The boy’s throat bobbed, but he did not appear panicked—his attention squarely, calmly, on the knife. He was trained. “The council believes the introduction of a royal heir who can gain access to power without marriage or an impossible law change will keep Ardenia safe and the situation will stabilize.”
As she’d deduced—the introduction of a male heir, even a bastard, would be an easier pill to swallow than an unmarried woman accepting her rightful power.
The patriarchy in a nutshell.
A week ago, the princess was chattel to be bought and sold along with her kingdom—she never imagined any situation where she wouldn’t be happy that scenario came to an end. And yet. “I fail to believe that is enough to halt war at every border. Pyrenee will still attack, no matter who is on our throne. Do not underestimate Inés; she has a plan.”
At this, Ferdinand nodded.
“Mother has been very clear—we need to mitigate Inés. We don’t know what she is waiting for, but we will be ready. In the meantime, this is what we can do to ensure no further damage.”
Amarande drew in a thin breath. “When will you be introduced?”
“Sunset tomorrow. The announcement decrees have been written and are being distributed throughout the Sand and Sky, announcing my coronation.”
Amarande’s mouth went desert dry. “Coronation?”
“They are naming me king. There is no law about age here—it was rewritten for Father.”
Yes. Father became king at fifteen. Two years before he wed. The laws were different from the ones Renard had navigated. Rewritten for the right ruler—yet not rewritten for her.
And just like that, her claim would be erased.
Amarande’s grip strangled the knife hilt. Her voice roughened. “Ardenia is my home, my kingdom, not yours. What do you care of Ardenia? Don’t answer that, you care nothing of it other than of the power it gives you.”
“I don’t care about power—”
“You’re stealing my throne, of course you do. You don’t wish to lie but I highly doubt you give a flying fig about stabilizing a land you’d never seen until days ago.”
“Ardenia, my father, my true mother, you—they are fresh grains of knowledge, but it is incorrect to assume I won’t do anything for them simply because they’re new to me.”
She took another step forward. “Such a diplomatic answer—not a lie, yet not the truth. Mother taught you well from the Warlord’s tent.”
Amarande raised a brow and dared him to give an answer. If he really wanted to commit to a life of truth, a confirmation of what Amarande thought she saw would be vital information to relay to Luca—if she could escape this place. And armed with her brother on the defensive, she could nearly taste the fresh air of freedom.
When Ferdinand didn’t respond right away she took another step toward him, and continued to press. “If you are going to lie outright, don’t waste that chance here. I saw our mother in the Warlord’s tent. Which means, by your own description, you were there, too.”
Ferdinand leveled his gaze, so much like their father’s. Though he was defenseless and backed against a wall, his words were calm and measured. Everything she was not in that moment. “You always knew who you were and what power you held. I knew nothing other than what my mother told me and even then I lived a lie.”
It was true that Amarande always knew who she was, but she’d been wrong about the power she held and under what circumstances she would hold it—or have it stolen away.
“You confirm it then? Mother is the Warlord?”
He didn’t answer.
A foot away from him now, Amarande gripped the knife tightly, turning over the options. Stomach. Throat. Chest—no.
Unbidden, the memory of Renard’s death flashed before her. His storybook features screwed up in surprise before draining of color. Lifeblood blooming crimson across the white fabric at his chest before spreading black on the aubergine of his jacket.
She wouldn’t kill Ferdinand, only strike him hard enough to leave her mark. The princess raised the knife. “Tell me.”
Ferdinand lifted his hands in surrender. “Please, Sister.”
Amarande hesitated. Words faltered on her lips. In that slight pause, he took advantage. One long arm swept up the princess’s loose boot and flung it directly at her face. She blocked it with a forearm but in that second lost sight of her brother.
And that was her mistake.
When Amarande had full view of him again, she saw his hand slipping out of his own boot. The cool edge of a blade caught in the filtered light. In his hand. And then not.
