Page 86 of Thief of Hearts

Chapter Twenty-Six

At first I thought I’d misheard him. “What did you just say?”

“I am going to take the diviner stone from you.”

What was happening? Was I asleep and this was a new dream? I looked to my left as if Invara and Eramis might suddenly appear.

But this was not a dream. It was the coldness in his face and his voice, the finality and surety of what he was saying, that let me know this was very real.

I took out my sword. Had he hit his head yesterday in the final event? I had no other explanation for why he was behaving this way. I didn’t know this Zain.

“You’re not going to take the stone,” I said.

“I understand that you have issues with your mother, but there are things far more important in this world than winning your mother’s favor.” He said it dismissively, as if my dreams were small and worthless.

And I’d already resolved to give her the stone and let her ask a question. This could help my entire nation. He wouldn’t be stealing it from me.

“More important things like your great treasure?” I shot back.

He didn’t answer.

All of this for some gold?

“If you were in such a hurry to die, you should have just said something in Sagaris,” I said. “I could have helped you then.”

“Put your sword away,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Would I kill him? I wasn’t going to let him take the stone. I had earned it, and it could help Thrace.

It would not bring me pleasure but I would stop him from stealing what was mine.

“You haven’t fought me yet, but you will lose,” I told him. “I am undefeated.”

I didn’t count Lia because we had only been sparring.

“There’s always a first time for everything.”

“This is foolish. I will end you.”

He stood in the shadows, waiting.

Everything that had passed between us over the last week—I began to see it all in a very different light.

Zain should have finished what he’d started.

“You would have been better off romancing the stone from me than stealing it openly,” I said.

His silence made me think that had been his original plan.

I had been completely taken in by him.

This colored every action and conversation we’d ever had. “You sat there by my side encouraging me, helping me, standing up for me, for it all to lead to this moment.”

No wonder he’d been so excited whenever I’d won. He knew it was getting him closer to this, when he planned on stealing the diviner stone. Taking it from the woman who had been enough of a fool to fall for his lies.

To have believed him when he said that I was beautiful.

All tainted.