“Of course,” he said, and he smiled as if all were well, and his mind wasn’t a wildfire. He left the room, his legs feeling thick and heavy, his every footstep pushing as if walking through wet sand. Down the stairs, and to Thorda’s study, with each passing moment a dragged, bloated thing. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Such a truth, such a betrayal, was more than he could bear. He was overreacting, reaching conclusions based only a few convenient coincidences.

Calm yourself. Clarissa wasn’t there, for I sent her on an errand.

Two errands. Two lives saved. It couldn’t be chance.

Cyrus’s hand touched the handle to the door and held still. He didn’t have to do this. He could walk away, and turn his back to the nagging questions. Doubts could be ignored. The truth could be buried and forgotten. Hadn’t Thanet’s past proven that, with the Orani? He could still be the Vagrant Prince. The war they waged didn’t have to change because of a few words spoken by a dead Imperator who might have easily lied.

Yet just as with the Orani, the truth lingered, never quite gone. Cyrus would cower before none of it, no matter the guilt or the shame. He had to believe he was strong enough to face it. To be the person he needed to be, the person Keles thought he was, he must stand tall before the truth.

No matter how much it hurt.

CHAPTER 48

VAGRANT

Thorda sat on the floor of his study, facing his beloved fireplace. His back was to the door, but hearing Cyrus enter, he slowly rotated until he faced his pupil. A sword lay across his lap, its hilt a beautiful gold, its shining steel curved downward at the end. Cyrus had never seen the blade before, but he could guess whom it once belonged to. It belonged to the man who wore the broken mask Thorda cradled in his hands.

“Yes, prince?” Thorda asked, and he arced a bushy eyebrow.

Cyrus cleared his throat. It felt like he had swallowed shards of glass. A single word bounced around his skull, scraping him with its edges.

Son.

“The ambush,” he said. “It was intentional, wasn’t it?”

Thorda stared into Cyrus’s eyes, meeting his gaze for a long, interminable stretch of silence. Recognition sparkled in them. He knew. They both knew. The mask lowered in his lap, and his hands instead settled upon his sword, one with palm gently pressed to the flat edge, the other holding its golden hilt.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his question nothing but feigned innocence.

“Before I killed him, Magus said there was a traitor in our organization. Someone who leaked word of the meeting, and gave warning of our rescue attempt.”