The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  Her mother laughed a little at this. Amarande did not join her, and when Geneva was through, her lips stayed quirked at the corners. Her eyes flashed up to meet her daughter’s. “She is not here, but I am. Isn’t there something you want to ask me?”

  Once, Amarande would have. She would have asked all the questions that had plagued her ever since she was old enough to remember missing her mother.

  The questions that had run through her head in that first breathless moment when Geneva revealed herself in Satordi’s chambers. Questions that waned the moment Ferdinand stepped into the room. Questions that died altogether when she’d learned what her mother had done.

  Now every question was but ashes upon her tongue. This woman had already proved herself not to be an ally to Amarande, no matter her reasons for leaving long ago. Therefore, her answers were unimportant. Now all that mattered was getting free and reuniting with Luca. Her true family.

  Amarande stubbornly returned Geneva’s gaze, holding her face still as stone, not speaking a word. As the silence stretched between them and no questions came, the expectant look in her mother’s eyes faded away and walled over.

  Geneva secured a roll of gauze and pulled out a length—purposefully making it short enough that Amarande wouldn’t be able to use it as a weapon. She took her daughter’s fingers in her own and tied up the gauze with a knot cinched against Amarande’s outer wristbone. “Your hands are so much like mine. See?”

  Something like delight flickering in her blue eyes, the first crinkles of crow’s-feet accenting her long eyelashes as she held up a hand—small but dexterous, knuckles prominent in ode to their surprising strength. Amarande couldn’t disagree—she’d already tried to ignore yet another physical similarity between them.

  Amarande reached for Geneva’s hand, as if to press her palm into her mother’s in comparison—but didn’t. In a swift movement, she changed course and pinched the elegant fabric at her mother’s wrist, hauling down the sleeve.

  And there, in satiny black ink not much different from Luca’s own—flames leaping toward the sky. A fire pit.

  “It’s true. You are the Warlord.”

  Her mother did not flinch, did not move to conceal the ink or deny its meaning. “Ferdinand told you.”

  He hadn’t, but he’d given her the lead. 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. But she would never admit it to Geneva. For some reason Amarande felt protective of that.

  “No. I saw you.” She raised her eyes to her mother’s. “I was a prisoner in the Warlord’s camp, you know. Your camp. I told your guards my name.”

  If Geneva truly wanted a relationship with the daughter she’d abandoned fifteen years ago, then returned to, only to imprison her in a tower—truth was the only way forward. In watching her mother ponder her choices—would she lie, or confess?—Amarande wasn’t sure which she preferred. She knew the truth; what was more?

  Geneva made her choice. “Four people in all the world carry this tattoo. Each of us has been the Warlord. I was not the first and I will not be the last.”

  Four. All the timeline questions Amarande could never justify were swept away in this single revelation.

  “The Warlord’s power lies in the name and reputation. As long as both are intact, so is the Warlord’s power; it does not matter who wears the mask, per se.”

  Amarande wasn’t sure how she felt about being correct, or that her mother had chosen truth. A new question rose where the others had once been. “You are no longer the Warlord?”

  “I have retired. I was the third Warlord and the longest serving—ten years.”

  Ten years. Amarande’s mind reached back for her father’s face. The scar on his cheek—a gift from the Warlord. At least, that was the story he’d told. She couldn’t remember when he’d gotten it exactly. Had it been within the last decade? Most likely. Which meant …

  “Did Father know?”

  “Yes.”

  All the air left Amarande’s lungs in a slow leak. It was true, then. The Warlord was able to run amok unchecked because the greatest warrior in the Sand and Sky refused to attack.

  The princess bared her teeth. “And so what? The Torrent wasn’t enough for you? You decided to use Ferdinand as your puppet in Ardenia? To kill another kingdom?”

  Her mother’s hand struck out, quick as a Harea Asp, crushing Amarande’s injured hand in an iron grip. The princess cried out, her wound screeching with pain as bones and ligaments pressed in on the oozing gash.

