The Tyrant's Queen

63: free to loathe

Pushing Yhun into the deep recesses of her mind hadn't been a demanding task.

Engaging in either some form of physical labor or attempting to converse in Shahark had served as sufficient distractions.

Now, Thalia faced Yhun entirely, squarely. The first thing she did, was examining his features and comparing them to hers.

Soon, she came to the conclusion that she'd gotten his nose.

As if he knew what she was doing, Yhun seemed to wait, until she was finished. Then, he broke the silence again.

"I heard tidings of your disappearance."

Gibberish. Straightening her back, Thalia met Yhun's gaze. "Why did you kill Letellia?"

"Your mother was as good as a corpse." Drawing his fingers away from the bars, Yhun rasped.

"Awake in a child-like state...or comatose. And the king was using her to hold you hostage in the palace, was he not? I was attempting to free you from him."

There was one thing Thalia hadn't gotten from this man.

It was the Aesna gods-given ability to make outright fabrications without the slightest hint of shame.

"Free me." Thalia raised her eyebrow. "Then what? What were you planning to do after that? Approach me?"

She did not know why she was asking such pointless questions.

To test if he'd at least exerted some effort to make his lies as reasonable as possible?

"No. I would've waited, for you to leave the palace yourself. I wouldn't have approached you. I don't have the right to."

Yhun's lips thinned into a line, reminding her of the way rubber stretched too much around tree trunks, on the verge of snapping.

"My method could have been better, but I did it to protect you."

Better. Better how? Better as in, could've been undetected?

"Protect me?" Thalia rejoined icily. "From what?"

"From the king," Yhun said, matter-of-factly. "He threatened you with your mother's life. Failed to protect you from the concubine, who now made you a woman incapable of child birth.

"Above all, he dared to bring you into the palace- the largest prison in this country."

This man was unapologetic. If he harbored the slightest remorse for Thalia or Letellia, he wouldn't look at her so squarely in the eye.

Or explain himself so eloquently, without an apology.

All discomfort that had stirred in her belly, ebbed away. Lucidity was returning to her.

"People in a town visit the same tax house, on the same day. The people paying, and the people doing the collecting, are all men."

Thalia took a step closer to the cell, and smelled urine, blood and grime. "

"So when Letellia or I went to a tax house, it was like announcing to the whole town- there is no man in our household. No brother, no husband, no father."

Flattening his palms against the bars, Yhun listened.

"It was no coincidence. Every time we moved to a new town, and after tax day. A man always visited our house. Some with flowers." Thalia shrugged.

"Others with knives. That's why Letellia did marry eventually. That man- my father- believed women and girls who talk back should be beaten to their senses."