The Inadequate Heir (The Bridge Kingdom Book 3)

by Danielle L. Jensen

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...