Enchanting the King (The Beauty's Beast Fantasy Series) (20 page)

Llewellyn was right, though. Aliénor was too young for him, and his people would never accept a Jerdic princess as Queen. Not after living so long with the beloved memory of his late Queen Rosamund. Anyway, it wasn’t fair to Aliénor to ask her to give up her home, her friends, everything to travel to a strange land just to marry him.

Was it?

Marriage
. Thomas shook his head, angry at himself. Aliénor didn’t even want that. Not again. And who could blame her after Philippe?

I could make her happy. I do
. An arrogant thought and a foolish one. But Thomas couldn’t seem to help it, couldn’t stop his mind from daydreaming. Couldn’t stop his heart from hoping.

They reached the small clearing where they had camped—
had it only been last night?
Two knights had been left to guard the supplies and horses. The men breathed sighs of relief as they caught sight of Thomas and the others.

“Everyone eat and rest a bit. We’ve all had a long night. We’ll leave when the men searching for Godric return.” He wiped a weary hand over his face, scrubbing hard at his chilled skin. He wanted to find Godric, to save him, but not at the expense of every other person in their party. At some point, they would have to move on.

The spell was fading. After almost a day or more out of the witch’s power, Godric at last felt like himself again. Some weak, fumbling version of himself, anyway. The world seemed vague still, sort of fuzzy around the edges, and his limbs fumbled often when he walked—as if they weren’t used to taking orders from him anymore. Nevertheless, each hour that passed he felt better, more sure in his movements, more certain in his mind.

King Thomas had almost found him a few hours ago, and then a few of his brother knights had come looking later. Godric had tried to call out, but the damn spell still had its grip on him—slackening, yes, but still strong enough to keep him from rescuing himself.

It was good Godric hadn’t seen the princess. The compulsion was still on him to grab her and bring her back to the blood witch. He could fight it a little, but probably not if he actually saw Princess Aliénor.

Unable to reach for rescue, fighting not to return to Mistress Helen, he’d sat in the woods and waited, hour after hour, imagining he could almost feel the poison of her spell dripping out of him. At last, when the desire to find his king trumped the compulsion to chase Princess Aliénor, he’d left his hideout among the trees.
They might still be in camp. I might still reach them
. He scurried down the hill, rushing, falling occasionally, just praying all the time that he would not be too late.

Voices. Up ahead. Voices in the direction their camp had been last night.
Please, oh please
. A branch whipped at his cheek as he ran past, cutting his skin. He barely noticed—the witch had been cutting on him for days. What did one more scratch matter?

Please
. He stumbled and skidded a few feet down the hill on his bum, but he thought he could pick out distinct voices ahead. The king. Master Llewellyn. Men were calling out to each other. The jingle of harness sounded. “Move out!” King Thomas yelled.

They were leaving. He stopped his downward slide and braced to push to his feet.

“Hello, Godric,” her husky voice whispered behind him, syrupy and sweet.

“
No
.” He twisted to stand, to run, opened his mouth to scream for help.

“No, you don’t.” Her little blade whistled past his sleeve, nicking his arm. The blade landed to stick hilt up in the dirt. Godric’s chest swelled with anger, boiling inside him like dark oil. He clawed the blade out of the turf and wheeled toward the blood witch. His balance was off, and he had to blink to clear his vision. “You will not take me again.”

She rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers in a summoning gesture. The little blade tore itself out of his hands to fly into hers. She drew the flat side of the blade against her tongue, tasting his blood once more. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“Please, no.” Godric fell to his knees, sinking his head down in despair.
I should have slit my own throat with the knife
.

“Come now,
up
.” She snapped her fingers.

All at once the languidness in his limbs disappeared. He moved with purpose again, precision. His mind was sharper, clearer. It was like being sober again after a weeklong drunk. He actually smiled at Mistress Helen as he pushed to his feet.

She smiled warmly back at him, tracing her hand over his beard. “That feels better, doesn’t it? You must not try to leave my protection again. Now, let us hurry. I have the horses, and we must ride hard if we’re to beat dear Thomas and that little slut to Anutitum.”

