The Inadequate Heir (The Bridge Kingdom Book 3)

by Danielle L. Jensen

Sleep never came easily to him, especially when he wasn’t alone or protected by solid walls and a locked door. He’d been stabbed in the back—literally—too many times for that. Such was the nature of being a Maridrinian prince, the sheer number of brothers ensuring constant jockeying for position, which often meant eliminating the competition. Keris had survived this long because his brothers hadn’t perceived him as a threat, choosing instead to murder the best warriors and most ambitious politicians among them. It had all worked very well until the last of his elder brothers had been killed, leaving Keris as heir, whether he wanted to be or not. And the heir was always the greatest target of all.

“Peace is like a dance,” he said softly. “It only works if both partners are listening to the same music.” And Maridrina only knew the drums of war.

Keris lunged, but the soldier was ready, and in a heartbeat, three of them had him pinned, another wrapping ropes around his ankles, then around his wrists. They proceeded to arm themselves with more of the weapons from the wagon before dropping down the hatch. Then there was nothing but the thunder of his heart and Raina’s ragged, wet breath. He met her gaze. “I didn’t know.” A tear ran down her cheek. “This is the last thing I want.” His eyes burned. “I’m sick of war. Tired of the endless fighting. It’s the reason I was going to Harendell—not because of the books, but because I can’t stomach any more killing. I wanted a different life.”

She’d been fourteen and had gone with her mother, the empress’s younger sister, to visit the estate of a friend, not an hour’s ride south of Nerastis. Just before dawn, Maridrinian raiders had struck, slaughtering the guards and estate workers alike. And then they’d turned on the villa. Like it was yesterday, Zarrah could remember her mother begging she be spared. That she’d do anything if only they’d allow her daughter to live. And Zarrah’s dreams were haunted by the laughter of King Silas Veliant himself as he agreed. As he hacked off her mother’s beautiful head, his men fixing her body to a cross in the middle of the gardens while Zarrah screamed. But he’d kept his word. They’d tied Zarrah to the base of the cross with her mother’s head in her lap. For two days, she’d wept and screamed and struggled against her bonds as blood and worse dripped onto her, as the hot sun turned her mother’s body to rot. And then the empress had come. Galloping into the villa with her war party, she’d been the one to cut Zarrah loose. To clean the filth from her body and hold her close night after night as the terrors took hold. Who, after witnessing weeks of weeping, had put a staff in Zarrah’s hand and said, “Tears will not bring your mother back. Put all your sorrow and all your rage and all your passion into becoming a weapon, and fight to prevent this fate from ever befalling another Valcottan child. I promise you, we will make Silas Veliant bleed for what he has done.” Zarrah had neve...

“I’m not interested in proving myself to him.” Especially given that proving himself to his father meant becoming a killer like every other goddamned member of his family, women included. It was almost a shock that Veliant children weren’t born with their hands stained red.

Except losing wasn’t what made Keris’s blood run cold; it was that he knew he could win. He’d stood in on war council meetings and felt his head fill with strategies for victory, his mind all too capable of distancing itself from the realities of war, if he allowed it. And if he did it once, he had no confidence that he wouldn’t do it again and again until his hands were as drenched in blood as his father’s.

Gritting her teeth, she carried on. Because this was Nerastis: lawless and dangerous and miserable, and though both Valcotta and Maridrina fought endlessly to possess it, neither did anything to improve it.

“Why should you care for the life of your enemy?” “Because I’ve seen enough death to last me a lifetime, and if I have my way, I’ll never be the cause of it.”

“How many men and women do you suppose have died in the war over this city?” “Who can say?” Though she knew the answer: tens of thousands. It was surprising the earth itself wasn’t stained red, so many had fallen in this place. “Even if it were only one, it would be too many,” he said. “Because this is a war fueled not by the desire to improve the lives of the people but by the greed and pride of kings and empresses, and no one should have to give their life for that.”

