The question only deepened her confusion. Slowly, cautiously, she shook her head.

"Yesterday was the king’s coronation," Falein said. "Ragnar and his wife were crowned king and queen."

He watched with open satisfaction as horror spread across Nheera’s face.

"And the day before that," he continued, "was Hairan’s burial. It was quite a humble affair. A shame you were not there to witness it."

Nheera’s head jerked back as though he had physically struck her.

"Liar," she rasped. The word scraped out of her throat like shattered glass. "You filthy, vengeful liar. Hairan is alive. He must be alive."

But a dull ringing had started in her ears.

The walls around her suddenly felt too close. Her breathing grew uneven as her mind tried to reject everything he had just said.

No.

No, it was impossible.

Then she began shaking her head frantically, uncaring of the pain the movement caused.

Anger ignited inside her chest, burning through the confusion and terror.

He was lying. He had to be lying.

He had not come merely to gloat over her imprisonment. He wanted to torment her. To break her with cruel fabrications.

"No," she whispered again before her voice rose sharply. "My son is alive. Show him to me. Take me to him." Her eyes blazed furiously despite the tears gathering within them. "You will do as I say, I am still your queen."

But Falein only continued watching her calmly.

"I have never liked you," he began.

Nheera froze.

"Even when I first met you all those years ago, I saw you for exactly what you were. A manipulative, social-climbing wretch. You use people until they no longer serve your purpose, then discard them without remorse. I understood your intentions the moment you began forcing yourself into Prince Orrin’s path whenever you could, desperate for his attention. And when you realized you could not have that prince, you settled for another. His cousin, no less." His voice remained maddeningly calm. "I disliked you, but part of me understood why you were the way you were. I didn’t want to hold it against you. You were the daughter of a wastrel lord, a minor nobleman standing at the edge of ruin. You were trying to survive in a cruel world. But none of that could hide how vile you were. And the more power you gained, the more monstrous you became."

Nheera stared at him silently, still reeling from the revelation about Hairan. Tears glistened in her eyes.

"Then you murdered my daughter," Falein said quietly. "And you blamed her husband for it, when all that man ever did was love her and worship the ground she walked on. But even that was not enough for you. You had to take another child from me. When Luria died, I still believed in the king. I believed that if I waited patiently, the people responsible would eventually face justice. Then my son was killed, and I realized what a fool I had been all those years. I could have waited another decade and nothing would have changed. Their killers would have continued walking freely through the world without punishment."

His eyes locked onto hers.

"And I could not allow that. I did not want justice anymore. I wanted revenge. Your son Azul did not struggle at all when the blade was dragged across his throat," Falein said. "At least, that is what the assassin I hired told me. He was weak, frail and completely pliant. Nothing like the man he had been the day he murdered my son."

A violent tremor ripped through Nheera’s body.

A strangled sound escaped her throat before she suddenly lunged forward, ignoring the white-hot agony that exploded through her body. She slammed both palms against the iron bars so hard the impact rattled through the cell.

"Monster!" she screamed. The force of it tore painfully through her throat, but the fury inside her was far stronger than the pain. "How could you?"

Another broken sound tore itself from her chest, something between a sob and a scream, something utterly feral. She struck the bars again and again, the metal clanging loudly through the dark prison.

Falein watched her outburst with a small smirk tugging at his lips, his eyes gleaming with grim satisfaction as he drank in every second of her suffering.

"I wanted you to feel what you forced upon me. The pain of losing a child. Because of you, I lost two, and nothing gives me more joy than seeing you broken and suffering, watching the misery slowly chip away at your sanity," Falein straightened to his full height. "Yesterday, the king asked me to become his chief advisor, and I said yes. The man is like a son to me, and I will gladly aid him in his mission to rebuild everything you and your greed destroyed. And because I am so gracious, I will appeal to him. Instead of executing you for your crimes, he should leave you here to rot in your shame and shattered pride. Death is too merciful a punishment for someone like you."

Then he turned and walked away, taking the light with him as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the cell.

"I’ll kill you!" she shrieked at his retreating form. Spittle flew from her cracked lips as her voice echoed harshly. "I’ll have your entire bloodline erased. I’ll feed your wife’s heart to the dogs while you watch. When I get out of here, I will make you beg for the mercy you never showed my son!"

Her arms finally gave out. She sagged against the bars, pressing her forehead to the cold steel as her chest heaved. The rage drained from her as quickly as it had come, leaving behind only a hollow, gnawing wound in the center of her chest.

Hairan.

Her boy. The son she had schemed and bled and murdered for. Gone.

Tears burned hotter than the flames that had eaten away at her face. They seeped through the stained bandages wrapped around her skin and stung like fire against raw flesh. She did not bother wiping them away. What was the point? No one was there to witness her weakness except the man who had already taken everything from her.