She thought she’d done it. Fixed him. Saved the Reaches. Defeated the heir.

Really, the heir had been at her side all along. Snaking her way into Akeylah’s heart. She closed her eyes, and behind the lids, she saw the tableau again. Rozalind with the bloodletter in her fist. Kneeling in a pool of cursed blood next to her father’s blackened body.

It’s not what it looks like, Rozalind had sputtered. Right before she fled the scene.

Ever since that moment, Akeylah had drifted in a haze. She issued orders in a listless, numb tone. First the body—she’d asked the menders to take care of it. Then Rozalind—she’d ordered the Talons to find her. When they asked why, she told them in a voice deadened by anger, by sorrow, by too many in-between emotions to name. “Rozalind knows what happened. She was with him at the end.”

It should have worried her, how easily everyone accepted her word. She watched Talons nod to each other, menders gaze down at Father’s body with fresh suspicions in their eyes. It proved to Akeylah what she’d known deep down all along—nobody here really trusted the foreign queen.

Akeylah had wanted so desperately for the prejudiced, judgmental courtiers to be wrong. For Rozalind to be the girl she’d fallen for, the girl she’d come to trust, to love. Rozalind was more than just some Genalese infiltrator—she was kind, caring, supportive. The one person Akeylah had felt she could rely upon.

But it seemed the Keep’s vipers were right, after all. Rozalind had been against them, against Akeylah from the very start.

It’s not what it looks like.… That’s what Rozalind had said when Akeylah found her crouched over her father, knife in hand.

She balled her fists. No, Rozalind. It’s never what it looks like with you, is it?

After deploying the Talons, there had been the other tasks. Akeylah had ordered the death knell for Father’s passing, bells tolled all across the city. Then she’d called an emergency session of the council of lords and the regional council, jointly.

“We need a temporary regent,” Danton began the meeting, first thing.

“What we need is to find the former queen,” Lord Rueno interrupted. “Are these Talons even trying? How could one lone woman evade them so long?”

Akeylah watched them speak from the head of the room, struggling to keep her mind focused on the here and now. But her thoughts kept chasing after Rozalind. Wondering where the queen was, how she was evading the Talons’ grasp. Whether she regrets it. Whether anything we had was real.

Captain Lindle, head of the Talons, bristled. “My men are doing their best.”