“Do you know who started the Endless War, Valcotta? Who threw the first punch?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “No one does, though of surety both sides blame the other. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that an emperor and a king long dead both wanted this land and had too much pride in their hearts to split it down the middle. And though thousands have died to claim it, Nerastis sits in ruins and much of the land around it is fallow. Anyone who thinks it is honorable to continue such a fight is a goddamned fool.” Zarrah jerked, hand going to her weapon as fury rose in her heart. “If you had any concept of what your people have done to mine, the number of orphans they’ve left in their wakes, you’d—” “I do understand, because your people have done the same to mine. And you must take a hard look at yourself if you think a child of Maridrina is worth less only because they don’t bend the knee to the same crown.” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Back and forth and back and forth, and all it yields is corpses, their children growing up with hate in their hearts to take up weapons and continue the cycle anew.”

If you truly believe in something, you should be willing to suffer for it. To die for it, if need be. Which tells me that you either don’t believe your own words or that you are a coward. The memory of her words simultaneously angered and inspired him. All his adult life, he’d been espousing the virtues of peace and been called a coward for believing in such ideals. But never once had he been called a coward for not acting on them.

The idea infuriated her, but as hard as she tried to shove it aside, it kept returning to her mind. Kept scratching at her conscience with the suggestion that in trying to avenge what had been done to her as a child, she’d instead made herself the villain in the stories of countless Maridrinian children. That in trying to defeat Silas Veliant, she’d become him.

The Maridrinian didn’t understand how much the empress had suffered at Silas Veliant’s hands, her beloved younger sister slaughtered and left to rot. Except it wasn’t the Maridrinian people who’d killed Zarrah’s mother. She bit at her thumbnail, remembering how she’d pleaded with Bermin to warn Ithicana because the nation’s innocents didn’t deserve to pay for the choices of their king. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she’d spent the past decade doing? Making Maridrinian innocents pay for the crimes of Silas Veliant? A good, clean fight between armies of soldiers was one thing, but that wasn’t how the Endless War was fought. It was fought with ugly raids intended to strike against those who could least defend themselves, and in that, she was just as guilty as any Maridrinian princeling.

“What is it that needs to end, Valcotta?” he called across the water. “What part terrifies you so much? Because I don’t think it’s me.” Her shadowy form shivered. “You don’t understand. I need to be a certain way. I need to think a certain way. Because if I don’t, not only do I risk losing everything I’ve worked for, but I risk losing myself.” “Or maybe you’ll find yourself.” His hands balled into fists, and he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Valcotta or to himself. “You told me once that if you truly believe in something, you should be willing to suffer for it. To die for it. Well, I think that if you truly believe in something, you should live for it.”

“The Fifteen-Year Treaty between Maridrina, Harendell, and Ithicana was signed when I was just a boy. Not long after, my father’s soldiers took all of his daughters of a certain age from the harem, giving no explanation for where they were being taken. Or for what purpose. All the women accepted it, except for my mother. She tried to go after my sister to get her back, but she was caught. My father strangled her to death in front of me and the rest of the harem to make a point to us of what happened to those who crossed him. Had his men hold me down when I tried to help her. And then he left her body in the middle of the harem garden for weeks so we’d all have to watch her rot.” His voice caught. “I still wake up in terror with that smell in my nose.” Zarrah’s breath caught, horror filling her chest because she knew that smell. Knew what it was like to watch a mother’s flesh blacken and foul. To watch the flies swarm and the buzzards circle overhead. “Fifteen years later, my sister Lara reemerged from the Red Desert and was sent to Ithicana. And given what she did to that kingdom, I think it fair to say that my father killed the sweet little girl I knew and brought to life a creature made in his image. A monster. A queen who leaves the corpses of her enemies in her wake.”

“Not all battles are won with fists and swords. Some are won with words and a clever head.”

“I was nine when my father’s soldiers took my sister—young enough to still be living in the harem, but old enough to remember the moment well. To remember how my mother fought them. To remember how she attempted to sneak out of the palace to go after my sister, knowing in her heart that my father intended her for some fell purpose. To remember how, when she was caught and dragged back, my father strangled her himself in front of us all. As punishment. And warning.”

