Морган Райс - Hero, Traitor, Daughter

“You think I haven’t thought it through?” Stephania countered. “Felldust is fractious. It cannot afford to have its soldiers sitting, laying siege to a castle it cannot take. They would fight amongst themselves in weeks, if not before. They will have to talk.”

“And you think they’ll play fair with you?” Ceres asked.

Sometimes, she could barely believe the arrogance Stephania showed.

“I am not a fool,” Stephania said. “I have one of my handmaidens preparing to play the part of me for the first meeting, so that if they try to betray us, I have time to flee the city through the tunnels. After that, I will present you, kneeling and in chains, to First Stone Irrien. An offering with which to begin peace negotiations. And who knows? Perhaps First Stone Irrien will find himself… amenable to joining our two nations together. I feel I could do a lot alongside someone like that.”

Ceres shook her head at that thought. She would no more kneel on Stephania’s command than on that of any other noble. “You think I’m going to give you the satisfaction – ”

“I think that I don’t have to wait for you to give anything,” Stephania snapped back. “I can take anything I want from you, including your life. Remember that, in what follows: if it weren’t for this war, I would have shown you mercy, and just killed you.”

It sounded as though Stephania had as strange an idea about mercy as about everything else in the world.

“What happened to you?” Ceres asked her. “What made you into this?”

Stephania smiled at that. “I saw the world as it was. And now, I think, the world will see you as you are. I can’t kill you, so I’ll destroy the symbol you made yourself into. You’re going to fight for me, Ceres. Again and again, without the strength that made people think you were so special. In between, we’ll find ways to make it worse.”

That didn’t sound so different from anything Lucious or the royals had tried to do.

“You’re not going to break me,” Ceres promised her. “I’m not going to collapse and beg just for your entertainment, or your petty revenge, or whatever else you want to call it.”

“You will,” Stephania promised her in return. “You’re going to kneel before the First Stone of Felldust and beg to be his slave. I’ll make sure of it.”

Felene had stolen plenty of boats in her time, and she was pleased to find this one was one of the better ones. It wasn’t much more than a skiff, but it sailed beautifully, seeming to respond as quick as thought, feeling like an extension of herself.

“It would need more holes in it for that,” Felene said, moving to bail out water that had washed over the side. Even doing that hurt, and as for the times when she had to row because the wind had dropped…

Felene winced just thinking about that.

She tested the wound gingerly, moving her arm in every direction to stretch the muscles of her back. There were some movements where it almost seemed as though she could ignore its presence, but there were others —

“Depths take you!” Felene swore as pain flashed through her, white hot.

The worst part was that every flash of pain brought with it memories of being stabbed. Of looking into Elethe’s eyes while Stephania stabbed her from behind. Every physical pain brought with it the agony of betrayal as well. She’d dared to think…

“What,” Felene demanded. “That you might finally end up happy? That you’d float off with a princess and some lovely girl, and the world would just leave you alone?”

It was stupid thinking. The world didn’t offer the happy endings you got in singers’ tales. Certainly not for a thief like her. No matter what happened, there would always be something else to steal, whether it was a jewel, or a slice of the map, or the heart of some girl who would then turn out to…

“Stop it,” Felene told herself, but that was harder than it looked. Some wounds didn’t just heal over.

Not that her physical one had, yet. She’d stitched it as best she could on the beach, but Felene was starting to worry about the puncture Stephania’s knife had left in her back. She lifted her shirt high enough to douse it with sea water, gritting her teeth against the pain as she washed it clean.

Felene had been wounded before, and this felt like a bad one. She’d seen wounds like this among others, and generally it hadn’t ended well. There had been that climbing guide who had found himself mauled by an ice leopard’s claws when Felene had been trying to steal from one of the dead temples. There had been the slave girl Felene had rescued on a whim after her master had whipped her bloody, only to watch her waste and die. There had been that gambler who had insisted on staying at the table, even after he’d gashed his hand on a broken shard of glass.

The sensible thing to do right now, Felene knew, was to head back the way she had come, seek out a healer, and rest for as long as it took to get back to everything she had been. Of course, by that point, the invasion would probably be over, and everyone involved would be scattered to the wind, but Felene would be all right again, free to go off wherever she wanted.

It shouldn’t make any difference to her how the invasion turned out, after all. She was a thief. There would always be things to steal, and there would always be those who wanted to hunt her down. There would probably even be more in the aftermath of a war, when things tended to get a little less tightly controlled, and there were always gaps for someone cunning enough to slip through.

She could go back to Felldust, rest up, and then find some fresh adventure to set out on. She could go off in search of long-lost islands, or head into the lands where ice closed over everything like a fist. There might be treasure and violence, women and drink. All the things that had tended to mix together so readily in her life to date.

What made her keep the small boat’s tiller pointed toward Delos was simple: it was where Stephania and Elethe would be. Stephania had tricked her about Thanos. She’d used her to get to Felldust, and then she’d tried to kill her. More than that, she’d tried to kill Thanos, even if the rumors around Felldust suggested that he had at least survived through to the rebellion’s capture of the city.

Felene found that she couldn’t let what Stephania had done go. Felene had left plenty of enemies behind her when she sailed on, but she didn’t like to leave unsettled debts. She’d fought a duel in Oakford once over an insult a year before, and once hunted down a locksmith who had tried to cut her out of her share, following him across half the Grasslands.

Stephania was going to die for what she’d done. As for Elethe…

In a lot of ways, that betrayal was worse. Stephania was a snake, and Felene had known it from the moment she set foot on the boat. Elethe had actually dared to make her feel something. For one of the first times in her life, Felene had dared to think beyond the next theft, and had started to dream.

“And what a dream,” Felene said to herself. “Traveling the world, rescuing beautiful princesses and seducing fair maidens. Who do you think you are? Some kind of hero?”

It sounded more like the kind of thing Thanos might have done than something for the likes of her.

“My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t met you, Prince Thanos,” Felene said. She jerked on one of the lines for her boat, setting it skimming in a new direction.

She didn’t mean it though. The main thing her life would have been if she hadn’t met Thanos was shorter. She would have died on the Isle of Prisoners without him, and after that…

He was a man who seemed to have a cause. Who stood for something, even if it had taken Felene to remind him of what that was. He was a man who had been prepared to fight against everything he’d been brought up to be. He’d fought the Empire, even though it would have been easier for him not to do it. He’d been prepared to give his life to save the likes of Stephania, which was truly the kind of thing a hero did.