It sliced through the air, quick as the strike of a Harea Asp, the knife pinning her right between the tendons that sewed her knuckles in place. Impaled, Amarande’s hand flew open, dropping the dagger. The blow spun her backward and she fell. In two steps, Ferdinand retrieved Amarande’s fallen knife, wrenched her uninjured arm back and clamped a shackle on her wrist—face placid and determined, looking just like Koldo.
Amarande kicked at him, going for a third strike on his damaged knee. But without leverage it was useless. Her free hand scrambled to gain purchase on something—his hair, his ear, the collar of her father’s tunic he had no right to wear—but her fingers didn’t seem to follow orders with a blade lodged between the tendons.
Ferdinand clamped a matching shackle to her injured hand. His warm fingers wrapped around her own. She struggled against his grip. Again, he leveled their father’s eyes on her, steady and calm, though he was breathing hard.
“Please hold still as I remove the knife, Sister. I do not want to damage your hand further.”
Again, she was caught off guard. If their places were switched, she would not be so kind. If she could worsen an initial strike while removing her weapon, she would. And she wouldn’t use the term of endearment either. “Why are you being kind?”
“Because you could have slit my throat and escaped the second I walked in and didn’t.”
But … he still hadn’t found the knife. It made no sense. Still, his demeanor was open, calm … honest? She stiffened as he wrapped a hand around the hilt of the dagger. He braced her wrist against the wall with the other hand and, in one smooth motion, removed the blade.
Amarande didn’t cry out, even as stars swirled in her vision and blood began to pour from her hand. Ferdinand removed a handkerchief from his jacket and tied it tightly over the wound.
“I will send for a medikua.” He wiped the bloodied knife on his shirt before dropping it in his own boot, the fallen dagger already sheathed at his hip. “I am sorry about that. I know you do not believe me, but I do not wish to see you hurt, especially by my hand.”
Then, without hesitation, he walked over to the mattress and removed her boot knife from where she’d hidden it. As he tucked away the blade Amarande had carried since childhood, Ferdinand nodded gently. “That is where I would’ve hidden it, too.”
Injured, unarmed, and now a threat to his very crown with her claim and knowledge of his secrets, Amarande looked away from her brother.
Ferdinand moved toward the door, boots collected, too, but then he paused and turned. “Proof of what you saw can be found on Mother’s right wrist. What you find there will tell you everything you need to know.”
With that, he was gone.
CHAPTER 10
“ULA, please—tell me of your parents.” Luca hadn’t wanted to pry, because it wasn’t in his nature.
He’d known Ula was an orphan. He’d known she blamed the Warlord for it. King Sendoa, too, for his failure to halt the Eradication of the Wolf or even to mount a proper revenge.
But this? This they had to talk about, if they could.
He now knew his true mother, Queen Elixane, hadn’t pretended to be someone else at the Itspi. She’d died in the Warlord’s burning of the Otxazulo like his father and the rest of his family. And Ula’s mother, Lygia, had saved his life—at the expense of a chance to escape with her own family.
Ula sighed but
didn’t speak. Luca asked again. “Please?”
“Tell him or I will,” Urtzi pushed dryly, over the rind of the half wheel of sheep’s cheese he’d finished with Osana in the hours of quiet between Mannah’s reveal of Lygia’s harrowing escape and that moment of tense, Ula-driven silence. “And we both know you don’t want that because I’ll get all the details wrong.”
At this, Ula’s lips quirked. Just a bit. “You would. On purpose—more harm than good.”
“Then consider it a threat. Tell him, or I’ll bungle it all so badly you’ll start shouting at me and wake our host.” Urtzi nodded to the rocking chair where Mannah had fallen asleep while awaiting Erfu, a blanket tight across her lap.
“Fine.”
Her golden eyes glimmered in the candlelit cabin as she glanced at her hands—free now from the sagardon and gauze. They all waited—Luca on the floor near her, bandaged up; Urtzi and Osana at the table. No one said a word as Ula wet her lips and smoothed the knees of her trousers a few times.
