“Brook, I’m serious. You can’t come. What you’re suggesting . . . well, you’d be defecting from your position as commander of the armed forces. You can’t do that.”

Brook laughed, almost a snicker as she countered, “But you can defect as queen? To do what? To go where?”

She didn’t know everything, I realized, but her words pricked my conscience. I brushed aside my own guilt as I glanced at Eden. “I’m not defecting as queen, Brook. Let Eden go and I’ll explain.”

Eden’s black eyes snapped up to mine, and I saw a flicker of something there. Something very close to triumph.

It didn’t take Brooklynn but a moment to weigh my request before she shoved Eden away from her. Eden rolled her shoulder, lifting her arm as if loosening the stiff muscles. The gesture appeared casual, a natural response to the angle she’d just been pinned in. But it was a deception, and before she’d finished a single rotation of the joint, she’d spun around, her fists at the ready and her shoulders squared. She moved so fast that if I had blinked, I would have missed it.

Fortunately for me, I hadn’t.

Her attack stance was thwarted, though, when Brook reacted just as rapidly, and I heard an unmistakable click. Even in the shadows, I could make out the silhouette of Brook’s weapon—a handgun that was now directed at Eden. “Nice try,” she said with a note of genuine sincerity. “I’d have expected nothing less.”

Eden looked blandly at the firearm. “And I expected a lot less.” She shrugged halfheartedly. “I suppose I’m somewhat impressed. You’re better than I realized.”

Brooklynn raised a perfect dark eyebrow. “I was trained by the best.”

The reminder that they shared a bond, these two women with very little else in common except that they’d both been revolutionaries in Xander’s army, eased the tension, if only somewhat, and Eden nodded.

Brook lowered her weapon as well, even though she didn’t holster it. “So I’m guessing this has something to do with Xander. Am I right?” She didn’t wait for either of us to answer, and it was easy enough to let her think she’d guessed correctly. “So let me repeat myself, neither of you is leaving here without me. Have I made myself clear?”

PART II

max

“This can’t be happening!” Max exclaimed, shoving his hands impatiently through his hair as he waited for Joseph di Heyse— Charlie’s father—to read the letter he’d thrown down in front of him. “What was she thinking? Your daughter’s a madwoman. You know that, don’t you?”

When Charlie’s father was finished, he set the paper down beside the ornate place setting—hand-painted china trimmed in gold leaf—and even that casual gesture set Max’s teeth on edge.

How could he just sit there at a time like this? How was he not climbing out of his skin with worry?

Instead her father treated the letter as if it were yet another trivial matter in a day like any other, even though they both knew it wasn’t.

He was too calm by half. Certainly calmer than Max had been when he’d discovered the note propped against Charlie’s pillows that morning, on a bed that had been unrumpled. She hadn’t even bothered to make it look as if she’d slept there. He might not have even found the letter, had it not been for a night guard with a very large bump on his head and an outlandish story about being attacked by a purplehaired assassin.

No doubt who the purple-haired assailant had been.

Max had had to read the letter several times before the words had started to make sense to him, until he’d finally realized what Charlie had been trying to tell him in her abrupt handwritten scrawl—that she’d taken Eden and gone on a rescue mission to save Xander.

Xander! Xander whose hand had been delivered to them in a box.

Charlie had also left the letter that she’d discovered in that same box, the one addressed to her from Queen Elena. Although, whether Charlie had left it as justification for her actions or to explain them, Max wasn’t certain. Not that it mattered, really. There was no excuse for what she’d done. What she was risking by her actions.

And the letter was quite clear:

Charlaina,

I know your secret. I know how to cure you of it. Surrender yourself to Astonia, and I’ll give you peace. I’ll give you everything you want. The choice is yours.

—Elena

Her secret? Only those closest to Charlie, including Max, knew that the secret was Sabara, of course. But they’d gone to great lengths to hide Sabara’s existence from the outside world. How could Elena possibly know about Sabara’s Essence being fused with Charlie?

He thought of Xander’s hand, and wondered if the other queen had tortured the information out of his brother, searching for weaknesses with which to lure Charlie to Astonia. If so, she’d succeeded. She’d found the one thing Charlie would be unable to resist—the chance to purge Sabara from within her.

The offering of peace for Ludania only sweetened the deal. But why couldn’t Charlie have come to him for help? Why hadn’t she confided in him?

He raked his hand through his hair again, frustrated because he already knew the answer. Because he’d have stopped her. He’d have rounded up an army and insisted they go to war instead, which was exactly what Charlie wanted to avoid, so instead she’d turned to the one person who had as much to gain as she did from sneaking off to Astonia.

The fact that she’d decided to take someone as unpredictable and revenge-minded as the former revolutionary only made her situation all the more precarious. Who knew what would happen to the two of them.