Throne Shaker (The Clash and the Heat Book 3)

by Val Saintcrowe

  Behind me, servants were waiting, pageboys who would run my orders to Bisset and Solene, who each controlled half of my forces.

  I hoped that Remy would halt out there, put down an anchor when he saw that he had no way on shore. Give us just a bit more time to prepare. Of course, I wasn’t sure what else I would do to prepare. I couldn’t go and try to draw up the living flame again. I couldn’t risk that. I had used everything I’d taken from Ophelie.

  I tried to reach out with my mind and feel for Remy’s power. Maybe I was strong enough to extinguish it from here. But I couldn’t feel him. He was too far away.

  When the ships sailed past the burning path, I was confused.

  Where was he going?

  And then they anchored on the side of the castle where the sheer rock face led up to the castle walls, and I watched as lifeboats were lowered and men rowed towards shore. It wasn’t until I saw them throwing up grappling hooks with rope that I realized what was happening.

  Remy was going to climb the blazing cliffs.

  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  I sent a pageboy off at once to get the archers from the ramparts facing the path over here. We would need them to shoot the climbing soldiers instead.

  I waited, watching as men climbed up the cliff, getting closer with every minute.

  Where were the archers? What was going on? I sent another pageboy, and if I didn’t get word, I was going to go myself soon.

  But then I saw that the archers were in place now, and arrows began raining down on the men.

  Remy’s men began to fall, uttering screams, dashing onto the rocks below. Even those who landed with a splash likely didn’t survive, because the water was shallow there.

  I began to feel a bit better. We weren’t necessarily winning. Remy still had us outnumbered, but we were holding our own now. We had a chance. Perhaps we could still hold him off.

  A loud crack echoed through the air and I could feel the castle sway.

  A cannon! From his ship. He’d shot a cannon into my castle. I could see that it had taken a chunk out of the lower walls, and I was horrified.

  Also, more gunshots rang out, and my archers started to fall. He had men behind the climbers with musquets, shooting at my archers.

  It was getting bad already. What was I going to do?

  Maybe I could go to the path, suck up that power again and use it. I wasn’t even sure if such a thing was possible. I’d never tried to take magic into myself a second time. But I had to try.

  I rushed down the steps of the tower, the pageboys running after me, asking me where I was going.

  I told them to go and check with the generals and report back on the number of casualties. Leaving them there, I rushed through the castle as quickly as I could, out of the walls and down toward the path.

  As I ran, all I could hear was the sound of cannons and gunfire. All I could smell was the distinct smell of gunpowder and smoke. The air was full of it, and I was shaken. This was my kingdom. My people were in danger.

  I needed to do something for them.

  Finally, I reached the fire, and some of it had already gone out. I put my hand into it, trying to pull it back into me.

  It wouldn’t come. It had gone through me once, and it was not going back into me again. Of course it wouldn’t work!

  Now, I had no idea what the situation was with the battle, and I’d wasted time getting down here.

  I rushed back into the castle and went to the other side, where the archers were shooting on the ramparts.

  “Your Majesty, what are you doing here?” cried Solene. “You can’t be here. You could be shot.”

  Bullets were whizzing at the archers at an alarming rate.

  I retreated, taking cover, my heart pounding. All of the dead bodies out there. So many dead already.

  My fingers were shaking. This was madness. We couldn’t hold this castle. We were fools to think we could. Maybe if we had guns or maybe if—

  Fire.

  I saw it, licking up the sides of the ramparts.

  Remy had used his power.

  I shot back out onto the rampart and seized the magic, pulling it into me. The minute it inhabited my skin, it was stronger and more potent. I poured the magic back down on the men climbing the wall, and it went down like an avalanche of flame, burning all of them where they stood, going back to burn all the men with musquets behind them.

  I took out three hundred men all at once, and only one figure was left standing.

  The fire went right over him, leaving him unsinged.

  Remy.

  I reached out and I found his magic. I could feel it. Maybe I could try to douse it now. I wasn’t sure if I could do that without touching him, but if I could, it would mean he was powerless.

  But should I?

  I had been able to do damage taking his magic. If he would use it again, then I might actually be able to fight his army.

  But would he be so foolish as to try again?

  If I took his magic, he wouldn’t be able to use it at all. But then I wouldn’t be able to use it either.

  He was peering up at me from below. He lifted his hands and they lit up with flame. He knelt and the fire licked over the ground and caught the foundation of the castle. The flames rose high.

  Remy knelt, his posture tense, pouring the waves of flame out of him.

  So.

  He’d gotten stronger too. I never knew he could push out so much flame.

  I seized some of it, not all, wanting to keep it as a weapon, and I poured the flame back at his ships. My flames went out over the water, catching two boats ablaze. I could hear the sounds of the screams from here.

  I gazed down at it. How many dead? Two hundred men? Just like that?

  I had just destroyed half of his army. Maybe we could win this after all.

  “My queen! The flames! We must go or we’ll be trapped!” Solene cried.

