The Beauty of Darkness (47 page)

He told me about a conversation he'd had with my brothers before they left. He hadn't been happy about the diplomatic mission proposed by the cabinet, and he was surprised my brothers had agreed to it so easily. He suspected they were up to something.

He privately confronted the eldest prince, asking him what they were plotting. Regan hadn't tried to deny it. “You know what we're doing. The same thing you'd do if your sister was wrongly accused.”

“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.”

“I thought you would,” Regan had answered.

And then the Field Marshal wished them luck.

I sat on the bench at the end of my bed, resting my face in my palms. My breath swelled in my chest. He said my brothers had never planned to go on to Gitos or Cortenai after they set the memorial stone in the City of Sacraments—only on to a few cities to recruit more help, and then they were heading to Venda to get me back and prove I wasn't a traitor—which meant the trackers we had sent were headed in the wrong direction. By the time they figured out the princes had planned a new route, they would likely be too far behind to catch up. But this also meant those lying in wait to ambush them had to regroup too. It might give my brothers an advantage, but even if they evaded those sent to kill them, going all the way to Venda was a sure death sentence. Even a dozen regiments at their sides wouldn't be enough to defend themselves against the Vendan army they would meet.

“The Aberdeen garrison,” I said. “After what happened to Walther's company, that's where they'll go next, to recruit more and double their numbers. We'll send riders there.”

Rafe shook his head. “No. Your brothers would be past there by the time riders arrived. We have an outpost northeast of the City of Dark Magic. Fontaine. We can try to intercept them near there.”

“That's even farther away,” the Field Marshal scoffed. “How would you get a message to them in time?”

I looked at Rafe, my heart gripped in a fist. “You have Valsprey with you?”

He nodded.

We sat down at my desk immediately to write messages. One from me to my brothers so they would know the interception wasn't an attack by Dalbretch soldiers. The other from Rafe to the commanding colonel at Fontaine to set patrols combing the landscape for Morrighese squads. It was still a long shot. There were miles of wilderness, and those lying in wait to ambush my brothers could still reach them before they were warned. But it was something. Rafe looked over my message and rolled it up with his. No one else saw what he wrote, because it was written with ciphers known only to his officers. “I told the colonel I wanted a well-armed battalion to escort your brother's squads home if he finds them.”

Alive.
It was unsaid, but I saw the word looming behind his eyes.

He left to get the message into the hands of the Valsprey handler. If all went well, he said, it would be there by tomorrow, but he warned me there would be no return message. It took months to train a bird to fly to a distant location. They weren't trained to return to Civica.

I looked at the Field Marshal, nodding thanks and apologies in the same gesture. “And from this point forward, you must trust the king of Dalbreck as one of our own. His word is true.”

I told the soldiers to release him, and ordered the Huntmaster, the Timekeeper, and Trademaster freed as well. The rest of the cabinet would remain in their cells to face trial and execution—if I didn't kill them first. My threat to the Viceregent had been real. If any harm came to my brothers or their comrades, his death would not be an easy one.

 

 

Devastation looked down on us,

But a green valley lay ahead.

The end of the journey was in sight at last,

And I did what I knew I would do all along;

I buried my knife deep in my betrothed's throat,

And as he gasped for his last breath,

As his blood soaked into the earth,

There were no tears

Among any of us,

Especially none from me.

—The Lost Words of Morrighan

 

CHAPTE
R
SIXTY-
N
I
N
E

RAFE

It was a warm dark hole I climbed into as I had interrogated the prisoners that morning. It had no bottom, a free fall that invited me to let go. All I could see in the darkness as I asked questions were barrows full of bounty taken from Dalbreck's dead soldiers. With every swing of my fist, I saw Lia sitting in a dank Vendan holding cell, grieving for her dead brother. And when I drew my knife on the Viceregent, I saw only Lia, bleeding and limp in my arms. Sven had finally pulled me back.

