Maritza stared at the braid for a while, then shook her head. “No.”
“Did Egan stay out at night for longer than he should have? Did his behavior seem off at any time?” Valaine asked.
Maritza shook her head again. “No. Milady, believe me. I had no idea this was going on. I would’ve talked to him about it. I would’ve notified the master commander himself, if necessary. We are the empire, and the empire is a part of us. I would never have anyone in my family associated with the Darklings.”
“Do you know anything about this faction? Has Egan ever talked about them?” I asked, analyzing her expression carefully. Her heartbeat was rapid and irregular. It did not exude grief, but rather… anger. Red-hot anger.
Valaine glanced at me for a moment, and I could see it in her eyes. She had a hard time believing what Maritza was telling us. But we had to go easy on her, nonetheless. She was probably simply trying to defend her family honor, but surely she must’ve seen the signs. Egan couldn’t have led such a perfect double life—not without his spouse noticing.
“No. Egan did his job, he came home and put blood on the table. He never gave me any reason to doubt him,” Maritza insisted.
“You don’t think he kept any secrets?” I replied, raising an eyebrow.
For the third time, she shook her head, this time more vehemently. “Never! Egan was a good soulmate… and now he’s gone.” She was about to cry again, when Valaine offered her a handkerchief.
“I need you to focus, Maritza,” she said, watching as the Aeternae wiped her tears with delicate patting motions. “Maybe Egan didn’t tell you anything specifically, but he must have let something slip without even realizing it. Or maybe you noticed something shifting in his behavior, something that didn’t quite fit the Egan you know and love.”
Maritza stilled, her head low. She started trembling, then looked up at us—she was laughing. It wasn’t healthy-looking laughter. It sounded more like a maniacal cackle. And it made my blood run cold.
“You silly cow!” Maritza spat. “First you kill my husband, and then you expect me to participate in your garbage attempt at psychology?”
Valaine froze, her eyes blank with confusion. “Maritza.”
“Maybe I’ll be the one to kill you. Maybe I’ll be the one to end the cycle this time around,” she hissed. The glint of a silver dagger caught my eye as she produced it from a hidden pocket in her skirt.
Maritza lunged forward, going straight for Valaine’s head.
I intercepted her, and we tumbled across the floor, taking down the coffee table with its pitcher and glasses in the process. Glass shattered and blood splattered. I struggled to get the knife out of Maritza’s hand, but she was vicious and remarkably strong.
“Tristan!” I heard Valaine scream, followed by the familiar thudding and jingling of gold armor soldiers. The two we’d had with us had already stormed into the house, but no one could do much, as I was too close to Maritza.
She clawed at my neck and managed to cut deep. I hissed from the pain and slapped her hard, enough to momentarily daze her. I grabbed the knife and threw it to the side, but Maritza quickly came to and kicked me away with such strength that I was projected backward like a rag doll. I rammed into the bookcase, the wood shelves splintering against my shoulder blades and knocking the air from my lungs.
I saw Maritza darting toward Valaine with her claws out. She was going for the kill, and my heart stopped for a moment.
Valaine ripped her throat out in a fit of rage, and Maritza fell to the floor, her head almost fully severed—much like I’d done to one of the Darklings back in the orphanage. Looking at it now, I realized how feral I must’ve seemed to her, for she looked like a beast now, breathing heavily, her hands glazed with blood.
“Milady!” one of the guards said, his claws out. “Are you all right?”
“So to speak,” Valaine answered. She looked at me, concern twinkling in her eyes as she rushed across the room and knelt by my side. “Are you okay, Tristan?”
I nodded slowly. “I’ll live. Maritza packed quite the punch. She took me by surprise.”
“I’m sorry. I had to kill her. She wouldn’t have stopped until one of us was dead,” she whispered. “I saw you get hurt, and… I lost it.”
Despite the savagery we’d both survived throughout the day, culminating in this equally startling incident, I was stunned by Valaine’s quick reaction and apparent affection toward me. At least I wasn’t the only one feeling it all as it shifted around us—our realities, our emotions changing, adjusting, then readjusting until we were brought closer to one another, often without even realizing it.
“Thank you,” I said to her. “You took her down. That’s all that matters.”
“She would’ve been useful to interrogate.” Valaine sighed while I got up and dusted some of the wood splinters off me. The guards checked Maritza’s pockets, her blood spreading and seeping into the handwoven carpet. “Anything?” she asked them.
They produced a black-and-white braid—hers, as Egan’s was on the floor, soaked in Maritza’s blood. “She was a Darkling, too,” the second guard observed. “Are all the Makios Darklings?!”
Valaine shook her head. “I doubt it. Maritza and Egan shared a common goal, clearly… pretending to be upstanding citizens while plotting with the Darklings. I know the Makios dynasty well. They’re good people.”
“Maritza struck me as someone else, entirely,” I said, genuinely baffled. “I… I didn’t see this coming.”
“None of us did,” Valaine replied, her brow furrowed. “But it happened. It’s done. And we’re nowhere closer to the truth. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know the Makios dynasty all that well, either. I mean, I thought I knew Egan. Obviously, that’s not true.”
The first guard straightened his back. “What do you want us to do, Lady Crimson?”
She exhaled sharply, glancing around the room. She picked up another handkerchief from the floor, where the blood hadn’t reached. It had fallen along with the coffee table and several other rolled-up handkerchiefs. Wiping the blood from her hands, Valaine looked at the gold guards again.
“Their children are upstairs, sleeping. Have one of their next of kin come over and take them away. Then, when the house is clear, turn it upside down,” she said firmly. “There must be something in here linking Egan and Maritza to the Darklings. If it had been just Egan, I would’ve been inclined to assume he had a secret hideaway somewhere else…”
“But with the two of them, chances are said hideaway is in here,” I finished her sentence, nodding in agreement. Sadness engulfed me like the coldest, most peculiar fire. “The children… they’re orphans now.”
Valaine was trying hard to keep a straight face, but I knew this was affecting her on a deeper level. Her body language frequently betrayed her. “It’s not something I’m proud of. But I had no other choice.” She looked at the guard again. “Also notify my father that all the members of the Makios dynasty must be brought in for questioning. Just so we’re on the safe side.”
The soldier nodded briefly, backing away.
“No one is blaming you, Valaine,” I said. Suddenly, Maritza’s words came back to me. “What cycle was she trying to end, exactly?”
Valaine shrugged, equally confused. “I have no idea. She wanted me dead to… end the cycle? Did I hear her right?”
“Yes. She mentioned the cycle,” I replied, then glanced at the gold guards. “Do any of you know anything about a cycle? Any kind of cycle?”
The two stared at each other and back at me. “The solar cycle. The moon cycle. The season cycle,” one of them said. “None have anything to do with… well, with this,” he added, motioning around.