Thomas drove his people hard after the confrontation with the witch in the shepherd’s hut. They rode faster now, stopping less, sleeping less, eating less. Their group almost ran into another small patrol of Tiochene, a dozen or so, but his people hid despite their greater numbers. Llewellyn recognized the Tiochene had several spell-casters among their troop, and he did not want to set his talents against
two
unknown magicians.

Of the blood witch there was no sign. Thomas uncharitably hoped she’d run afoul of the Tiochene and had her neck slit. Of Godric there was no sign either, and Thomas regretted that more than he could say.

Several days of hard travel at last brought Thomas’s party out of the high mountains and into the lowlands, where the river gentled, and more villages cropped up. Llewellyn refused to let them pass through any of the towns. He was still wary of traps set by the blood witch, and a town full of strangers seemed like too much risk. Instead, they hunted rabbits, fished out of the river when they could, and bartered with farmers on the outskirts of civilization. All Thomas’s people were filthy and hungry, every one of them at the ragged end of their endurance.

“Anutitum should be just over this next ridge,” Llewellyn announced after consulting their maps. The magician urged his mount forward, moving to the front of their ragged column.

Thomas grinned and tried to urge his mount faster also, but the stubborn beast just grunted. The horses too were at the end of their stamina.

A small chuckle sounded behind Thomas, and he half turned in the saddle as Aliénor approached on her own horse. “Anutitum at last.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said, and her eyebrows crimped as if with pain. She opened her mouth, then closed it and looked around at their small retinue with frustration. She appeared so alone, so distressed, that his chest ached with it. She had so much brightness inside, so much life ahead of her.

She should not be so sad, so hopeless. That was for shriveled old men like him. She was a rose that should have been bursting into bloom. Dried roses and regrets should not have been her lot in life. “I am…” He broke off and wet his lips, his throat suddenly tight. “I am glad I met you, Princess Aliénor. I wish…”

“I understand.”

“Good-bye. My lady.”

She winced at his words—all the sign he needed that she understood this too.
This is where I lose you, my princess. This is where the world takes you from me
.

Watching him, her delicate face firmed up as if with great resolve, as if she meant to argue with him. Oh Fate spare him, but he wanted to let her, he wanted her to convince him, to cajole him to being unwise and reckless again. He wanted—

“
Halt
.” Llewellyn flung his arm up.

“What is it, Llewellyn?”

The magician sat on his horse almost at the very crest of the hill. He had a perfect view into the valley below. He grinned back at the rest of them. “Anutitum.”

The city lay like a box of spilled jewels along the floor of the canyon. Hundreds of crisp marble buildings with domed tile roofs and narrow, spindly towers stretched toward the sky. The marble walls of the city glinted in the decadent golden sunlight. And straight through the heart of Anutitum, the river wound like a fine silver thread. Clean, modern, Anutitum gleamed like a beacon for them, calling them to home and safety with the failing of the light.

The road down the mountain to Anutitum lay empty and seemed somewhat ill-kept to Aliénor. A dead donkey lay off to the side of the road with flies buzzing all over. At another point, Thomas and his men had to dismount and shove an overturned farm cart out of the way.

It was near dusk as they neared the city, and yet they passed no other people. Their whole party had fallen silent without having to be told. The hairs on Aliénor’s neck stood on end, and she chafed at the goose bumps on her arms.

At last, the tall white gates of the city and the long walls of Anutitum loomed above them like benevolent giants. Aliénor puffed her breath out with relief.

“Who might you lot be?” someone called down from the top of the bronze gate doors—the gates that remained resolutely shut against them.

Thomas urged his mount forward. “We are weary travelers who seek the protection of your city.”

A snort sounded from the watchtower above. “Are you now? Well, it’s your bad luck that we don’t let folks into the city after sunset. Especially not now.”

The sun was busy rolling down behind the mountains, and a chill breeze fanned across Aliénor, tickling her skin with icy fingers. She let out an impatient humph.

“Please open the gates,” she called out. “I know Lord Guillaume. He will vouch for me.”

The unseen guard cackled. “Oh, certain sure he will. I’m sure he’s friends with all sorts of dirty guttersnipe girls. Doesn’t mean I’ll let you into the city.”

