Heritage: Book Three of the Grimoire Saga (23 page)

Evelyn smacked the table. “I refuse to be associated with a drenowith!”

Kara narrowed her eyes. “And why is that?”

“You know what those vile creatures did to my aunt! They betrayed her! I would never—”

“Yet you don’t care what she did to them. Or me,” Kara interrupted.

Evelyn frowned. “Aunt Aislynn was trying to protect her people. Sometimes, safety comes at a cost.”

Kara shook her head. “I saw into her memories. She hated muses, and what she did to Adele was her way of punishing them.”

“Ladies, please. Focus,” Frine said.

“Why would this muse ever fight for us after what we did?” Evelyn demanded.

Kara shrugged. “He isn’t.”

“What?”

“He isn’t fighting for you. He’s fighting for Ourea. For yakona. For everything that lives within a lichgate. He’s tired of seeing so much blood over these last few millennia. Ourea was great once—all he wants is to see that again. To see peace. So no, he isn’t fighting for you. He’s fighting for the future generations who may not get a chance at happy lives if you keep on the way you’re going.”

A soft whistle escaped Frine, and the Lossian Blood tightened his jaw to kill what must have been an involuntary reaction. Braeden nodded, eyes focused on her and slightly narrowed in his concentration. Gavin rubbed his neck again.

Evelyn, still standing, leaned her fists on the table. Hatred radiated from her glare. “We will not work with the muses!”

“
You
will not,” Frine said.

Evelyn turned her scowl on him. “What?”

“I corrected you. You said ‘we,’ but you are mistaken. I have no interest in turning away help, especially a powerful ally like a muse. After what we did, we should be grateful for his cooperation.”

“Blood Frine has a point,” Braeden said.

“I agree,” Gavin added without looking up.

Evelyn sat in her chair, lips parted in what could only be surprise. Kara understood that—the queen had just been outvoted in her own home.

Frine turned to Kara. “For what it’s worth, you’re ready for this life. I never thought I would see the day when you could handle yourself, but I was wrong. You’ve become a powerful ally, one I fear we do not deserve.”

Kara nodded in thanks, but the compliment didn’t mean anything. There had been a time when she ached for him to say she was good enough, when hearing that would have made her proud, but she already knew she could handle this life. She was and would always be the Vagabond. She had sacrificed nearly everything to get here. What others thought of her no longer mattered.

Frine continued. “I’m afraid for my kingdom and for my people. This war needs to end, and I believe you can help us. I vote we allow Kara back into our council and give her full authority as our equal.”

Gavin nodded, his voice soft when he spoke. “We need your help.”

Braeden grinned. “I’m in.”

Kara turned to Evelyn in time to see the queen’s expression slide from disgust to disbelief. Just as quickly, her face hardened into something unreadable. She grimaced and shook her head.

“I suppose I have no choice,” Evelyn said softly.

Gavin stood. “I need a break.”

“Agreed,” Frine added.

Braeden stood as well. “Why don’t we reconvene after dinner?”

Gavin gestured in what Kara assumed was some sort of agreement before heading for the door. The Ayavelian soldiers parted enough to let the king through, and Frine followed close behind. Braeden stood and stretched.

“May I speak with you alone, Vagabond?” Evelyn asked.

Kara glanced at Braeden, who raised an eyebrow as if you say
are you sure?

She nodded.

“Very well,” he said.

He headed to the door but paused before he reached the crowd of guards. He glanced over his shoulder at Evelyn and nodded toward them. Evelyn groaned. She waved at the soldiers, who bowed in unison and trotted out ahead of Braeden. The prince walked into the hall and, with one final glance to Kara, shut the doors behind him.

Silence settled once more onto the meeting room. Evelyn drummed her nails against the table, the incessant
tap, tap, clack
enough to fray Kara’s composure. A minute ticked by without conversation, followed by another and another. Kara bit her tongue, unwilling to break the silence. Whatever Evelyn wanted, she would have to make the first move.

“I don’t understand what brought you back,” Evelyn finally said.

“I think I’ve made that fairly clear.”

“Hardly. Why are you really here? Revenge for being used as bait? Revenge for the half-wit muse who tried to rescue you? What is it?”

Anger burned in Kara’s gut. Tension pulled on her wrist guard, and a body-wide itch smoldered on the top layer of her skin. But with a deep breath, she reeled in her disgust. As much as Kara wanted to break the queen’s nose for that insult, she knew better. This was a trap. Evelyn wanted to bait her into a frenzy and make her do something stupid. So she forced a smile instead.

“I want to finish what the first Vagabond set out to do,” she said.

“And that’s why this muse is helping, too? They don’t care about us.”

“They care more than you’d think.”

“A muse killed my aunt, and you know it. We shouldn’t trust them.”

“You have no proof of that. It’s an assumption that could cost you the war.”

“It may be something we can never prove. I know who is trustworthy and who isn’t.”

“I’m not so sure you do,” Kara admitted.

With every second that passed, Evelyn seemed more and more like her treacherous aunt. Dread pooled in Kara’s stomach at the similarities, namely the blind hatred for drenowith. Aislynn was only better at hiding her disgust.

Evelyn shook her head and set one hand on her cheek. Still as a stone and apparently lost in thought, she stared at the floor. Kara kept quiet, letting the young queen simmer on the options. Perhaps that was all she really needed to see reason—a quiet room and someone to listen.

“A choice between the lesser of two evils is not a real choice,” Evelyn eventually said under her breath.

Kara’s intuition flared—if trusting a muse was one choice, what was the other? Alarm spread through her body. The hair on her neck stood on end, and beads of sweat pooled in her palms.

“The muses aren’t evil,” Kara said.

Evelyn laughed—a bitter, dark laugh that sent a chill down to Kara’s toes.

