The Sweetest Betrayal by Natalie Mae

Author:Natalie Mae [Mae, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Natalie Mae
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Minutes later, I stride into the hallway, unguarded and alone. Trembling against the memory of the queen gaping around at her calm, unmoving guards, magic still burning through me, spreading through my thoughts like cracking glass. I don’t know if I’m still in control. I don’t know if I lost it in there. No one came even close to dying, and no one turned that eerie shade of blank like in the war room, but I still feel wrong all the same. I told my friends I’d only use Influence if I feared for our safety. I told my father I would win our allies fairly.

And I just slammed the door on this alliance, possibly for a very long time, for Kasta.

My hands shake. I grasp them and beg my mind to stop thinking. First I need to get Kasta, then the rest of my advisors, then we need to go.

It’s easy enough to ask the servants where the princess went even without knowing Grekan, as Iris’s name is enough to get me headed the right way. The guards barely look at me. They assume, if I’m out here on my own, that it’s by the queen’s grace. How terribly true that is. Between arched windows and around busts of gods I go, until a guard points me toward the weapons’ room at the end of the hall. I round the doorway so fast I almost careen into a full suit of armor, stopping short when I spy Kasta and the princess at the far end. She’s pointing out a coat of arms on the wall, and they’re not touching, but all I need to imagine is her twining her hand in his and then I’m back on the warpath.

I have to do this. It’s just a little magic, and if I couldn’t win Greka’s support back, I can at least make sure what I did today doesn’t doom us.

Princess Iris sees me first. “Ah, Mestrah! It is good news, then? Can we tell him?”

I almost feel bad for her. She honestly doesn’t deserve any of this. She thinks she’s been flirting with someone not under the insecure control of a borderline tyrant, and doubtless she thought this would go smoothly.

“Of course!” I embrace her as new family would, where it’s easier for my magic to run deep. “I know how stressed you were about marrying a stranger,” I mutter into her ear. “I got you out of it. You should be able to take your time with a huge decision like that, not have to bend to a match your mother thought up in an hour.”

She pulls back, and for a moment, I worry she’s so set on Kasta that even my magic won’t work. Then her jaw drops. “How did you know? Oh, we really are going to be good friends. I have been telling my mother for years that I want to court, even for a political match. My father and she went through a terrible separating .

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