The Viceregent dabbed his lip with his sleeve, then smirked. “I had planned on killing you both, you know? An ambush staged to look like a common robbery by Dalbretch bandits on your way back home after the wedding.”

His eyes glowed with smugness. “You think I don't have my reasons, just as you think you have yours? Don't we all get tired of waiting for what we want? The only difference between you and me is I stopped waiting.”

The man is insane
, Sven had muttered as he stopped my fist mid-swing.
Enough
, he said and pushed me away. He locked the cell door behind us and then turned my attention elsewhere, reminding me that I still needed to tell Lia.

*   *   *

I entered the quarters that Lia's aunt Cloris had ushered me into earlier, still feeling like an intruder. It seemed wrong to be staying in the room that Lia's brother had once shared with his bride, Greta. Most of their belongings had been removed, but in the corner of the wardrobe I found a pair of soft kid gloves sized for a woman's hand, and on the bedside table, two delicate pearl-tipped hairpins. I took one look at the large four-poster bed and chose to catch an hour of sleep on the settee instead. I would have preferred staying on a bedroll in Aldrid Hall, where many of my men were, but Lady Cloris insisted I take the room, and I didn't want to begrudge her hospitality.

When I walked in, Orrin was lying sideways across my bed, asleep with his mouth hanging open and his legs dangling over the side. Jeb was spread out on the settee, his eyes closed and his hands neatly woven across his stomach. They'd both been up all night securing the citadelle and assigning posts. Only Dalbreck's soldiers were to guard the prisoners until we were certain there were no more Vendan soldiers among the ranks. Sven was seated at a table, eating a game pie and reviewing files seized from the Viceregent's apartments. Tavish sat at the other end, his feet propped up on the table, sifting through papers in his lap.

“Anything?” I asked.

Sven shook his head. “Nothing of import that might help us. He's a clever devil.”

I grabbed a boiled egg from a tray of food and washed it down with milk.

“Did you tell her?” Tavish asked.

Both Jeb and Orrin opened their eyes, waiting for an answer too.

I nodded.

“She needed to know, boy,” Sven said. “Better to hear it from you than have it spill out at an inopportune time.”

I looked at him, incredulous. “She's going to address the assembly today. Now is a bad time.”

“So there was no good time. It still had to be done. It's behind you now.”

It would never be behind me. Her dazed expression when I told her cut a hole through me.

I shook my head trying to blot the memory out. “It's not an easy thing to tell the girl that you love more than life itself that you're going to marry someone else.”

Sven sighed. “Easy things are for men like me. The difficult choices are left to kings.”

“The general's a conniving bastard,” Orrin said, yawning, “who needs an arrow in his tight ass.”

Jeb sat up and grinned. “Or I could take care of him quietly. Just say the word.” He made a clicking sound—the snap of a neck—as if showing how quickly it could be done.

It was only a show of solidarity. I knew neither would ever assassinate a legitimate officer of Dalbreck, nor would I let them—though it was tempting.

“And what would you do about the general's daughter? Kill her too?”

Orrin snorted. “All she needs is one look at my pretty face, and she'd call it off with you. Besides, I'm an archer. I bring home dinner. What do you have to offer?”

“Besides a kingdom?” Sven mumbled.

“You could call it off and try to weather it out,” Tavish offered.

Sven sucked in a breath, knowing the consequence. My position in Dalbreck was precarious. Weathering it out was a risky option. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. The betrothal was the general's victory and my own private hell—the cost of saving Lia's life. And while the general played his games, his daughter was caught in the middle of it. I remembered the fear in her eyes, and her trembling hand as she signed the documents. The girl was afraid and wanted no part of me, but I had ignored it because I was desperate and angry.

“Let's move on,” I said. “What happens between me and Lia isn't something that needs to be on the table. We have an unbeatable army marching this way.”

“You don't believe that,” Sven said, finishing off his pie, “or you wouldn't be here.”

