, like a child discovering a favored story was entirely fiction.

“Yes and no,” Ambrose conceded. “The vision of the future was true—a focal point of forces in perfect alignment that could lead to the shattering of Anure’s power, the boulder in the river, if You will—but we crafted the words. It’s not easy, You know,” he said, warming to his subject with his more normal ebullience, “to create a solid prophecy. It’s got to contain a lot of information in a memorable way.”

“Sshort,” Merle qualified.

“Yes, concise, so nothing gets forgotten. Every word and phrase needs to contain numerous meanings. This is where You come