  Oh, no, I couldn’t have that. I reached out to quench the flames. I concentrated hard to put them out, but I realized that damage had been done to the foundation of the castle. We wouldn’t be safe on these ramparts. This was all going to crumble.

  Luckily, Solene was already taking the remaining archers out of there.

  I followed.

  When I got to a window, I looked out, and Remy hadn’t brought out new men to replace the ones I’d burned. His ships were still burning out on the water there.

  Remy himself I couldn’t see anymore.

  Suddenly, half of the castle gave way, just as I’d predicted. If I’d been up on those ramparts, I would be falling to my death.

  I watched the castle falling in on itself, hand to my mouth, too stunned to make noise. I’d known this was coming, but to see it was worse that I could imagine.

  And that was when I realized the other half of the castle was on fire.

  I made a split second decision. “Retreat,” I told Solene. “We have to leave Castle Ignis.”

  She nodded and ran, taking what was left the archers. I ran for the fire. I reached out, dousing it as I went, but every time I doused it, it seemed that there was more.

  On my way, I came across a pageboy, who was trying to tell me how many people had died, and I cut him off to send him to give the order to retreat to Bisset.

  That done, I rushed through a castle where stones were falling and smoke was rising and there were flames—always new flames—until I came to a window, and there he was.

  I reached out and doused the flames. I was growing tired. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up.

  He noticed me. “Fleur.” He was on the other side of the window, and there was no glass in it anymore, only shards sticking up from the bottom. The flames reflected on the shards, dancing and gleaming.

  “Remy,” I said. I was out of breath.

  He raised a hand. It was full of flame.

  I reached out with my mind to touch his power, trying to douse it completely, to take his magic. But maybe I was too tired. I c
ouldn’t. So, I reached out my hand, through the window.

  All I had to do was barely brush his skin, and I poured the thick, smothering power of my magic into him. I should have done this before. Wanting to use his power against him had cost me my castle, my childhood home. I didn’t know if I could rebuild, but if I did, it would be the work of many months. Whole towers had gone down from his flame.

  He yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned. “Blazes, I wondered when you were going to do that.”

  “Why you can’t you let me go? You don’t really need to me to fight your battles. Look how well you’ve done against me.”

  “I offered you everything you wanted,” he said. “You would rule Islaigne. I would not interfere. But you denied me anyway. You ran from me because you wanted me to chase.”

  “Oh, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Here I am, Fleur,” he said darkly. “What do you think I’ll do when I catch you?”

  I had the urge to rush at him, pummel him with my fists, hurt him in whatever way I could. But he was stronger than me, and I was no fool.

  I backed away. “Go home and leave me in peace, Remy. Go and use your magic to take Rzymn, like you always wanted.”

  “When I catch you, I’m going to kill you,” he said.

  I halted. I hadn’t expected that.

  “You started it,” he said in a noncommittal tone. “If you hadn’t tried to kill me first, I wouldn’t bother. But I’m not an idiot. You failed once. You’ll try again unless I stop you.”

  I thrust out my chin. “Well, what’s stopping you, then? Here I am.”

  “I’m not ready right at this second,” he said with a shrug. “I want it to be… right. I want it to be intimate. I want to have you in my grasp while I watch the light go out in your eyes. I feel like that’s only appropriate, given everything that’s passed between us. Or maybe you’ll kill me, who knows? But if we ever thought this was going to end otherwise between us, we were fooling ourselves.”

  I only gaped at him. I didn’t have any words.

  Now, he was the one who backed away, fading into the smoke and the darkness.

  * * *

  Bisset found me wandering around the stables, looking for a horse. The army was gone. They had retreated on my orders. Bisset had waited behind for me.

  I felt the need to apologize to him.

  He pulled me up on his mount, seating me in front of him, and we rode off into the darkness, leaving the smoking remains of the castle behind. “No need for that, my queen.”

  “I should have surrendered to him when he came and agreed to his terms. He’s gone mad,” I said softly. “He says he’s going to kill me.”

  “Well, you did try to kill him,” said Bisset.

  “Yes, but…” When I left, Remy had begged me to stay. He said we would work it out. I supposed I thought that… what? He’d forgive me for trying to kill him? Who did that?

  I sagged against Bisset’s chest and his arms were around me as he clutched the reins. It felt… safe, like I was a small child in my uncle’s arms. Back before my uncle had tried to kill me, anyway. He had been safe once.

  Was everyone who loved me going to eventually try to kill me? Was that how this went?

  My uncle. Remy. Ophelie.

  “I don’t know how to surrender to him now. I’m not sure if he’d be satisfied with anything other than my death. And I might give him that, for the people of Islaigne, but… who will save them from the fires then? They need me.”

  “Shh, my queen, there is no need to talk of surrendering or dying or anything else. You will outsmart King Remy. You always have before.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true.

  * * *

  I slept on horseback as Bisset rode, something I would have thought impossible up until now. But it was utterly manageable if I was tired enough, and I was very tired.

