The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  That weight pressing on Luca’s chest tightened, squeezing his lungs until he couldn’t breathe.

  I am told I am kind and trusting—like my father.

  I will make the same choices.

  And if I make the same mistakes, I will die.

  When Luca drew in a breath to speak, his voice shook. The blood in his veins was one thing, his life experience another.

  “Your doubt of Ardenia is well founded. Though these actions are not in line with the King Sendoa I knew, I respect what you’re telling us. But you must also understand that I trust Princess Amarande with everything I have.”

  The leader didn’t respond.

  “Tala, look at me,” Luca said, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I would like you to trust me—be it as the Otsakumea or simply as Luca—when I say that Amarande is not her father. If she is with me, she is with you.”

  Luca settled back. His companions nodded, unified. Tala drew a thin breath. “You must contact her, my Otsakumea?”

  “Sending a message to Amarande is a promise and I am required to keep it.”

  “My Otsakumea, Princess Amarande should not require anything of you. You are not her stableboy anymore.”

  “I require it, not she. If I make a promise, I keep it. Most especially to those I love.”

  Tala’s expression did not change. He did not approve. “It is imperative that the princess comes alone, not with her army. I do not trust her that far.”

  “The princess will come alone.” Luca needed Amarande more than any army she could bring to defeat the Warlord. He had seen the determination of his people in that cavern, felt it in their grips as they’d taken his hand and looked him in the eye. Every one of them prepared to fight. And win.

  At Luca’s word, Ula immediately got to her feet. “I will go to the princess.”

  This was not a surprise. Ula knew by virtue of her paw print she was someone equally trusted by the resistance and Amarande. The perfect bridge. Tala nodded at the girl, lips turned wryly at their craggy-faced corners. “Of course you will, Ula. You are just as brave, as loyal as your mother—willing to do what is needed without even being asked.”

  Of course this man knew Lygia, too. It made sense and yet her lips dropped open, her golden eyes round in surprise. A flush bloomed across Ula’s face and throat, her thick fall of dark hair not enough to hide it. “Thank you.”

  Osana stood and steadied the scabbard that held Sendoa’s sword across her back. “Luca needs your medical talents. I will go,” she announced. “I know the quickest way to the Itspi and the princess gave me instructions on what I am to say to the guards.”

  Osana had the same compliant attitude she’d had since joining their crew at the Bellringe, but something about the way Luca read it had changed in the past day. Luca always believed the best in people, but King Sendoa’s death and everything after it had added a sour note to that optimism. Still, it was a solid argument and he did not want to appear combative before Tala.

  “I would feel better if someone goes with you—Urtzi, would you indulge me and join Osana? I’m sure the kitchens would be happy to fill your saddlebags before you head out.”

  Mid-bite, Urtzi backed off the bread in his fist and exchanged a heavy glance with Ula. “I travel with Ula.”

  Suddenly Luca realized his request had been much more than simple. Had they been apart since she’d literally left her mark on him as children?

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t travel with me,” Osana replied, her voice light before adding, in a heavier tone, “Especially if it’s the Otsakumea’s fancy.”

  This last bit was clearly for the benefit of Tala, who watched the exchange with his arms wound over his lean chest. He didn’t like the assignment, he didn’t like the resistance of orders, he didn’t like any of it. Ula understood this as well as Osana, as well as Luca. And she would find a way to make Urtzi see it, too.

  “Go on, you big oaf,” Ula said, permission clear. “Maybe you’ll appreciate my finer qualities a little more if you see what else is out there.”

  Urtzi hesitated a moment, but then stood. “I will go.”

  Relieved, Luca nodded.

  Tala forced them both to confirm they would retrieve only the princess before heading toward the resistance’s underground staging area near the Hand. “If you make it to the area before us, wait for the resistance to emerge. Whatever you do, do not seek the tunnel entrance. We must keep our location secure. From everyone.”

  “Amarande can be trusted,” Luca reiterated, keeping his voice as flat as possible.

