"Elowen." The name leaves the Queen's mouth like something she's been forbidden to say for twenty years. "They told me you drowned. Crossing the northern strait, the winter after our coronation dispute. I identified what they said were your remains myself."
"You identified what I paid a very talented mortician to provide," Elowen says, stepping fully into the chapel now, torchlight catching the gold in her eyes. "It's remarkable what money and patience can accomplish, sister, when the person doing the mourning wants so desperately to believe."
"Why," the Queen breathes. "Why would you disappear. We were fighting over a coronation, not a war. I would have stepped aside if you'd simply asked."
"Would you?" Elowen's smile turns razor-thin. "I don't think you understand, even now, what our