Otis’s wife was a casualty of the Endless War. But rather than comfort him, those around Otis had used his grief to fuel his hatred, for it was as keen a weapon as any sword. They didn’t want him to heal, didn’t want him to move past his grief and anger, because then he’d no longer be a pawn they could use to achieve their ends. He’d believed himself righteous—the master of his own destiny—never once seeing that he was a pawn in a war between rulers. They’d been manipulated in the same way, she and Otis, their grief weaponized to fight a war where the only people who died were those who didn’t deserve to.

Her aunt would allow Silas to kill her before conceding an inch. Would allow him to murder her because her death would put fuel to the fire of the Endless War. As her aunt had used her as a tool in life, she’d now use her as a tool in death.

“Favor for Petra’s pursuit of the Endless War has been in sharp decline over recent years, especially with the rebels in the south contesting her right to the crown at all, for there are many who believe it was not she who was the chosen heir but rather her younger sister.” He jerked his chin at Zarrah. “Her mother.”

There were a thousand ways this could go wrong, for everything depended on Keris successfully manipulating the players in this vast scheme of moving parts. Depended on him tricking enemies into working with enemies, each of them with a different vision of what the events of tonight would achieve, none aware of the others’ goals. Lara believing she’d get her husband back. Aren believing he’d gain an ally in saving Ithicana. The harem believing his father would breathe his last. The mob believing they’d crown a new king. They weren’t wrong in holding such beliefs, but what none of them realized was that Keris stood at the heart of this scheme and that every move they made was to achieve his goal: freeing Valcotta.

“He believes you’re suppressing your true nature, but that there will come a point you’ll embrace it. That you’ll live up to your name and be the heir he wants you to be. That’s why he’s protecting you.” Keris rounded on her, eyes full of anger as he snarled, “I will never be like him. I’ll put a knife in my own goddamned heart before I’ll ever live up to his expectations.”

“I do want to remake the world so that I can be with you. So that I can get down on my knees and ask you to be my wife. So that I can put a crown on your head and make you my queen. So I can build a shrine and worship you as my goddess. I want all of these things, yet I face a future with none of them, and I don’t know whether I want to fall on my own blade or burn everything to ash because I do not want to let you go.”

“Abandoning politics and scheming and war and murder to be with the woman I’m in love with is an easy decision.”

For his entire life, he’d resisted learning to fight or having any part in the Maridrinian military, and much of the reason for that choice was his fear of becoming like his father. Yet now he was embracing the role, and though she knew it was an act born of necessity, she also knew that if you played a character for long enough, you risked becoming them.

“My flock whispered your speech into my ears, Keris. Told me that you swore to protect those who need protecting and to bring the villains who would prey upon them to justice.” Serin’s laughter turned wild, absolutely devoid of sanity. “If you wanted to protect Zarrah, you should have taken her far, far away, but instead, you sent her back into the arms of the greatest villain I’ve ever known.” Dearest God, what have I done? “For all his faults, your father loved you. Protected you. And I think even if I were to reveal this truth to the people, they’d forgive you, Keris, because they want what you’ve promised. But Petra? Petra does not love. Petra does not feel. And Petra and I have a rapport that goes back all those years ago to when she delivered word to my flock that her sister, the true and rightful heir to Valcotta, was staying, virtually unprotected, at a villa near the border. I, in turn, whispered that information into the ears of your father.” His breath caught, horror turning his veins to ice. The empress had arranged the murder of her own sister. Zarrah’s mother. “To twist the knife deeper, Petra took her niece and raised her in defiance of everything her mother believed in. Taught her to revel in violence and vengeance and war, not the peace her mother sought.” He smirked. “Just what do you think Petra will do to Zarrah when she discovers that her niece was not only the lover of her mortal enemy but that Zarrah ruined her one chance to destroy Maridrina? Becaus...

Devil’s Island was Valcotta’s harshest prison. A small, rocky island in the cold waters of the deep south, where only the worst of the nation’s criminals were sent. Men and women so vile that it was said hell itself had spat them out and refused to take them back again. And the empress had delivered Zarrah to them.