“I got a look at the troops this morning, and it's worse than we thought. Azia called it pathetic.”

Sven grunted. “
Pathetic
is a strong word. The few I saw seemed astute and able.”

“The
few
you saw is exactly the problem. It's not that they lack skill or loyalty, but their ranks are depleted. This is their biggest training post, but they've been dispersed all over Morrighan in small units. Only a thousand are stationed here right now. Gathering them all back here will take weeks. Even then, it won't be enough.”

“The Vendan army may not all be headed this way. Dalbreck is a closer target. We'll sort it out. First things first. The assembly this afternoon. Strategizing a plan after that.”

A plan. I had decided not to tell Sven what I had done. It would either work out or it wouldn't, and telling him would only incur a blistering lecture about being impulsive. But it hadn't felt impulsive when I rode to the camp outside the city gates where the handler was ensconced with the Valsprey. After I gave him the messages, I looked back at Civica, and the weight of its history settled over me. I felt the centuries of survival. This was the beginning, the first kingdom to rise after the devastation, the one all the other kingdoms were born from, including Dalbreck. Morrighan was a jewel the Komizar hungered for, a validation of his own greatness, and once he had it, along with its abundant resources, no kingdom would be spared. My doubts vanished. He was coming here first.

Sven eyed me suspiciously, as if he could see the inner workings of my mind. He set his papers aside. “What did you do?”

We had been together for too many years. I sat down in an overstuffed chair and threw my feet up on the table. “I added a request in my message to the colonel at Fontaine.”

“A request?”

“An order. I told him to send his troops to Civica.”

Sven sighed and rubbed his eyes. “How many?”

“All of them.”

“All of them as in
all of them
?”

I nodded.

Sven jumped to his feet, jarring the table and spilling his cider. “Have you lost your mind? Fontaine's our largest outpost! Six thousand soldiers! It's our first line of defense for our western borders!”

“I sent the same message to Bodeen.”

By now Orrin and Jeb were both sitting up.

Sven sat back at the table and rested his head in his hands.

Orrin whistled at the staggering news.

I figured this was a good time to leave. Any more revelations, and Sven might burst a blood vessel. My decisions were made and there was no changing them now.

“Not a word to anyone,” I said. “This isn't an answer to all their problems. They need to remain earnest in their efforts.” I walked toward the door.

“Now where are you going?” Sven asked.

“First things first,” I said. As much as I hated to admit it, Kaden would be a critical part of the plan to save Morrighan. “I promised to make some peace.”

*   *   *

I checked his room. When he wasn't there, I followed my next best guess, and I was right. I spotted him, one hand pressed to the wall, poised at the top of the stairs that led to the lowest level of the citadelle—where the prisoners were kept.

He stared down the dark stairwell so consumed by his thoughts he didn't notice me at the end of the passageway.

He is Morrighese
, I thought, just as Lia had claimed.

He was born from a line of nobility that went all the way back to Piers, one of the fiercest warriors of Morrighan lore. A Holy Guardian, Sven had called him. He had given me a brief history lesson the night before, when I noted my surprise at Kaden's parentage. A statue of a muscled powerful Piers dominated the entrance to Piers Camp.

Kaden didn't look powerful now. He looked beaten.

But last night—I swallowed, remembering how they looked together when I went to check on Lia during the night. I had seen his hand resting on her bed and her hand curled over his. Both of them were asleep, peaceful. I backed out of the room quietly so they wouldn't see me. Maybe that was what had given me the courage to tell her the truth. I knew she didn't love him in the same the way she did me. I had seen her eyes when she first saw me in the armory, and then the hurt when I told her about my betrothal, but she cared about Kaden too. They shared something that she and I didn't—the roots of one kingdom and their love for another.

He still hadn't noticed me. Instead he stared into the darkness and his hand absently fingered the sheathed dagger at his side, as if a scene was playing out in his head. I could imagine what it was.