  Tala held up a hand. “But those who may be watching cannot.”

  Luca nodded to his messengers. “Be careful.” Then to Tala: “What is my role?”

  “You will wait for word at the secure location as the watchers infiltrate and report back.”

  Luca shook his head. If he had learned anything from King Sendoa, Koldo, and Amarande, it was that leaders did not hide and wait.

  “No, I will infiltrate with the watchers. I did not come here to hide, wait, or otherwise be set upon a pedestal and watch the others work.” His eyes flashed upon the older man. “Tell me what to do.”

  CHAPTER 17

  IN the hours after her mother’s visit, sleep did not come easily to the imprisoned princess.

  Amarande’s damaged hand throbbed, far worse than when it was first injured. The only thing that dulled that acute and terrible pain was the growing stiffness in her muscles from the restriction of the shackles that kept her against the circular cell’s curved stone wall, a whole room away from the relative comfort of her straw mattress. There was only enough slack to allow her to slouch against the unpolished stone, not completely lie down, and even then the metal cuffs at her wrists dug into her skin if she did more than prop herself against the wall like a doll.

  But it wasn’t the physical pain that kept her awake.

  It was the mental anguish.

  Over her own decisions that led to this very moment—chained in a tower at her ancestral home, obscured in both person and title.

  Over the raw horror of who her mother had become, a flesh-and-blood monster.

  Over the searing combination of the two, which left Luca vulnerable in a manner she could not counteract, and for which she was solely responsible.

  If this boy and his wolf tattoo is out to unseat the Warlord, I will personally see to it that he fails.

  There was no nuance in that threat. Her mother was no longer the Warlord, but if she did not get out from under lock and key and get to Luca, his head would soon be on a pike just like his father’s had been. His tattoo flayed and visible, too, proof as much as a threat, exposed to all in the Torrent—the caravans that followed the Warlord, and the resistance that waited for the Otsakumea. A rebellion broken, the Warlord’s supreme power enhanced.

  Come with me, Princess.

  If only she had.

  The pain in her hand would be replaced by the warmth of his gentle embrace. Her bones would be weary from fighting with him, for him. And, when the time was right they would have faced her monstrous mother’s ambitions together, sparing both her throne and his from Geneva’s machinations.

  Instead, when sleep did come in some black hour, Amarande did not dream of what they could do together, but of what she had done. Of the look in Renard’s eyes, of the color draining from his face as bright red blood gouted from the upward thrust of her strike, staining her knife hilt, hand, wedding dress.

  It was the dark vision of a memory she could not escape.

  Her first kill—done not for honor, or fighting for her people—but for vengeance. A life for a life. Believing that Renard, in a way, had killed Luca, her love.

  It matched one of her father’s tenets—If not an eye for an eye, a lash for a lash. And yet it was her biggest regret.

  The sound of shattering glass jolted the princess upright and to full wakefulness.

  With another crinkling crash, more glass shattered, salting the sto
nes in shimmering flecks of cobalt and crimson. Hesitant to move, Amarande craned her neck as much as she could, trying to make out who or what was outside her window. Only a few jags of stained glass clung to the window frame now, leaving the steel bars in stark relief against the night.

  “Luca,” Amarande whispered, a reflexive prayer built on immediate, impossible hope. That their love was so strong he could feel how much she needed him, and rode to her rescue, just as she had ridden to his.

  Then she heard a cork pop with a loud sizzle and hiss, and acrid-smelling smoke filled the air. Before her very eyes the bars framing the window melted away. The hilt of a dagger nudged the mangled strips of metal out of the way, creating space enough for a lithe body.

  Something about the sequence caused a drop of unease to settle within her. The princess shot to her feet, her training and strategy flipping from defense to offense. She pressed herself against the wall and gathered the minimal slack of her heavy chains in a loop gripped with her uninjured hand.

  Through the window a boot appeared, black and shiny. Then another. Plain breeches and the tip of a long sword followed, as a male torso snaked sideways through the space left between the disintegrating bars. Amarande’s heart stuttered.

