Chapter Fourteen
I leaned back on my seating cushion, my mind reeling.
The imperial heir was a murderer. He had wiped out any possible competition for the throne from the Halmeni line, and killed his own mother before she could give birth to her third child—another potential rival. Now all that was left was his younger brother, Kalil.
The emperor was hardly a problem. Sarad Dharakmeni had been a decent ruler, as far as things in the empire went. But he had been completely broken by the loss of his beloved wife. As Admon’s foster-son, I had been among the nobles at the funeral who had seen him break down at the sight of the empress’s body. Both the Halmeni line and Empress Shirah had been members of the Isketi clan, which had once stood as the most powerful of the nobles, immediately beh
