This Cursed Crown by Alexandra Overy

Author:Alexandra Overy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2022-09-26T16:07:09+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Asya woke with her sister’s name on her lips. Somewhere between a gasp and a shout, raw against her throat.

But it wasn’t the phantom that had haunted all these lost days. It was her sister, flesh and blood. Sitting in a stout wooden chair, her hair disheveled and face pinched. But breathing. Alive. Here.

Asya couldn’t stop staring at her, afraid if she blinked her sister might slip through her fingers again. She didn’t look quite as she remembered. Her hair was pulled back in a simple plait, her eyes drawn, and she wore what looked like a set of Asya’s hunting clothes. A strange reflection—who Izaveta might have been.

“Iza,” she said softly, and her sister’s eyes fluttered open. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Izaveta leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees. “I could say the same.”

Asya followed her sister’s gaze to the slowly healing wound on her side. Firestone, Asya remembered that now.

It was an odd picture, the two of them. One that had played out before, Iza at Asya’s bedside while Asya tried to piece together what had happened.

But it wasn’t the same now, no matter how much Asya wished it could be.

She’d been so focused on her sister that only when she pushed herself up to sitting did the room begin to fill in around them. Familiar low rafters, the comforting warmth of a small fire, the oddly familiar confines of the narrow bed she lay in.

The Roost, where she’d lived with Tarya.

It felt so out of place against her memories, an overlay that couldn’t hide what lurked beneath. Her own shashka running Commander Iveshkin through. The burn of that spell and the ease of Azarov’s death.

She shook her head, hazy memories jostling against each other. How had they ended up at the Roost?

She opened her mouth to ask Izaveta just that, but the question that came out instead was “How are you here?”

Izaveta looked up at her—properly looked, for the first time since she’d awoken. There was something not quite right in that look. Something that made the relief in Asya’s stomach turn sour.

“I—” Izaveta swallowed, some truth she didn’t want to share shrouded in her eyes. “I’m not quite sure.”

“But where were you?” Asya asked, an echo of hurt in her voice. She could see the lies gathering on her sister’s face even now.

“I was in a tower,” Izaveta began. “I don’t know how I got there, but the Azarovs—” She broke off, catching herself. “I think they made some kind of bargain.”

Asya didn’t say anything as Izaveta told her story, each piece more confusing than the last. How she’d watched that curse spread within the palace, supposedly because of a crown. Letters she’d found that pointed to spies—those were hardly surprising—and a saint’s ring that could travel through the skies.

“He...” Izaveta swallowed. “Whoever kept me in that tower, it wasn’t Kyriil. He had magic beyond what should be possible.”

Fear flashed in the depths of her brown eyes, an expression Asya was so unused to on her sister.

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