“My father and I fled together. Across the Divide to Eritri. He was a blacksmith and found work easily, and so we got a room and just … waited. Every night before I fell asleep we would pray to the stars that Mother would find us. I don’t even know if he actually knew where she was or if she was alive. I just know he prayed with me.”
Ula swallowed heavily, and squeezed her eyes shut as if to stave off tears. After a moment her eyes sprang open and her voice started again, even softer than before. “Then he died—an injury at the forge. I was in an orphanage by four turns of the sun.”
Ula didn’t add more. But then Urtzi whistled from behind. “Where you met me!”
Amazingly, he earned a laugh. “‘Met me’ means ‘arrived and immediately tried to cut the supper line in front of me.’”
Now it was Luca’s turn to laugh. “I am quite sure that did not go well.”
“Want to see my scar?” Urtzi asked, pointing to the skin on his neck below his ear. “If you look close you can see where she stabbed me with a fork.”
“So your temper started early,” Osana teased.
“As if you wouldn’t have stabbed him in the same situation,” Ula answered. “He was a foot taller than anyone in line and not only did he try to slip in front of me, but also several smaller children.”
“Okay,” Osana relented, “I would’ve stabbed him if I knew how.”
Urtzi smacked the table with both hands. “I didn’t see them.”
“Did you ever cut the line again?”
“No.”
“And what of Dunixi?” Luca asked.
“He came when we were thirteen and fourteen turns of the sun,” Ula replied. “Son of a shipping magnate that fell afoul of the Eritrian crown. Father was thrown in prison, mother was already dead, so he was sent to the orphanage as part of the sentencing. Everything wound up with the Crown—the ship, the son, those stupid rings.”
She nodded to Osana here, as Urtzi made to clarify. “His father’s rings.” It wasn’t his usual from-the-gut pronouncement; something bitter wove throughout. “He stole them off the ship as they were being taken. His father never even knew he had them.”
Luca grinned. It would be like Dunixi to grab anything of worth before running—especially if it wasn’t actually his. “I have a feeling he liked to show those rings to anyone with eyeballs.”
“You would be correct,” Ula spit.
“And yet you followed him anyway,” Luca pointed out. “Why?”
Urtzi replied for the two of them. “He got us out.”
That answer was enough for Osana. “That’s why I followed the princess—she got me out. Though it was quite obvious she was the real deal, unlike that blowhard. Sorry, but he was.”
Ula shrugged. “I don’t deny it. But that blowhard came up with the plan. Knew where his father’s ship had been impounded. We were old enough to know that children like us were never actually adopted, never sent into the world on our own accord. If we’d stayed, Urtzi and Dunixi would’ve been conscripted within a month—the Eritrian army is different than that of Ardenia. In Ardenia, anyone with smarts can rise to be an officer. In Eritri, only the children of nobility are officers; the rest are grunts. And the orphans are front line.”
“Especially if they were not of Eritri,” Urtzi added, that bitterness back. Urtzi did not explain why he left Myrcell for Eritri in the first place. Luca did not ask—refugees rarely had a happy reason for being displaced.
“I wouldn’t have been pulled into the army,” Ula clarified. “I would’ve been pushed onto the streets with no skills and no savings. Exactly as I came to them in the first place—”
Ula’s words died out as a commotion came from outside—the goats in a ruckus.
“Erfu!” Mannah exclaimed, startling awake—she’d had years of practice in awaiting her husband’s reappearance under the cover of darkness. She stood from her rocking chair, blanket dropping to the floor, and yanked open a single shutter, as she must have done so many times before.
As it yawned open, a brilliant light flared beyond the window.
Fire.
She shoved open both shutters.
The barn was completely aflame.
Luca and Ula shot up, and Osana’s and Urtzi’s chairs scraped back from the table—as something else came into view.
A rider.
No, more than one—three. Three men on horseback, torches in hand.
Two bent toward the split-rail fence surrounding the upper level of the property, the grazing area beyond—lighting each and every rail on fire with the methodical precision of priests lighting candles to the stars.