  When I awoke, we had caught up to the rest of the army. We were at least a day behind the other members of the village, who had set off before us, but we caught up to them as well within the first week of our journey.

  I spurred them on faster, because we had scouts behind us who reported that Remy was following. He had only the men who had been on the remaining ships, about five ships’ worth, half his army, but he was pressing on.

  To give the villagers time to get ahead, I stayed back with a small contingent of archers, and we engaged Remy in a series of skirmishes.

  He never used his fire magic again, so I couldn’t use it against him.

  I tried to reach out through the ground or the air and douse Remy’s magic for a day or two, but I could never manage it. Maybe I never got close enough. Maybe I had to be touching him to do it. I couldn’t be sure.

  Our goals during these short battles were to make the men use up as much of their gunpowder and bullets as they could, shooting at people who weren’t really there. To that end, we would shoot arrows not at the men, but at bushes and trees to make them see movement and think that someone was there. Fifty men would fire on one arrow. It was a good tactic, but we were only buying time.

  I didn’t know what would happen when we finally reached our fortress. I wasn’t sure we would be able to hold it.

  Almost three weeks passed as Remy pursued us over the lands of Islaigne. My bleeding stopped after the first week, so that was one positive thing, perhaps the only positive thing.

  I spent time thinking about what I could do. Sometimes, I thought that I should have simply given Remy what he wanted. I should have agreed that he could be the ruler of Islaigne in name and paid him his taxes. Then none of this would have happened. I didn’t really care who ruled Islaigne if its people were safe and free. Maybe I might have cared before, but I didn’t anymore. The deal would have been fine.

  But other times I thought that it might not have mattered what I’d said. Remy had obviously set out for Islaigne before my answer ever got to him, and he was planning on killing me, so he might have attacked regardless of my answer. I would have been entirely defenseless then.

  I spoke mostly to Bisset and to Solene, talking strategy and whether or not Guillame might have made it back yet. We had left messengers to intercept him, to tell him where we had gone, but we were afraid that we might be looking at trying to get the guns past a siege wall if Remy closed us into the fortress where we were headed.

  Or worse, that we’d be leaving that behind as well, utterly destroyed.

  I saw my cousin Jalal on the outskirts sometimes, but I never engaged him in conversation. Sometimes I outright ignored him. I had my reasons for not trusting him. He’d lied to me about my mother. I hadn’t had a chance to even contemplate what that meant, though. It was like a concern from another life.

  One evening, however, as Solene and I surveyed Remy’s encampment from afar, trying to determine whether it would be worth it to attack while they were sleeping and pick off a few of his men, she asked me about Jalal.

  “I see that your manner toward him has changed,” she said. “At first I thought that you were just stressed over the attacks, but you are much the same with everyone else. It is only your cousin. Do you resent him for having had the throne all the time when you were gone?”

  “It’s not that at all,” I said. I turned to her. “You were in the castle that night, were you not? The night when the fire burned and when my mother sent me away along with my uncle and the others?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “How did you realize it?”

  “Realize what?”

  “You know something about Jalal,” she said. “About what he did to your mother.”

  “What?” I furrowed my brow. “Listen, all I know is that Jalal says that he never saw my mother again—”

  “It’s a lie,” said Solene. “I saw them together, but I’ve never told him that I did or that I knew. It was a bad time afterwards. We needed him. We needed a leader.”

  “What do you mean you saw them together?”

  “I…” She took
a deep breath. “It was two weeks after that night, after she put you and all the others on those ships. A small boat arrived on the docks, and it was your mother. I wasn’t on duty. There was no one watching the docks at that time. Everything was chaos. But Jalal was there. He saw the boat and went to intercept it.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was on the castle ramparts, looking down,” she said. “I saw them together. It looked as though they were arguing.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Why didn’t he welcome her? Where had she been?”

  “I don’t know,” said Solene. “They moved, and my view was obscured by some of the evergreen trees that grow between the castle and the dock. Jalal reappeared, but your mother never did.”

  “What?” I was appalled. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t see how he could have overpowered her. She had living flame. But I never saw her again. No one did, and Jalal never admitted that he ever saw her after that night.”

  “Maybe he surprised her from behind,” I said. “Maybe she never saw it coming.” I shuddered. My mother had been murdered by my cousin? But why would he do such a thing? He couldn’t do something like that. I turned on Solene. “Are you sure that it was my mother? Are you positive? That’s very far away.”

  “I… I am fairly positive,” said Solene. “I served her years and years. I would know her, even from that distance.”

  I was silent. I couldn’t even wrap my head around that. I hadn’t expected my cousin to be a murderer.

  “She was different before the explosion in the castle,” said Solene.

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but maybe when she came back, she was… unhinged. Maybe over sending you away or the destruction of the castle or something, but maybe Jalal did it in self-defense. Maybe he had no choice.”

  “We can’t have it both ways,” I said. “Either he surprised her from behind or he was defending himself. I don’t see how it can be both.”

  “He’s always been decent to me,” said Solene. “And he seems to care about the people of Islaigne. I’ve never wanted to think too ill of him.”