Nor felt like she was torn in two beneath it. Half a child, desperate to run to her mother, who after all these years had simply come back to life. But the other half seethed with hatred. With a burning desire to march across the space and demand an explanation.

For her mother, her own Exonian flesh and blood, was Arachnid. Her enemy.

They were one and the same.

“What is the meaning of this?” Nor asked. Confusion swarmed through her as she tried to make sense of this reveal. She looked to her soldiers, who continued to stand at the ready. A few had fallen in the cross fire, but plenty still remained. “No one moves,” Nor commanded. “If they take a step, you are to fire at will.”

“There is so much you don’t know,” Klaren said, drawing Nor’s attention back. “So much that he has done to you, child.”

“She is a queen,” Darai snarled from beside her, his grip on Nor’s hand intensifying as he spoke. “You call her child again, and you will fall.”

“Enough,” Nor said to Darai. “This isn’t your battle, Uncle.”

His jaw shook with the effort not to speak.

Nor looked back to her mother. She had only the evidence of what had transpired with Arachnid to lean on—and the evidence said that Klaren was Arachnid, her enemy, who had come to Arcardius and waged war, who had gotten Zahn killed, who had threatened to drive the killing blade into her own chest.

Nor had feared Arachnid.

But without the helmet on, that threat now seemed diminished. Klaren’s true size was revealed, and she was much smaller than Nor remembered, for she’d been only a girl when she last saw her mother. Less of the regal, beautiful queen she’d once been, now more of a woman who’d been forced to find a way to survive—who had likely done terrible things to make it so.

“You were once loyal to Exonia,” Nor said, harnessing that angry part of herself, pushing the chill of the day away. “How could you betray our people like this?” Her mind swarmed with the sudden and intense surge of rage, the very same that had come over Nor all her life, had driven her decisions, had made her the queen she was today.

“Don’t listen to her, Majesty,” Darai said. “She is a traitor to you, and a traitor to Exonia!”

Yes, Nor thought.

It made Nor’s blood boil as she thought of how this woman had simply disappeared from her life. Gone in an instant, leaving nothing but a message and a mission, half-complete, only to return now, years later, on the wrong side.