“I have one condition, though. I believe it will please you.” Imeria’s smile broadened, and she held out her hand. Luntok brushed past Laya to join her. “You will become the queen Maynara needs, Laya. And your betrothed will join you on the throne,” she declared for the entire room to hear.

Laya’s gaze snapped to Luntok, who nodded in encouragement. “You mean⁠—”

“We will marry,” he told her. “Isn’t that what we always wanted?”

Her heart hammered in her chest. Her gaze trailed down to Luntok’s hands⁠—the hands that had traced prayers across the length of her spine. The same hands that had held her down in the great hall the previous night.

“I wanted to marry you,” she said weakly. That had been before⁠—before Luntok had joined the attack on her family. Before he’d allowed his mother to string her up in chains.

“Hara Duja never would have allowed it, for the same reason she’d never have stepped down from the throne. She’s stubborn, unaware of her own shortcomings,” Imeria said. “Don’t you see? She gave me no choice but to intervene.”

Laya shook her head. She knew what Imeria was doing. She was trying to poison her mind, same as she poisoned the minds of Luntok and Datu Gulod and all the others with whom she conspired. She thought Laya was as weak-willed as them, that she could be swayed by flattery and empty promises.

“I cannot marry Luntok,” she said, and stared him straight in the eye. “I refuse to marry a traitor.” The words echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling of the throne room, loud and damningly clear.

Imeria’s jaw tightened. “What a change in tune from a few days ago,” she said, “when you let my son play you like a lute.”

Laya’s cheeks burned, but she refused to let Imeria humiliate her. “I am not the one who was played.” Defiantly, she met Luntok’s gaze. This time, however, he looked away.

“Oh, child.” Imeria clicked her tongue in pity. “Who do you think engineered the attack on the palace? Who do you think snuck our men through the gap beneath the garden wall?”

A clammy feeling spread across her skin.

“Luntok couldn’t have broken into the palace on his own,” Imeria said. “How generous of you, Laya, to show him the way.”

Laya’s throat constricted. A weight dropped on top of her chest. Years earlier, she’d been the one who’d taught Luntok how to sneak past the palace guard through the tunnel under the wall⁠—the tunnel that belonged to no one but the pair of them. She had been so sure that he loved her. That he was devoted to no one else. Had he fought to win her heart, knowing he could twist its strings for his own gain? Had he always planned to betray her?