  “I do admire your spirit, Amarande—I will admit that when I learned of your plea for consent, a voice, a choice, I found it inspiring. You told all of the Sand and Sky what you wanted literally over your father’s dead body.” Her mother’s voice was but a whisper of hot breath against Amarande’s cheek. Suddenly, that moment on the dais at her father’s funeral, where she informed her people she wanted a say in who became her husband and their king, felt almost a lifetime ago. “So dramatic in execution—and brave. And yet it was not effective in the way you’d dreamed. You shot for the heartstrings of your people, but enraged the decision-makers, did you not?”

  The princess clenched her teeth to muffle her scream, looking her mother straight in the eye, breathing hard. Geneva’s grip intensified. Amarande could no longer hold back an agonized sob. “Mother…”

  “Do you think you are the only person seeking freedom of choice, Amarande?” Ferocity gathered in Geneva’s tone as her words built. “You, my darling daughter, were born into a leadership that has ruled this kingdom for a thousand years. Your people are conscripted into the army—men, women, everyone—without choice or thought. If they survive that, they’re sent into the mines to produce diamonds from which they will never profit. Their lives are mapped out for them just like their fathers’ and mothers’ before them and their fathers’ and mothers’ before that for the past millennium.”

  Geneva’s thumb, so small and strong, pressed into the precise spot where Amarande’s flesh gaped beneath the gauze. She cried out, tears rolling out of the corners of her eyes.

  “I committed the worst acts of my life, stars save me, when I left you to protect your legacy.” Geneva squeezed Amarande’s hand so hard now she thought the bones might crack. “In the years since that horrific night I learned that legacy is not worth saving. Especially as a woman.”

  Amarande struggled to keep her eyes open, trying to read her mother’s face through the unrelenting pain. Geneva’s voice was dark and direct and full of the weight of a lifetime of regret. Or, perhaps, disgust.

  “Up until tonight, you were the most powerful woman in Ardenia and possibly the most powerful on the continent of the Sand and Sky. And yet, even with all that power, you couldn’t even rule in your own right. Love in your own right. Be in your own right. Could you?”

  As blood soaked through the fresh gauze, snaking down their joined hands, and the pain tore at the edges of any coherent thought, Amarande’s mind flashed back to another powerful woman’s words. The Dowager Queen Inés, snapping back at Amarande’s assertion that the Crown of Pyrenee was not hers. Yet you have the right blood, and your claim is still worthless without you attaching yourself to another like a parasite.

  A parasite, begging for her own kingdom. These women had been through it before. They knew how to rule even if their blood and rights created a different burden for them than they had for Amarande.

  Geneva squeezed even harder. Amarande’s bones stretched and cracked as the wound folded upon itself, pain kissing every edge, injured or whole. “I want an answer—could you?”

  Amarande wet her lips, her teeth suddenly chattering. “No.”

  The Runaway Queen dropped her daughter’s hand. “And that is why we must end it. Your brother’s reign is the first step.”

  Amarande cradled her hand against her chest, as safe a distance as she could get. She swallowed, stars at the recesses of her vision. “How is that better? Another man
on a stolen throne? How is that more acceptable than my simple request to rule alone? Ferdinand may be a promising ruler, but elevating him does not solve the problem of the patriarchy. Inés is as power hungry as they come, but even she offered me a more diplomatic solution that did not call for erasing my claim by locking me in a tower.”

  Amarande expected another outburst—more painful retaliation. Instead, her mother found a new target. “Inés did, eh?”

  “Yes, before the wedding.”

  “And you believed her?” Geneva cocked a brow. “I knew Inés well once—as peers do. She is much smarter than anyone gives her credit for, as distracted as they are by her face and bosom. Do not dismiss for a second the fact that she knew exactly what she was doing, appealing to your motivations in the moments before that bloodbath.”

  “She said that if I ran from Renard and let her do her work, we could upend the patriarchy with the right number of votes. Invoke a majority that would rewrite the laws and let me rule outright.”

