What Was Buried
819 Words
"How many," Zayn said, already moving.
"At least forty," the warrior said, keeping pace. "Waiting at the fence. Not attacking."
Sofia ran after him. No one told her to stop.
The southern grounds were chaos, staff pale at the windows, a controlled burn chewing through the brush, black smoke rising in a column visible for miles. Forty figures stood beyond the fence line, no visible weapons, which was worse. One stepped forward, a woman, shaved head, three old scars from her eye to her jaw.
"Your Majesty," she said. "We've been watching the Convergence grounds tonight."
"You crossed a sovereign boundary unmarked," Zayn said. "Give me a reason not to call that an act of war."
"The reason's behind you."
Her eyes moved past him. Recognition, not warmth, the look of someone reaching the end of a very long search.
"You have the mark," she said to Sofia.
"Don't speak to her," Zayn said.
"My name is Sera." She kept her eyes on Sofia. "I served the House of the First Blood. Nineteen years I've carried a name given to me by a dying woman." She pressed a fist to her chest. "Sofia Vane. Hidden by a loyalist. Raised to be invisible."
"Hidden by who," Sofia said.
"Your mother." Sera didn't blink. "Queen Mara. She told the loyalist to take you south and never come back."
Zayn's voice went tight. "The Queen's youngest was an infant. She'd remember none of this."
"Which is why we waited for the mark," Sera said. "Not a memory."
Sofia looked down at her wrist, burning, calm, exactly like it always was when nothing around her was.
Mira and Casian Vane had never existed. Some of the elders at Hollow Ridge had always known, which explained the looks she'd gotten her whole life, the ones that weren't quite pity.
"Who is Mordain," she asked.
Zayn's face shut down. "My uncle. He led the siege. He's spent a decade building an army in the east, and he thinks the throne was always his."
"Your throne," Sofia said.
"If Sera's telling the truth," Zayn said, "it isn't."
"He won't crown you," Sera cut in. "He'll come to finish it. Not to give you power. To make sure you never claim it."
Zayn crossed to Sofia and stopped close enough that she had to tip her head back.
"You're coming to the capital with me."
"You rejected me three hours ago."
"I know what I did."
"Then you understand why I'm not simply—"
"This isn't about the bond." His voice carried a controlled weight. "If the mark's been seen tonight, you have until dawn."
"Your Majesty." Sera's voice sharpened. She was facing east. Her people had shifted stance, hands drifting toward weapons.
From the tree line, drums.
"They're already here," Zayn said.
Chancellor Voss appeared at the top of the embankment. In the torchlight, Sofia saw what he held, a small silver mirror, angled toward the trees.
The information hadn't leaked through spies. It had been sent, deliberately, by the man Zayn had trusted for nine years.
Sofia called his name before she'd decided to.
Voss lowered the mirror slowly, his pale eyes finding her the way a man looks at a conclusion he's been expecting.
"She sees quickly," he said. "Mara's daughters always were."
Zayn's hand went to his blade. Voss raised an arm, and twelve of his men moved with it. Not Zayn's men. His own, seeded into the king's retinue over nine patient years.
"Eight years," Zayn said, quiet.
"Almost nine." Voss spread his hands. "Step back, Your Majesty. The army's twelve minutes out. There's nothing left to do."
"What does he want."
"The throne. And the heir, alive." Voss glanced at Sofia. "People won't follow a usurper. They'll follow the last of Mara's blood, once she's cooperating."
"And if I don't," Sofia said.
"Then you're worth slightly less. Martyrs work almost as well as figureheads."
Her wrist was burning brighter than she'd felt it yet. She stepped forward, past Zayn's shoulder.
His hand caught her arm. The mark flared at the contact, heat traveling up into her chest where the broken bond thread sat jagged and waiting.
He made a sharp sound. His grip changed, no longer stopping her, just holding on.
"The bond isn't rejected," Sera said behind them, her voice dropping into something older. "When the heir's mark wakes, a severed bond can't hold. It's in the oldest laws. If the heir's heart calls to a mate, the bond becomes permanent."
"That's a myth," Zayn said.
"You're feeling it right now."
He didn't answer. His hand on her arm didn't move.
From the tree line, the drums stopped.
The silence after was absolute, the kind that arrives right before something enormous walks through a small space.
Sofia looked at the mark on her wrist, blazing like something that had finally run out of patience.
She was finished being invisible.
- Writer
