She slammed the door in their faces.

Then, finally, staring down at her vatarh’s gray, sunken face, she allowed herself to cry, kneeling alongside his bed and holding his cold, withered hands. “I loved you, Vatarh,” she told him. Alone with him, there could be truth. “I did. Even after you abandoned me, even after you gave Fynn all the affection I wanted, I still loved you. I could have been the heir you deserved. I will still be that, if I have the chance.”

She heard the scrape of bootsteps at the door and rose to her feet, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her tashta, and sniffing once as Fynn pushed the door open. He strode into the chamber-Fynn never simply walked into a room. “Sister,” he said. “I see the news reached you.”

Allesandra stood, arms folded. She would not let him realize how deeply seeing her vatarh on his deathbed had affected her. She shrugged. “I still have sources here in Brezno, even when my brother fails to send a messenger.”

“It slipped my mind,” he said. “But I figured you would hear anyway.” The smile he gave her was more sneer, twisted by the long, puckered scar that ran from the corner of his right eye and across his lip to the chin: the mark of a Tennshah scimitar. Fynn, at twenty-four, had the hard, lean body of a professional soldier, a figure that suited the loose pants and shirt that he wore. Such Tennshah clothing had become fashionable in Firenzcia since the border wars six years before, where Fynn had engaged the T’Sha’s forces and pushed Firenzcia’s borders nearly thirty leagues eastward, and where he had acquired the long scar that marred his handsome face.

It was during that war that Fynn had won their vatarh’s affection entirely and ended any lingering hope of Allesandra’s that she might become Hirzgin.

“The healers say the end will come sometime today, or possibly tonight if he continues to fight-Vatarh never did give up easily, did he? But the soul shredders will come for him this time.