  Again, her mother laughed. “If your father was unable to produce such a result, I can guarantee Inés would not have been able to do so. It is called a patriarchy for a reason. The Inés I knew was always one to work within it, and she indeed has done well for herself. But I plan to break it. In my own way. In my own time.”

  It was a threat and a promise—Ferdinand was indeed a puppet. The woman who had hidden behind a title for a decade, pulling strings, now taking her show to a new place, a new people, this time hidden behind the spitting image of a young Warrior King. Koldo had to know this, and yet she’d let it happen over not only Amarande’s claim but also her own regency. Why?

  Geneva neatly packed her basket of tinctures and stood, turning to the door. She was finished, but the princess was not. Amarande sucked in a steadying breath.

  “Did you poison Father? Or give the order? To end it? Was that really the first step?”

  “No.”

  That was it. No explanation. Just a trite reply, and another step toward the door. Amarande wasn’t sure what to believe. Was she telling the truth?

  The princess looked away, not wanting to give her mother the satisfaction of a closely watched exit. That was when Geneva paused. “Lygia’s boy, Luca. Where is he? You risked all for him and yet he is not here with you?”

  Amarande’s chest tightened, the worn edges of the ransom note caressing the skin over her heart. Silent, she watched the woman’s profile. The sweep of her neck, elegant even on her petite frame. Geneva’s most recent title of the Warlord may have been passed along to another, but the weight of its power still anchored her proud shoulders.

  “Your silence gives me a theory.” Geneva turned back to fully face her daughter. “I am no longer the Warlord, but I have a great interest in the Torrent. I knew Lygia, and I’m observant enough to know that Luca was not her child, but her charge. The tattoo on his chest was something she often tried to obscure, but I did not miss the shock on the faces of my Torrentian maids the first time they saw it.”

  Abene and Maialen. Amarande swallowed, willing her face to stay blank, even as panic rose within her—a wildfire.

  “Darling daughter, hear me now and know what I say to be true.” Geneva crossed the short distance and tipped up Amarande’s chin so that she could look nowhere but into her mother’s eyes—blue and aflame. “If this boy and his wolf tattoo is out to unseat the Warlord, I will personally see to it that he fails.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “CREATED it?” Luca’s words tasted like ashes in his mouth. “Tala, please, spare no detail.” He glanced at Ula, who looked as if she were a million miles away. She already blamed Ardenia for doing nothing to help the Torrent but this suggestion … it was a path that was dark indeed. “I know King Sendoa did not do enough to unseat the Warlord. How did that inaction lead to the creation of the Torrent?”

  The man drew in a deep and weary breath. Suddenly Tala appeared so much older, the weight of the years and fight slumping his shoulders as he found the words to explain what had led to the resistance he had built.

  “My Otsakumea, your father, King Lotyoa, was a longtime friend of King Sendoa. Our king was ten years older, and regarded King Sendoa as a brash younger brother. Their connection was much stronger than with the other rulers. King Domingu was too old to be a peer. King Akil’s father, King Alladan, was dead, and the Dowager Queen Tiya was not interested in making friends. King Louis-David was a peer but was even more disinterested in such things than Dowager Queen Tiya. And so all that is to say, Lotyoa and Sendoa were friends on a continent where that is rare.”

  Friends. The Warrior King was friendly among those who knew him well, yes. But he considered himself protector of the Sand and Sky—a role he took on not out of friendship but as a strategy to insulate Ardenia.

  Perception and perspective—did they drive everything, even at the top?

  “Forgive me, Tala, but from what I know of Amarande’s life, not a single person of royal blood seems to trust one another. It seems to bear no consequence if they appear to be friendly with one another.” Luca gestured to where gauze peeked out from the top of his tunic, marking his wound. “I have personally experienced what a brother would do to remove his own blood from the line of succession. That blood and appearance of loyalty didn’t matter; why would friendship?”

