The Reckless Reign (Book 3, The Culled Crown Series)

Chapter 6

Anna's Suite.
Oredison Palace, Gazda.
The day before the Welcome Dinner.

Anna kept her attention on her painting as the door to the suite was pulled shut and we were left alone. I stayed where I was next to the lit fireplace. The flames had burned low and I wondered—with the tacet almost gone from my system—if I could touch it without it hurting me. The urge to do so was nearly painful. The power in my gut, the barest bones of it, lurched and roiled and pushed against my skin. Faint, but ever-present.

Goddess, I wanted to reach out. I wanted to bury my hand in the flames.

But if the fire burned me, Anna might react. And if the guards outside heard her and summoned Caine... I turned from the fireplace, digging my nails into my palms in an effort to ground myself. All of this felt like a trap or a test of some sort. Like Kai, Caine rarely did things without purpose. Whatever test this was, I couldn't afford to fail it. I needed Caine on my side.

I needed to prove that I could be trusted.

I am a pawn. I am weak. I am malleable. I am easily used.

You are goddess-touched, that oily voice in the pit of my stomach seemed to hiss.

I walked over to where Anna sat painting. Her brush still moved, each stroke bringing more life to the image—a more complex ocean, scars on the person's reaching hand, a streak of red to the sky beyond it. I tried to remember what I knew about her.

I'd asked Kai about his mother lots of times. He was adopted and raised by his aunt and uncle. While Mirren Caine had never been more than an uncle to him, his Aunt Anna had become the only mother he'd ever known. When I asked questions, he'd always been more willing to tell me about Anna than he was to tell me about his birth mother, Caterine Callahan. In fact, I couldn't remember if Kai had ever told me his birth mother's name before Caine had let it slip shortly after our Linomi mission.

From what information I'd been given, I knew that Anna had been Caterine's best friend. They'd grown up together in Vayelle and, from what little I understood, it seemed that Anna had been put into an arranged marriage with Caterine's older half-brother, Mirren Caine. Caine had turned out to be abusive. He still was abusive.

And Anna had been the target of that abuse.

I couldn't imagine what that had been like—to be trapped with a man who delighted in breaking and hurting... or perhaps I could imagine it. Perhaps I was living it.

I pushed that thought away, unwilling to face it fully. No. I needed to focus on Anna. On Caterine.

On Kai.

He'd once told me that Anna wanted to have children of her own, but she was barren. I wondered if it had been difficult for Anna to take her best friend's child and raise him as her own. I'd read letters from Caterine to Anna explaining some of Kai's past and outlining the danger he was in. At the time, I hadn't realized that Caterine had found herself mixed up with the current king and queen of Erydia. When I'd read those letters, I hadn't known that Kai was the king's bastard son.

I never dreamt that he was the heir to the throne.

But Anna had known. She was perhaps the only person Caterine had ever trusted with the truth of Kai's birth. So, how had Caine found out? Knowing what I did of his violence and her love for her son, I knew Anna couldn't have told him by choice.

I wanted to ask her.

I wanted to ask her a lot of things.

Her brush still moved, each stroke deft and light. Caine had taught Kai war and she'd taught him art. While I saw Mirren Caine in every bad quality Kai had, a small part of me knew that if I looked closely enough, I might see every good piece of him in Anna. Kai credited her for all the positive moments in his childhood.