  It was not Luca.

  “They certainly took no chances in disappearing you away, did they?” The young man dropped gracefully to the floor. “High-up tower, under lock and key, chained to a wall while clothed in nothing but a glorified sheet. Your cage is certainly not a gilded one, Princess.”

  Amarande squinted across the dim light at this boy who was not Luca. He was dressed in the garnet-and-ivory of the Itspi castle guard, but a guard he was not.

  Short blond hair, parted neatly. Blue eyes, the color of a fractured glacier. Jawline as regal as any artist could imagine.

  Fox-like smile.

  “Taillefer?”

  She blinked at Renard’s younger brother, not sure if she was actually awake or if she’d entered yet another dark corner of her blood-soaked nightmare.

  “Princess Amarande, your eyes do not deceive you.” The second son of Pyrenee bowed low, sweeping the garnet cape before his body with a flourish. “You are a damsel in distress and I am here to rescue you.”

  He was not incorrect, she was a damsel in distress, but he should not be her rescuer.

  Not in a million years.

  The last time she’d seen him, he was on the other end of her blade as she tried in vain to plunge it into his heart. She hadn’t killed him, but that did not mean he did not intend to repay the attempt now.

  The princess set her feet, legs bent at the knees—ready for action. She bunched the chain in her grip. “You’re here for revenge. I am not a fool.”

  Taillefer took a step closer. His dagger and sword remained stowed at either hip.

  “I see you are surprised.” He raised his hands, palms out, as if he were approaching in surrender—as if he were the one who was unarmed. “I never thought you a fool and I do not underestimate what you can do even while chained.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

  “All I have is that and my reason. If you will not listen to flattery perhaps you will listen to reason.”

  Amarande tipped her chin toward his belt. “You also have your sword and your dagger.”

  “Fair enough.” Taillefer unsheathed both and dropped them into the space between them with a clatter of steel on stone. “Take one or both—whatever you find to be enough collateral that you will accept it when I say I did not come here to murder you.”

  The princess dropped the chain and swept up both weapons. Amarande did not trust Taillefer, but whatever his play in disarming himself, she was certain it could not best her abilities, even while chained and injured. She held both the dagger and sword in a high guard stance, the pain in her injured hand all but muted by the deadly Basilican steel suddenly in her grip.

  “Do not come an inch closer. Why are you here?”

  He cocked a blond brow, and smiled in that deceptively charming way of his that might fool anyone who didn’t know him into thinking he wasn’t completely deranged. “Why did I travel a hundred miles, steal onto the grounds of a highly fortified castle, pilfer an ugly Ardenian uniform, shimmy up a tower, break a window, and melt cell bars all the while balancing on a two-inch-thick decorative ledge for the opportunity to arm an angry, well-trained warrior with my own weapons?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Because we are each other’s only hope.”

  The princess nearly laughed but instead tightened her grip on her weapons. “I’ve heard this song before and we both know how that ended up for Renard.”

  Amarande expected to see him wince, or flush with color, or show some sort of emotion that matched the guilt that was a constant drip in her gut. Taillefer had provoked her into murder and that was something he could not dispute. Instead, he simply answered, “Precisely.”

  “For the love of all the stars, state your case plainly, Taillefer.”

  The boy straightened, the fox-like grin slipping from his face. “My mother wants your blood. Caught dead or alive, there is a bounty on your head for the regicide of Crown Prince Renard. The same for the heads of your stableboy and the pirates for aiding and abetting Renard’s murder and your escape.”

  “None of this is surprising. Why should I believe you are here for any reason other than to shuttle me from my current prison to certain death in the Bellringe?”

  “Because if I show my face at King’s Crest, I will be murdered on the spot.”

  The prince gazed forthrightly into Amarande’s eyes. “I have the same price upon my head. Think of it: Two birds, one stone. Execute a traitor and the only person standing in the way of the throne.”

