Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to Tamora Pierce.

Note: This was originally posted to the Goldenlake forum in response to Malorie's Peak Prompt #77: There and Back Again.

Guilty as Charged

At first she didn't recognize the sulky boy who trudged over to her cell, arms crossed in front of his thin chest, until a shaft of light fell across his face. She hadn't seen the brat in three years or so, since her dratted brother dragged him up to the tower to gawk at her, but there was no mistaking those brown eyes and that snub nose. Her nephew didn't take after the Eldorne side of the family, that was certain.

"What brings you here, my darling little Lerant?" she asked, coating her voice with false sweetness. She refused to move from her hard wooden bench. "Come to visit your favorite auntie?"

She wore shackles around her wrists, spelled with magic to prevent her from escaping, but she gazed at the boy with her chin in the air and a proud edge to her voice, as if she were still a lady entertaining guests in her lavish home. She wouldn't admit defeat, not even to this pathetic whelp who edged towards her cell, desperately trying not to stare through the bars.

He grew bolder and forced himself to look into her eyes. "Why'd you do it, Aunt Delia?"

Her pride wavered, shaken by a question she hadn't heard in years. "What was that?"

"Why'd you do it? Why'd you try to kill the king?"

How dare this miserable brat come to her cell and ask such a thing? Delia strengthened her pride, refusing to let a mere boy shock her into silence, and added a bit of venom to the honey in her voice. "Why, Lerant, isn't it obvious? If I had succeeded, you would have been royalty. Wouldn't you have liked to be nephew to the queen of Tortall, my dear?"

His shoulders, which sagged with an apathy that no normal ten-year-old ought to possess, suddenly grew straighter. His eyes accused her. "You wouldn't have been queen. Not with that crazy Roger trying to destroy Corus."

"And what would you know about it? You're a child."

"I'm old enough to know that you're a traitor, and there's no excuse for what you did."

He was right, of course. He was only a mere boy, but he was right all the same, and Delia resented his presence more than ever. Did he think she enjoyed spending her days and nights trapped in this lonely little cell, knowing that some half-savage foreigner was sitting on the throne that should have been hers? Oh, she had heard all the stories about how wonderful Queen Thayet was, how she was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, but Delia didn't cry over her lost throne and waning beauty.

She never cried, even when she saw Roger's body, with that horrible sword buried in his chest (though she felt as if her chest had been stabbed as well, right through the heart). She never cried, even when she found out that Alex had died as well, taking all of his secrets with him (and she wished she could have kissed him just once, in some vain attempt to put a few cracks in that infuriating mask he always wore). She never cried, even when King Jonathan, the great arrogant fool, placed the shackles on her himself and arrested her in his own name (it could have been Roger's name instead, if all had gone as she desired, and sometimes she resented Roger's madness even more than Jonathan's uncanny ability to escape from the jaws of death, over and over again).

Delia never cried, but something about this impertinent nephew got under her skin, digging at an old wound that never truly healed, and for the first time in years she felt like throwing aside her dignity and weeping for everything she lost.

"Why have you come here?" she asked quietly. "Does a brat like you have nothing better to do than come up here to mock your elders?"

"I wanted to be a knight," said Lerant, staring sullenly at the ground again. "But I can't and it's all your fault, because traitors can't fight for the realm."

"What do you want me to do about it? Apologize?"

"I don't want your apologies. I just wanted to know why you did it."

But she didn't know anymore. Once upon a time Delia dreamed of power and glory, of ruling Tortall with Roger at her side, but that dream collapsed and died in an earthquake long ago. She had nothing but her insufferable pride left, but what did pride matter when she had nothing to be proud of? She wasn't queen, she never would be queen, and she finally let the bitter tears fall down her cheeks, knowing she couldn't go back and change the past.

Lerant finally left her, but his parting words rang in her ears for hours to come. "Thanks a lot, Aunt Delia," he muttered as he turned away. "Thanks for nothing."