The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson

Author:Mary E. Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781627794701
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

And Morrighan raised her voice,

To the heavens,

Kissing two fingers,

One for the lost,

And one for those yet to come,

For the winnowing was not over.

—Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. IV

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

KADEN

After four days on the road, I decided the gods were against me. Maybe they always had been. No such luck that the governor would be coming my way, half sloshed and late. The brothel in the last town hadn’t had the pleasure of his visit yet, and that was a stop he never missed. He was still somewhere on the road from here to there—or he hadn’t left yet at all.

Damn Governor Tierny. I’d wring his neck when I caught up with him. Unless someone else had already done that job for me.

The weather was miserable, cold winds by day, cold rain by night. The men who traveled with me were surly. Winter was coming early. But it wasn’t the icy winds that were leaving me raw. It was my last night with Lia. I had never told anyone, not even the Komizar, what my mother’s name was.

Cataryn.

It was as though I had raised her from the dead. I had seen her again, heard her voice again, as I told Lia about her. Saying her name aloud, something tore inside of me, but then I couldn’t stop telling Lia more, remembering how much my mother had loved me—the only person who had ever loved me. That wasn’t something I had wanted to share with Lia, but in the dark, once I had said her name, it all poured out, right down to the color of her eyes.

And my father’s eyes. That memory stopped me. I hadn’t told her everything.

Lia. Like a whisper on the wind.

At first I had thought that was all it was, the wind and long hours riding alone. When Lia had first told me her name in the tavern, it had reminded me of the hush I heard riding across the savanna, Lia through the canyons in the desert, Lia, the cry of a distant wolf. Lia wheedling into my heart before I ever laid eyes on her. And then Lia as I stood over her in the darkness of her room, my knife in hand. It was a whisper I finally couldn’t ignore, though I had managed to choke it from my life from the moment I met the Komizar. The knowing had only brought me pain.

I had used it the way Lia had. I had told the lady of the manor she was going to die a slow and horrible death, though I had seen no such thing. I was eight years old and angry that it was my own mother who was dying and not the petty one of my half brothers, a woman who had never shown me any kindness. That was when my first beating came. It was at the hands of my father, not the beggars. They only left scars atop the ones he had already laid deep.

Which one was it,

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