“Your mother did not kill my brother Lazen when she attempted to escape,” she said. “Though it was with the bow she made that I killed him, while trying to help her flee. My father made certain I could never draw a bowstring again.”
That was what a treacherous liar would say to save herself. But there would be no escape for her, just as there had not been for his mother.
His gaze on hers, Maddek suckled her brother’s lifeblood from her remaining fingers, then licked between the stumps and down her bloodied palm. Her breath shuddered, clammy perspiration dotting her upper lip. His tongue pressed against her inner wrist, above the crimson-drenched ropes. Her pulse thundered through her veins.
Her blood raced as quickly as his did. But soon hers would spill onto the ground.
She swallowed thickly before telling him, “If you intend to kill me, I only beg that you do it quickly. My life has been a torment. I pray my death will not be.”
The fear in her voice did not please him as much as the taste of her brother’s blood did. The fear should have pleased him, for she had been the reason his parents had entered that drepa’s nest, and so she was the reason he had to speak the words, “Was my mother’s death quick?”
Shadows passed through her pale eyes. “No.”
Anger speared through him anew. “A beheading is not quick?”
“That was how it ended.” A heavy rasp deepened her reply. “But that was not how her death began.”
She was fool enough to tell him this? Did she hope her words would spur him to rage, to a quick end? She would not have that wish.
“And so it will be for you,” he said. “Very long, very slow, and all the pain that was visited upon my mother and father will be visited upon you.” Releasing her wrists, he gripped her slender neck in one hand, the silver claw at his thumb pressing into the vulnerable flesh beneath her jaw. “Now I only have to decide where to start.”
In a voice strained by the pressure upon her throat, she told him, “By taking me as your wife.”
Maddek laughed.
Her laborious swallow worked the muscles of her throat against his fingers. Her moonstone eyes were steady on his. “If you truly wish to destroy my father and brothers, take me as your wife. Nyset’s line passes through the female and I can claim the throne when I have reached a queen’s age—or when I bear a child.”
His laugh fell silent, his body still.
“As my husband, you could take everything of value to my father. And when Zhalen is not a regent king, who will care if you claim his head? When I remove my brother Bazir from his position as council minister, who will care if you kill him? Not I. I would do it myself if I could.”
His gaze skimmed down her trembling form. “I could simply rut upon you until you bear a child.”
“You could. But without marriage, you have no claim on the child. Without marriage, you cannot share my throne.”
“What do I care of your throne?”
“Because as long as my father sits upon it, you will have a weak and rotted state at Parsathe’s southwestern border. If the Destroyer comes, my father would turn against the alliance in an attempt to save himself, my brother Aezil would join him, and together they would strike at your people first.”
Or perhaps they would not wait for the Destroyer. Zhalen and his son ruled the two realms on Parsathe’s southern border, so perhaps they believed the Burning Plains might be easily taken.
And perhaps that was why Zhalen’s daughter wished to be Maddek’s bride. She would wait until his back was turned and bury her dagger between his ribs.
Even if she killed him, never would her family conquer his people. “All of the realms could band together and still they would not defeat our warriors.”
“This I know.” Again her throat worked, her voice hoarsened by the pressure of his fingers. “Just as I know that it would be my people who would suffer because of my father’s ambitions. Better peace and a strong alliance than war between Syssia and Parsathe.”
As his parents would have wanted. But they deserved more than peace. And they deserved better than a son who would ally himself with the woman who’d conspired against them. “You only hope to save yourself now that you will not marry Toleh’s king and spread your father’s poison there. But you will not have Parsathe.”
“I do not want Toleh’s throne. I want my own. But I cannot take it alone, for my father and brothers will not easily let it go. I need your strength and seed to claim it.” Her breath wheezed harshly through her lips but her gaze still held his. “And it would be more painful for my father to see you seated upon Syssia’s throne. He despises the Parsatheans. He has never forgiven the raids that weakened his family’s holdings in Rugus before the alliance was established. It is your people he blames for not being directly in line for the Rugusian crown, and for having to marry a Syssian to secure the power he believes he deserves. If a Parsathean took that power from him now . . .”
It would be humiliation on top of vengeance. Against her father. Against her brothers. Maddek’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you take part in this?”
Sudden fury burned in her gaze. “Because I hate my father more than you ever could. My brothers, too—except for the youngest. You wish for vengeance? It is nothing compared to my wish. I will not rest until they are dead.”
Then she had made a fine start by killing her brother. But although her anger spoke to his, Maddek did not trust it. His hand tightened. “Yet you lured my mother and father so that your regent could kill them?”
“I did not beg them to come for my father’s sake. I begged them to come for mine.” The force of the word vibrated through the silver claws at his fingertips. “I wrote to them that an alliance between us would be beneficial to both our peoples but I needed help to escape Zhalen. I did not know my messenger had been found out until too late.”
His gaze searched her face for truth. He knew not if he saw it but the pressure of his fingers softened.
She dragged in a long breath to say, “That is why my father killed your parents—to stop a marriage between us. Your parents came to see if I could earn their approval. And I would have. But my father wanted me to marry Toleh’s king because that old man is more easily controlled. Never could my father control you.”
The last was truth but Maddek could not believe the rest. “You lie now to save your life. My mother would never approve of such as you.” Even if this woman genuinely had sought an alliance, she was not what his mother would have chosen. “You are not strong enough to be a Parsathean queen.”
Now her breath shuddered and pain flittered through her eyes. “She did say that upon meeting me.”