The man on the throne swallowed nervously. Rose to his feet, raised his hands over his head. "I give you my crown freely." He walked down to stand before Aery, his hands still in the air. "Take it."
Something was wrong with that. "You are a coward. You should not rule Adarlan if you do not intend to keep the throne." But the man just smiled.
Aery's hand flicked up, her short dagger shallowly slit his throat. Shallowly, but deep enough to kill. "You deserve a slower death than this. But I am not a torturer, unlike your people."
The man laughed, a long laugh, until his lungs were nearly out of air. "I would not raise a hand against my sister, especially my sister with such powerful allies. Just look at what your... friend has made you into, killing an unarmed man in cold blood. It is vengeance enough for me... Enna." And then he fell over dead.
And Aery froze. Enna. Aleksander's pet name for her when she was about six and he was fourteen. Enna. And...
She bent down and pulled the mask off of his face and stumbled back as if she had been stabbed. And in a way she had. Alek. Her protector and friend and very first mentor. Dead.
Her brother.
She'd killed her own brother.
He'd not drawn a weapon on her.
But he'd been the one who'd ordered her kidnapped and tortured.
But she'd murdered him in cold blood.
Over a dead, cold, glass throne.
Over her own cursed ambition.
Alek was dead.
Because of her.
She fell to her knees, sobbing, tearing at her flesh with her own nails trying to get the blood off.