LITMIR.BIZ

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Angelica told herself.

      The Dowager was waiting for her, seated on a comfortable chair and drinking some kind of herbal tea. Angelica remembered her deep curtsey this time, and it seemed that Sebastian’s mother wasn’t in a mood to play games.

      “Please rise, Angelica,” she said in a tone that was surprisingly mild.

      Still, it made sense that she would be pleased. Angelica had done everything that was required.

      “Sit there,” the older woman said, gesturing to a spot beside her. It was better than having to kneel before her, although being commanded like that was still a small piece of grit rubbing against Angelica’s soul. “Now, tell me about your journey to Monthys.”

      “It’s done,” Angelica said. “Sophia is dead.”

      “Are you sure of that?” the Dowager asked. “You checked her body?”

      Angelica frowned at the questioning note there. Was nothing good enough for this old woman?

      “I had to escape before that, but I stabbed her with a stiletto laced with the most vicious poison I had,” she said. “No one could have survived.”

      “Well,” the Dowager said, “I hope you’re correct. My spies say that her sister showed up?”

      Angelica felt her eyes widening slightly at that. She knew that Rupert wasn’t back yet, so how could the Dowager have heard so much, so quickly? Maybe he’d sent a bird ahead.

      “She did,” she said. “She sailed off with her sister’s corpse, on a boat heading for Ishjemme.”

      “Heading for Lars Skyddar, no doubt,” the Dowager muttered. It was another small shock for Angelica. How could peasants like Sophia and her sister possibly know someone like Ishjemme’s ruler?

      “I’ve done what you wanted,” Angelica said. Even to her, it sounded defensive.

      “Are you expecting praise?” the Dowager asked. “Maybe a reward? Some petty title to add to your collection, maybe?”

      Angelica didn’t like being talked down to like that. She’d done everything the Dowager had required. Sophia was dead, and Sebastian would be home soon, ready to accept her.

      “I have just announced your nuptials to the Assembly of Nobles,” the Dowager said. “I would think that marrying my son would be reward enough.”

      “More than enough,” Angelica said. “Will Sebastian accept this time, though?”

      The Dowager reached out, and Angelica had to force herself not to flinch as the old woman patted her cheek.

      “I’m sure I said that was part of your job. Distract him. Seduce him. Get down on your knees in front of him and beg, if you have to. My reports say that he’s cloaked in grief as he comes home. Your job will be to make him forget all of that. Not mine, yours. Do a good job, Angelica.” The Dowager shrugged. “Now get out. I have things to do. I have to make sure that you actually finished Sophia, for one thing.”

      The dismissal was abrupt enough to be rude. With anyone else, it would have been enough to warrant retribution. With the Dowager, there was nothing that Angelica could do, and that only made it worse.

      Still, she would do what the old woman required. She would make Sebastian hers once he got home. She would be royalty by marriage soon, and that elevation would be more than reward enough.

      In the meantime, the Dowager’s uncertainty about Sophia gnawed at her. Angelica had killed her; she was sure of it, but…

      But it wouldn’t hurt to see what she could learn about events in Ishjemme, just to be certain. She had at least one friend there, after all.

      CHAPTER SIX

      Sophia could feel the rhythmic flow of the ship somewhere beneath her, but it was a distant thing, on the edge of her awareness. Unless she concentrated, it was hard to remember that she had ever been on a ship. She certainly couldn’t find it, even though it was the last place that she could remember being.

      Instead, she seemed to be in a shadowy place, filled with mist that shifted and billowed, fractured light filtering through it so that it seemed more like the ghost of a sun than its reality. In the mist, Sophia had no idea which way was forward, or which way she was supposed to go.

      Then she heard the cry of a child, cutting through the fog more clearly than the sunlight. Somehow, some instinct told her that the child was hers, and that she needed to go to it. Without hesitating, Sophia set off through the mist, running toward it.

      “I’m coming,” she assured her child. “I’ll find you.”

      It continued to cry, but now the mist twisted the sound, making it seem to come from every direction at once. Sophia picked a direction, plunging forward again, but it seemed that every direction she picked was the wrong one, and she got no closer.

      The mist shimmered, and scenes seemed to form around her, set out as perfectly as performances on a stage. Sophia saw herself screaming in childbirth, her sister holding her hand as she brought a life into the world. She saw herself holding that child in her arms. She saw herself dead, with a physiker standing beside her.

      “She wasn’t strong enough, after the attack,” he said to Kate.

      That couldn’t be right though. It couldn’t be true if the other scenes were true. It could happen.

      “Maybe none of it is true. Maybe it’s just imagination. Or maybe they’re possibilities, and nothing is decided.”

      Sophia recognized Angelica’s voice instantly. She spun, seeing the other woman standing there, a bloody knife in her hand.

      “You’re not here,” she said. “You can’t be.”

      “But your child can?” she countered.

      She stepped forward and stabbed Sophia then, the agony of it lancing through her like fire. Sophia screamed… and she was alone, standing in the mist.

      She heard a child crying somewhere in the distance, setting off toward it because she knew instinctively that it was her child, her daughter. She ran, trying to catch up, even as she had the sense that she’d done this before…

      She found scenes from a girl’s life around her. A toddler playing, happy and safe, Kate laughing along with her because they’d both found a good hiding place under the stairs and Sophia couldn’t find them. A toddler pulled from a castle just in time, Kate fighting against a dozen men, ignoring the spear in her side so that Sophia could run with her. The same child alone in an empty room, no parent there.

      “What is this?” Sophia demanded.

      “Only you would demand meaning from something like this,” Angelica said, stepping from the mist again. “You can’t just have a dream, it has to be filled with portents and signs.”

      She stepped forward, and Sophia raised a hand to try to stop her, but that just meant that the knife thrust into her under the armpit, rather than cleanly up through the chest.

      She was standing in the mist, a child’s cries sounding around her…

      “No,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “I won’t keep going around and around this. It’s not real.”

      “It’s real enough for you to be here,” Angelica said, her voice echoing from the mist. “What does it feel like, being a dead thing?”

      “I’m not dead,” Sophia insisted. “I can’t be.”

      Angelica’s laugh echoed the way her child’s cries had before. “You can’t be dead? Because you’re that special, Sophia? Because the world needs you so much? Let me remind you.”

      She stepped from the mist, and now they weren’t standing in mist, but in the cabin of the boat. Angelica stepped forward, the hatred on her face obvious as she thrust the blade into Sophia once more. Sophia gasped with it, then fell, collapsing into darkness as she heard Sienne attack Angelica.

      She was back in the mist then, standing there while

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