  Taillefer had a point, but he also had royal lineage his mother did not. “She may murder you in secret, but her claim to the throne would be more powerful if she tried and executed you for treason.”

  “You’re right; it would be more dramatic. She’d prefer that to efficiency, I suppose. A trial and public hanging. Yes—makes for a good, sorrowful song. But she doesn’t need a legitimate claim; she has already moved the pawns into position for her power play.”

  “Taillefer, again with the riddles, can we not—”

  “She is to wed Domingu—it has already been arranged.”

  Amarande’s eyes narrowed. “But he’s already married to Nania—”

  “Very recently drowned, Queen Nania. So young, so unfortunate, so unexpected.”

  Stars. The Basilican king was nearly eighty now, but a man who had stabbed his own brother in the back for a crown would have no compunctions in murdering a mere wife. Especially his fifth. And especially if it meant the chance to create a joint kingdom and produce an heir to go with it—Renard’s fears were coming true.

  Taillefer continued. “Within days, my mother will marry Domingu. They do not need Ardenia’s approval to make it so—they already have the agreement of King Akil of Myrcell. Three heads of state in agreement do not need a fourth for a majority.” He paused for the barest of seconds. “That leaves Ardenia, with its new and inexperienced ruler both isolated and ripe for conquest by a new, powerful joint kingdom. It is not such a leap to believe that if Ardenia falls, so, too, will the entire continent.”

  Amarande’s mind turned over the possibilities of what Domingu could achieve with the whole of the Sand and Sky under his thumb. Is this what her father had feared? And what of Ferdinand—and Geneva? Would they fight? Would they bow? Domingu was Geneva’s grandfather after all—was survival worth the evils of the imperial patriarchy?

  Taillefer watched Amarande process this. “Do you see it, Princess?”

  She did. Though she believed Taillefer was incorrect in claiming that they were each other’s only hope. Each of them was an obstacle in this plan cooked up by Domingu and Inés, and together they combined to be a bigger target.

  Yet Taillefer was here, offering a way out. To Luca. Amarande chewed her li
p. If she were to go with Taillefer, they might not make it to dawn without blood. Even if his aims of allyship were true, his torture of Luca was not something she could ever dismiss. “Why should I trust you?”

  “Why should I trust you?” Taillefer dropped his hands. “Believe me, Princess, it’s a surprise to myself as well that I am even here. You tried to stab me in the chest the last time we had the pleasure of being in the same room.”

  Again, it sounded to her ears as if he was telling the truth.

  “Why not run on your own? Why do you need me?”

  “Because I don’t want to run. I want to fight. And I suspect you do, too.” His eyes flicked across her double-bladed stance. “Which is exactly why Geneva and Koldo took every precaution and hid you away, while handing the crown to your brother.”

  It was clear he understood the nuances of it, whether from the spiders or birds. Just like he knew she would need him to escape.

  He continued, his voice calm and devoid of any hint of the mocking tone that he so often used. “I watched the ceremony, you know. Watched as that lead councilor of yours announced to the people of Ardenia that you were dead by my mother’s hand. It was quite the somber moment—a massive blow to your people—before the sudden, extremely convenient introduction of an heir no one knew existed. Oh, the joy on those surprised faces, Princess. It was something. Quite fortunate for his stunning resemblance to Sendoa—makes for fewer questions and more blind, relieved acceptance.”

  Taillefer gestured at their surroundings.

  “This is a death sentence, Amarande.” For the first time in her memory of him, Taillefer appeared to be absolutely serious. “You still breathe, yes, but do you live? Is living being hidden in a tower? Being chained away? Being deemed a threat in your own home? It is a betrayal as much as it is the end of your life.”

  He took a step closer. “And you know this won’t last. They may keep you a few days, a week, maybe even a month, as collateral. But once your usefulness dries up, you will disappear—for good.”

  It was the truth. She’d known it since the moment she’d awakened in this bare cell—in her own home—imprisoned by people she had known her entire life at the behest of the only family she had left.