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ddy joy. “Would you kiss the bride already, Sevan?” a voice called in the background. “I’m in the mood to get drunk.”
Like most modern rings, the diamond had recorded all the significant events of the couple’s marriage, from the wedding ceremony to their son’s birth.
Kuarc extended his hand, his expression dazed. She dropped the ring in his palm. “They were married in a secret ceremony not long before the old emperor died. Your mother was pregnant with you at the time,” Zarifa explained softly. “She was a commoner, and Sevan was hoping to present his father with a fait accompli. But the emperor died, and Sevan had to leave her to take up his duties. He apparently planned to announce their marriage once he had the nobility under control. He was on his way back to claim her when he was killed.”
Kuarc blinked the eyes so like her own. “And your father knew all this?”
She nodded. “He’d planted Umar in Sevan’s entourage as a spy. After the assassination, Umar convinced Lodur he could be emperor. All they had to do was conceal the fact that you were Sevan’s legitimate son. Then Umar spent the next fifteen years blackmailing my father.”
“Lodur always claimed my mother was one of the maids. Said Grandfather got rid of her.” He looked stunned. “What really happened to her?”
“She’s still alive,” Zarifa told him. “But Umar programmed her nanosystem to ensure she could never tell anyone about the marriage or about you.”
“Why didn’t they just kill me?” He stared down at the ring, visibly struggling to take it all in. “It would have been easier all the way around.”
“You were an infant, Kuarc,” Zarifa told him. “Umar floated the idea, but my father wouldn’t have it.”
“Lodur wasn’t evil,” Rance murmured, repeating what she’d said weeks before. “He just wasn’t very good.”
Mechanically, Kuarc thumbed the diamond. “Would you kiss the bride already, Sevan?” the recorded voice repeated. “I’m in the mood to get drunk.” He thumbed it again. “Would you kiss the bride already, Sevan? I’m in the mood to get drunk.”
Kuarc frowned. “That’s Edin’s voice.”
“You’re right.” Zarifa rose to her feet. “I hadn’t spoken to him in ten years, so I didn’t recognize it.”
Kuarc turned to stare at Edin. “You knew about all of this, but you never said a word.” His eyes narrowed in sudden realization—and a growing, deadly rage. “It was you. It wasn’t some madman who killed Sevan—it was you all along.”
Edin’s mouth worked, his eyes darting from side to side as he visibly considered whether to lie. Until the truth exploded from him. “Yes! Because I should have been emperor! My blood is as royal as yours—and I’m not a naive fool!”
“So you spent years betraying my father, betraying me, even betraying Umar—playing all ends against the middle.” Kuarc shook his head, a bitter twist to his lips. “You even had me believing Zarifa was involved in Lodur’s murder.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Edin sneered. “As I said, you’re a fool. Like your father, like your uncle, like your bitch cousin. None of you deserved to rule!”
“That’s just too bad, because now I am emperor.” His gaze was cold and regal. “And my first official act will be to discover just what kind of treason you’ve been committing all these years.”
TEN
Rance walked onto the elegant marble balcony and stopped in his tracks to gape in mingled awe and pain.
Zarifa stood silhouetted by the setting sun. She wore an exquisite dark green velvet grown with a long train, the fabric intricately embroidered in gold and gems. Her red hair was piled on her head in a cascade of silken curls. The sunlight slanting over the palace grounds painted her exquisite face in gold.
She looked every inch the empress she no longer was.
Zarifa had abdicated the throne today at Kuarc’s coronation ceremony. Her last act as empress had been to award Rance the Order of the Lion, the crown’s highest honor in recognition of civilian heroism. The heavy gold medallion hung around his neck from a crimson ribbon, glinting against the black silk jacket he wore.
He felt like an idiot.
Being in the center of a media hurricane hadn’t helped his acute discomfort. Just hours after Umar’s death, Kuarc and Zarifa had given a joint press conference from the asteroid base. Together they’d laid out all the events of recent imperial history with merciless honesty, including Edin’s murder of Sevan and Lodur’s usurping the throne from his then-infant nephew.
Shock waves would still be blasting across the empire for years to come.
A week had passed since then. Zarifa had ordered the marines to stand down so that Kuarc and his men could land on Throneworld. Umar’s cronies might have kicked up a fuss about that, but they probably feared calling attention to their own dubious activities.
Now she’d brought Rance here, to this intimidating palace of hers. He was a free man in truth, his neck bare of the slave collar, his nanosystems under his full control again. Best yet, Kuarc had announced his intention to abolish slavery.
Rance had everything he’d worked for all these years. Yet he was afraid the one thing he really wanted was beyond his reach.
Why should a woman who had all this trade it in for the Freeworlds and life with a werewolf?