  He nodded, grave. “What matters is that it didn’t.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Urtzi grunted, gnawing on a hunk of bread.

  “I was there; it does make sense if you understand the situation,” Tala said. “Though they had been friends, that relationship became closer as they became older, then faced the same milestones in a sort of delayed succession—the loss of a father, elevation to the throne, marriage. They were as close as could be. And yet, right after King Sendoa married Queen Geneva, something about his relationship with King Lotyoa changed.”

  It hit Luca that though he knew Amarande was not like the rest, perhaps it wasn’t possible to say the same about her father.

  “Immediately after the wedding, King Sendoa called upon King Lotyoa. Twice, I heard raised voices from the royal chambers. Years later we discovered that within a week of that final visit, King Sendoa’s soldiers moved into the Kingdom of Torrence and took the first steps toward the Eradication of the Wolf.”

  A chill paced Luca’s spine. “Steps. What were they? How?”

  “These soldiers found the first Warlord, a man by the name of Jericho Talmage.” This was not a name Luca had yet heard. Looking around, it appeared, no one else had either. “They stoked his anger against the Otxoa, solidified his support, shored up his supplies, and strategized what would become, a short time later, a coup.”

  Luca squeezed his eyes shut. “They created it by installing the Warlord.”

  “Yes, my Otsakumea.”

  Luca drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Why?”

  “I do not know. All I know is though King Sendoa did not lift a finger in the killing of the Otxoa, he gave the order.”

  Luca stared at the Otxoa’s most trusted advisor. The ghost of the father figure Luca had known his whole life sat heavily on his shoulders—this man who had opened his home, given him a job, ensured he was educated, could he have done such a thing? Been so generous with one hand and so cruel with the other? He attempted and failed to swallow as he read Tala’s burnished face. The older man did not break eye contact, his dark pupils unwavering. “This is not secondhand information?”

  “No. It is my information and it is the truth. I survived it.” Tala did not raise his voice, but his words were as knife thrusts, one after another, all aimed at the memory of Sendoa so vivid in Luca’s mind.

  There had to be a reason. This could not be true.

  Tala seemed to read Luca’s thoughts. He continued. “And if you do not believe me, ask yourself why a man who styled himself as the great protector of the Sand and Sky let the continent’s heart be burned down and destroyed with a shrug and a glance the other way.�
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  Luca swallowed. “You know the name Jericho Talmage. Do you know the identity of the others?”

  “No. He is the only one we have confirmed.” Tala’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at, my Otsakumea?”

  Luca drew in a deep breath. “My princess believes the current Warlord—or, if your intelligence is correct and there is a new Warlord, the previous one—was her mother. You said the title did not seem to pass hands for a long time. Is it possible King Sendoa did not attack because he knew the Runaway Queen was the Warlord?”

  Tala thought on this awhile, as it seemed to be news to him. After a long moment, he said, “Or that could have been what he wanted all along. Control of the Torrent. Perhaps he had it through her. And with his death, unwittingly relinquished control.”

  Which could mean Amarande’s mother was forced out. Or dead. Days after Amarande was sure she had laid eyes on her. Maybe.

  How many times had he sat in the meadow with Amarande on the anniversary of the loss of their mothers—hers to disappearance, his to illness—listening to her wander through her thoughts about her father’s heartbreak over Queen Geneva’s flight? How King Sendoa wouldn’t marry again with his heart in pieces. How Amarande was grateful he had Koldo’s friendship to bolster the broken parts of him.

  Luca was not Amarande, and though he had daily access to the king, he wasn’t a surrogate son. But over the course of his childhood at the castle, he’d seen enough to know what Amarande said about her father’s broken heart was true. But what if it wasn’t broken by Queen Geneva?

  Luca tried again to swallow, his throat parched.

  The room was quiet. Tala continued, tone somber and low. “King Lotyoa was known for his kindness. He was more trusting than what was prudent in his position. Of everyone and anyone, and I believe this is what was the end of him.”