The third headed straight for the house.
“Out, out, everyone out!” Luca shouted. There was an audible whoosh as the flames touched the eaves.
This close to the Torrent, rain was sparse, especially in the summer, and the structure was made of juniper wood and dry as a bone. Within a minute or less, the whole thing would be engulfed.
Ula gathered the tinctures, thrusting them into her saddlebag, while Urtzi hauled the rest of the half-packed saddlebags and jug of sagardon. Luca hastily packed the map, unsheathed his dagger, and took Mannah’s hand. She’d grabbed a fire poker as means for a weapon.
“Mannah, is there a place we can run to? Somewhere we can hide?”
“Through the rear door,” the old woman directed. “We can scramble down the ravine—Erfu and I maintain a cave. Stocked with supplies.”
Closest to the rear door Osana grabbed her sword and used her blade to wrench it open without touching the hot metal handle, and held it ajar. Mannah and Luca led the way, but just as they all entered the yard Ula shoved past the line and ran back into the house as the whole front smoldered.
“Ula—” Urtzi grunted, dropping everything, then headed in after her.
Smoke billowed out for a few tense seconds before they both appeared again, coughing. Ula held a wad of fabric in her hands.
“Get dressed,” Ula ordered, shoving his tunic into Luca’s arms.
Of course. She was right. He shrugged it on, concealing the tattoo, and surveyed the scene.
Every structure was aflame—the house, the barn, the lean-to stable, the fence surrounding the whole damned thing. The stench of burning animal flesh and hair rose to the stars. Horses screaming, a cacophony of goats, chickens, the frantic barking of the farm dogs.
The pair of riders lighting the fence were thundering their way from opposite directions, on a course to meet right in front of the rear door, and their intended targets. The man lighting the cabin rounded the side of the building and met them.
This had been intricately planned.
They’d been smoked out and now stood trapped, hemmed in by fire on all sides, their only escape path blocked by the mounted marauders who crowded before them, torches still aflame. All three wore the sand-blasted canvas and muslin popular in the Torrent, hats pulled down over their eyes, bandanas shoved over their noses.
As Luca
stared them down, dagger tight in his grip, he realized this would be his first true fight without Amarande either by his side or as his pure and only motivation. He’d told the truth those moments in the meadow before everything changed.
“Of course I practice—I fight you.”
No reason more, no reason less.
To the stars, Luca wanted nothing more to be on the other side of this moment. Closer to being with her again. He couldn’t lose. Couldn’t let her down. Couldn’t leave her like this.
“I have an idea,” Osana announced, eyes on the bandits as they began to advance with their torches and hard eyes. She shoved King Sendoa’s sword into Luca’s free hand and tagged Urtzi’s arm. “I need your help.”
“Wait—” Ula started, only to be cut off as Osana sprinted away, holding something she’d grabbed from their pile of saved belongings.
“Trust me!” she screamed, without so much as a backward glance.
Urtzi hesitated a moment, looking to Ula, who waved him off, and he chased after Osana, catching up in just a few long strides.
“We saw your face, girl!” the leader screamed toward Osana before she and Urtzi disappeared around the side of the cabin, toward the stable and animal pens. “You can’t hide from the Warlord!”
There was no denying it then. These were the Warlord’s men.
The three bandits did not change the pace of their advance or regroup—facing off against Luca with a sword and dagger, Ula and her trusty curved blade, and Mannah wielding her fire poker, fierce in defense of her hard-won home, now burning to the deadened grass.
“If that was meant to be a diversion it didn’t work,” Luca whispered, when not a one of them peeled off after the pair.
“It’s not a diversion because they know who you are,” Ula whispered. “Run, we’ll hold them off.”
“I will not.”
“You can and you will,” she grit out, nudging him with her shoulder. Back toward the side of the burning cabin, where he could dart out front, find a break in the fence, and disappear into the night. Maybe.
The Queen Will Betray You Page 6