Aliénor recoiled, anger blazing through her. Then she happened to get a glimpse of her own hands in the torchlight—dirty skin with broken nails and scrapes all over. Her face couldn’t have been much better. Her clothes most certainly weren’t. Anyway, for all intents and purposes, she
was
a poor guttersnipe girl begging on her cousin Guillaume’s doorstep.

The only thing left to tell her that her life as Princess Aliénor hadn’t all been a mad fever dream was the golden signet ring of her father’s twisting on her thumb. “Look, you,” she hollered, picking out each word with precision, speaking in her most cultured accent. “I’ve got a gold ring down here that your Lord Guillaume will want to see, and he’ll want to see it tonight. If you make me wait even one minute more outside these gates, believe me that it will mean your head come morning. Now
open these gates
.”

There was a brief silence from above and then some frantic mumbling. “You, go fetch Guillaume.”

“No,
you
.”

She didn’t bother yelling again because a loud cranking had started, and the two large doors of the gate swung inward just wide enough for their horses to pass through. Aliénor urged her horse forward first, with Thomas’s close behind.

“Good job,” he murmured.

She lifted her chin high as she passed through the gate, into a torch-lit courtyard beyond.

Their small, bedraggled party was barely all the way through the gate before a great commotion sounded on the wall above them. “
Princess Aliénor
.”

She whirled toward the sound of the voice and watched as a tall redheaded man clattered down the gatehouse steps. “It
is
you. Cousin.” The tall man cut straight past her companions to stand beside her horse.

Aliénor smiled down into his handsome face. “Hello, Guillaume.” He had grown from a gangly youth into a man since she’d last seen him almost a decade ago, and yet he’d not changed much for all that. He was a little over ten years her senior, a tall, strong, handsome knight with a square chin like granite and a long scimitar of a nose slashing down his face. His eyes were the same dark brown as hers, his hair a paler shade of red, more blond than ginger.

“Bring me my horse!” Once Guillaume was properly mounted on his own horse—a fine white stallion—he wasted no time ushering their little party away from the gatehouse and up the winding road that led to his own palace on the high hills of the city. Guillaume rode at her side. Thomas rode just behind them, a lethal shadow ready to step in if Guillaume was not who or what he seemed to be. That blasted paranoia of the Lyondi must have been catching, because she was actually grateful for Thomas’s care of her.

Unnecessary in this moment, though. Noémi had taken to hiding the cursed hairpin in Aliénor’s coiffure each morning. ‘Just in case.’ The damn thing gave Aliénor the chills every time she touched it, but still it was a comforting weight in her hair.

“We heard of the slaughter of Prince Philippe’s army.” Guillaume’s mouth pinched with unhappiness. “It is a miracle any of you survived. I’m just sorry that Anutitum cannot offer you better protection, cousin.”

“What do you mean?” Was Guillaume going to turn them out into the wilderness, after all?

Her cousin let out a deep, heavy sigh. “A Tiochene army marches even now to lay siege to us. The whole countryside knows Philippe’s army is lost. I have no help coming, so the Tiochene mean to try their strength against my city’s walls. They should be here in a day, maybe two.” He flung his hands out, and for the first time Aliénor noticed how empty the place was, how unnaturally quiet. “We sent all the families we could down the river. I’ll try to get you out that way, cousin. As soon as a boat can be prepared.”

She should say something, of course, but her throat was thick, her eyes stinging. It was with a very great effort that she did not look behind her at Thomas.

“Here is my palace.” Guillaume dismounted first and lifted Aliénor down from her own horse. He offered his arm to her as they walked into his palace. More high walls surrounded the building, this time made of a warm brown stone, with towers springing out of the wall every hundred feet or so. The towers were round-walled and stockier than the architecture of Jerdun, with squat, rounded tops that seemed cheerful somehow to her eyes. More beautiful tile work covered the outer walls, subtle mosaics of the river with bright blue-and-green details that popped against the dull brown stone.

They passed through the main gate, and she couldn’t help herself—she looked back to make sure that she hadn’t lost anybody. Thomas’s gaze caught with hers, his blue eyes dark, his face solemn and worried. He gave her a small nod of encouragement. One corner of his mouth twitched in an almost-smile. Taking heart, Aliénor drew her breath in and straightened up.