Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

Author:Ashley Poston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Ana

Everything she knew was a lie. Her parents. Her history. Her scars—had Siege lied to her, too? Had Siege known who she was all this time? She must have—she found Ana, after all. It must have been why Siege didn’t want her on the Tsarina. The realization hurt deeply, somewhere in the center of herself, carving out a hole like a bullet wound.

She was a lie.

People flooded into the throne room, more than there had been a few moments before, kissing the back of her hand, pressing their foreheads against her palms, telling her how happy they were that she was alive. But she wasn’t so sure she was anymore. She didn’t remember the faces of these Advisers who knew her name, or the servants who bowed to the floor, or even the Grand Duchess, who disappeared so quickly after everyone had risen to their feet in the throne room that Ana almost believed that she had been a ghost.

“Don’t overwhelm Her Grace,” a short man with a gray mustache said, shooing the Advisers away. Her thoughts were a blur, spinning. “I’m sure she is very tired. Would you like to retire to your room, Your Grace?”

“My . . . room? Who’re you?”

“I am the Grand Duchess’s, and now your, steward. And yes, Your Grace, your room. You are home.”

She was very far away from that. Glancing around the throne room for Robb, at a loss for what else to do, she realized he was gone. Of course he was. He’d probably left the second he could.

“Yeah,” she replied, defeated. “Yes—please.”

The steward excused her from the throne room, and in the hallways she could finally breathe. Large potted plants grew against the walls, flowering with moonlilies and roses and purple dragon-tongues.

A small patrol of Messiers accompanied her and her steward to her room. She doubted they were guarding her. The crown might not have rusted, but she had just been convicted of treason not an hour ago.

But at the moment, she was too tired to care.

The steward showed her to a room somewhere in one of the towers. Hallway after hallway, each lit with bobbing lanterns that floated in an invisible river above them. When the steward finally stopped at a room at the end of a long corridor, and the Messiers took up position on either side of the door, she was lost. There was a crest above the door—the Armorov insignia.

A crescent moon with a sword down its middle.

Inside was a queen-size four-poster bed with a silken white canopy draped over the mahogany bedposts. The breeze from the open balcony window fluttered the silks so they danced in the evening light and drew shadows across the marble floor. There was a dressing table against the far wall, filled with opulent perfumes and pearl-studded accessories, and a wardrobe so big she could live in that, instead.

The bedroom was so large she felt like a mouse inside a lion’s cage.

Through a connecting door there looked to be a parlor of sorts, and beyond that a study—there were certainly a lot of expensive-looking books.

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