The Hundredth Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series Book 1) by Emily R. King

Author:Emily R. King [King, Emily R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781503943650
Publisher: Skyscape
Published: 2017-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

20

I gaze out the balcony door at the falling sun, Asha hovering at my back. “Viraji, it’s time to prepare for the feast.”

“I’m not going,” I say. Tarek brought General Gautam with him to Samiya. He is the reason Jaya was claimed. I will not dine with a monster.

Servants haul in the tub and steaming buckets of bathwater. I do not go inside. They fill the bath and file out of my chamber. I still do not budge.

Asha lingers, a silent shadow behind me. She waits for me to surrender to my weary bones and emotional fatigue. I do not. My stubbornness prevails, and she pads away.

The sky darkens to ash, and Vanhi burns with soft yellow lights. This could never be my home. I favor snowy winters over this harsh heat. I long for the distinctive spiked apexes of the Alpanas over these rolling dunes of dusty sameness. But I will never again return to Samiya. I have no reason to go back without Jaya there. I have been an orphan all my life, but I have never felt without a home, without a family, until now.

“You aren’t dressed for supper.”

I swivel at Mathura’s voice. She has broken the kindred’s rule, coming to the wives’ wing. “I’m not hungry.”

“Neither am I.” She walks to the doorway with a cane. “You put on quite a spectacle today.”

“A useless delay. Taline was executed nevertheless.”

“I meant in regard to the general’s new wife—and my son.”

Jaya is Gautam’s wife?

I turn my stricken face away from Mathura, but she is not finished. “If you care for my son, you will leave him alone.”

I go as still as a hare. Mathura must have seen Deven track me down in the spectators’ tent to warn me about Jaya. I would hate to know who else saw him.

“You needn’t worry,” I say. “Deven would never choose me over the empire.”

After skill demonstrations, he escorted me to my chamber and left without a word. I am certain Taline’s pained screams echo on through his memory, as they do mine.

Mathura walks to my side. “I thought my son would choose the empire above all else too, and then I saw him charge after you into the garden, risking his career, his reputation, his life. Why?” Her gaze searches my face for answers. “Then it occurred to me. To Deven you are the empire. You are the viraji. The people’s champion. His champion. He has confused his devotion to Tarachand with his obligation to protect you.”

My heart capsizes on a wave of crushing hurt. Deven’s loyalty to me is actually his obedience to the rajah. This realization warps every private moment we have had between us. He did not kiss me; I kissed him, and then he asked me to forget about it. Each time we touched before that, he was comforting me, building me up to fight in the tournament.

“What would you have me do?” I whisper. “I cannot request for him to be reassigned. I have no reason to dismiss him.

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