“I’ll send a note to Blood Ithone asking for him to allow you into the city,” Evelyn said.

With that, the queen stood and headed to the door, their meeting apparently over. But Kara didn’t want her to leave, not now. Evelyn had made a choice, and fear twisted in Kara’s stomach at the thought that the queen chose wrong.

Evelyn reached for the doorknob but paused and looked over her shoulder. “I would offer you a room, but I figure you’ll be staying with Braeden. No use wasting a bedroom if you won’t be there at night.”

Kara bristled. “I would like my own room, thanks.”

“Don’t try to be modest.” The queen smirked and turned the knob. She slipped into the hall and disappeared with just a few taps of her shoes along the stone floor.

Kara stood in the war room, alone and suddenly afraid that something just shifted for the worse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TWO EVILS

Evelyn slammed the door to her bedroom. The walls trembled from the force. Her hands tightened into fists. Anger boiled in her gut, churning until bile burned her cheeks. An ache pulsed in her temple.

She failed. Aunt Aislynn always warned her about how the tides could turn quickly in war and political affairs, but Evelyn never imagined how fast she would lose control of the council. One stupid human girl—worse, an isen—showed a bit of daring, and now Evelyn’s opinion meant nothing. Her family’s years of goodwill toward the other kingdoms was overturned in one hasty decision.

One
stupid
decision.

Openly trusting a drenowith was as dense as Blood Gavin and Blood Frine could get. The vile muse helping Kara was likely the one who killed Evelyn’s aunt, for Bloods’ sake. Since the dawn of time, the muses had attempted magic that caused natural disasters and plagues, yet no one held them accountable. Not once. The drenowith certainly didn’t care—what eternal creature cared about the fleeting lives of mortals?

This was the Vagabond’s fault, all of it. From the moment the girl stepped into Ourea, the drenowith owned her. They must have known how important she would become, or else they would never have wasted their time saving and protecting her. And now, their effort was paying off.

Evelyn grimaced. She leaned against the wall in an effort to calm herself.

In her defense, she only recently realized the drenowith were burrowing their way into the minds of the Bloods. Even she hadn’t noticed it at first, but it made perfect sense after she figured it out.

The yakona had caused political strife in Ourea for eons, and the drenowith were probably tired of it. Drenowith always hated the yakona—why else would they do something so petty as lead Aunt Aislynn into a Stelian trap she only barely survived? But when the Vagabond reappeared, the tide turned in the muses’ favor. The naïve human girl was easy to control as long as they got to her first. As long as she trusted them. The drenowith had to have known the Vagabond would continue her master’s purpose by trying to unite the yakona, and the prospect of luring all the Bloods into a sense of complacency had to be tempting. Those muses had to have known they could weasel their way into the thrones if they played their cards right.

And they did.

Evelyn ran her fingers through her hair. She escaped such a fate, at least. She wasn’t a pawn. But the other Bloods—she sighed. A pang of guilt shot through her, followed by frustration. Not long ago she raised her fears to Bloods Ithone, Frine, and Gavin individually. Every one of them dismissed her. None feared the drenowith. Blood Frine even admired them. Idiot.

The other Bloods were beyond saving. They had done this to themselves.

Perhaps there was no way for the muses to have predicted Braeden and Kara would fall in love, but those conniving creatures no doubt played the romance in their favor as well. They controlled Kara and—through his devotion—Braeden. If the muses weren’t out to destroy the yakona way of life, Evelyn would admire their cunning.

A breeze snuck through an open window and slid through Evelyn’s hair. The wind dried the sweat on her neck. She sighed with relief.

The muses were clever; she could grant them as much. Evelyn only began to understand what was really going on after her aunt’s memorial. When Braeden tried to convince her of Kara’s good intentions, something clicked in Evelyn’s mind.

The muses helped me more than once,
he’d said.
Maybe if you spent some time with one, you’d realize how wrong you are about them.

She gritted her teeth. Not in a million years. She would never become a tool like him.

Not long ago—just a few days after her aunt’s memorial—she finally acknowledged the drenowith plot had gone beyond her intervention. To save yakona from drenowith influence, Evelyn had to disband the council. The Bloods had to simply start over, and she was already well on her way.

Disbanding the Bloods would be difficult, and making it look as though the drenowith planned it would be near-impossible. It would take outside help from someone of influence who was not on the council, which left only Blood Carden.

Evelyn suppressed a shudder. A jolt of fear froze her in place, but she pushed it aside. She made the right choice. Though she never wanted to rely on the evil king, he was the lesser of two evils. What Evelyn wanted most was an escape. She wanted to no longer be alone, for Gavin to name a different heir and join her in Ayavel, forever hers. Better yet, she wanted Aislynn to suddenly appear so her aunt would take the reins once more and free Evelyn of the responsibilities of protecting a nation.

But no one was going to save her. Evelyn was the Blood now, and she always would be. She had to do what was best for her people. And she had to do it alone.

Between Blood Carden and the drenowith, the drenowith were the more imminent threat to Ayavel; she could keep Carden out of her home, but the drenowith already had Kara to spy for them. Thanks to Evelyn’s insight and the clarity after her talk with Braeden, Blood Carden was already helping her eliminate the drenowith threat. She spent days on her plan before she contacted him, and now that she’d convinced him to work with her, everything would unfold without the Ayavelian people ever knowing what she’d done. If she was careful, she wouldn’t lose even one Ayavelian soldier to the war.

She sat at her desk and dipped the nearest quill in an inkwell. With a deep breath and a muttered curse, she scratched out yet another letter to Carden, updating him on the basics. The quill tip scraped against the parchment, leaving indents of ink in its wake.
Scritch. Scratch. Shuffle.

As Evelyn’s pen traveled along the paper, her mind wandered.