Josiri felt sick. Calenne in battle? It was everything he’d striven to prevent. One more failure to add to the list. He didn’t have to ask who’d filled her head with such nonsense. Not with Viktor Akadra standing at her shoulder like some malignant shadow.

The crowd cheered. They cheered for her as they never had for him.

“We will be free of the Hadari,” shouted Calenne. “And equals in the Republic once more. I have asked Lord Viktor Akadra, the Council’s champion, to join his future to mine. Our families will stand united. The line of Trelan is rising, and the Southshires with it. At long last, we have the power to unmake injustices of the past, and we shall all of us have the future we long for!”

Josiri barely heard the cheers. He scarcely saw Akadra sink to one knee before Calenne. They intended to marry? Every time Josiri believed things could get no worse, they conspired to do so. But how could he stop her?

Muffled cheers rang out again as he entered the great hall. Self-pity boiled away into anger. His hands closed about a chair’s backrest. A wordless, heartsick cry ripping free of his lips, he flung the chair across the chamber. It shattered against flagstones beside the ruin of the upended table. With a choked snarl, Josiri sank to the floor and stared at the empty space where his mother’s portrait had so recently hung.

“I’ve failed you,” he muttered. “I’ve failed everyone.”

She offered no answer, as he knew she could not. In any case, he knew it wasn’t her voice he longed to hear, but Anastacia’s.

He was still there when the cheers at last faded and the church bells rang for seven. The doors to the great hall parted to admit Revekah Halvor.

“I take it you’ve heard?”

“All of it.” He paused, a new thought breaking to the surface. “How did you get in here?”

“Took a brooch and walked.”

“The guards didn’t stop you?”

She shrugged. “There aren’t any. Akadra’s co-opted them into his army.”

“His army? A few hundred souls cowering in the shadow of kraikons.”

“He’ll have more soon enough. Your sister lit quite the fire. Might even shake a group or two out of the Wolf King’s shadow.”

Another reminder of failure. “Like I should have, you mean?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you meant it.”

She sat beside him and rested her forearms on crooked knees. “I spoke to Calenne today. She told me you and I were carrying on like spoilt brats.”

“She said that?”

“That’s the gist.” Revekah sighed. “What if she’s right?”

“She isn’t.”