“Being Warlord comes with extreme advantages, including aegis over a vast network of watchers, and our fleet of trained caracaras that deliver news far faster and less obtrusively than riders clad in the colors of a kingdom. So, yes. All of this is true.” The Warlord took a large step back toward the fire, blade still ready, surveying the disowned prince and discarded princess before her. “Right this very moment, Inés is using her new power—legal or not—to collect her army and bore down upon Ardenia. And when blood stains the halls of the Itspi, she will turn to the last piece: the Torrent. And then the continent will be under her command.”
Here, the Warlord most definitely smiled beneath the thin fabric.
“But the thing about taking power by conquest is that as long as blood is around, there will be questions. Inés, for all her charms, has just very recently gained two-thirds of her army. And those soldiers, dutiful creatures that they have been trained to be, are going through the motions for her, no passion in it. Assurance stokes that passion, and she can get that with the death of any question of blood.” She pointed her blade at Taillefer. “And that means, she needs you, safely put away in her possession. To kill, to torture, whatever. Neutralized.”
Yes, tried for treason and murdered. Out of the way, no matter the paperwork.
“And so we are to be handed to my mother? Blackmail to keep the Torrent?” He nodded to himself, not really asking questions so much as working through a problem in his mind. This boy and his strategies and games. “If you think I am valuable enough on my own to keep my mother’s ambitions out of your hair, then you do not understand the depths of that woman.”
Perhaps he wanted to keep them together. Thinking he could lessen his punishment with the hand that killed Renard under the same roof. But it would not work.
“No,” Amarande answered, voice resigned. “I am headed to Ardenia.”
Taillefer’s strategic mind whirred ahead. “But Ardenia’s plans to aid the resistance died with Sendoa. Geneva and Ferdinand have no reason to tussle with the Torrent, especially when they learn of what my mother has done.” He straightened himself a little taller on his knees, imploring. “Handing Amarande to Inés only furthers your requests of autonomy and peace.”
The Warlord spun on Amarande, her head tilted to a viciously questioning angle. “He has come all this way, and yet you have not told him, Princess?”
Amarande felt Taillefer’s eyes settle on her profile. She steeled her breath, turned to him, and answered resolutely, “My mother was the previous Warlord.”
Taillefer did not react except to widen his eyes—it was possible this boy had never before felt true surprise.
“I am headed to Ardenia because the Torrent and Ardenia are now aligned,” she concluded. “It is an act of allyship, not barter.”
The Warlord shifted on her feet. “That is almost it.”
Amarande slowly raised her eyes to the girl—what did she miss?
At first, she did not believe the Warlord would give her a true answer. But then the girl’s anger got the best of her in the way it would not an older, true leader.
“Your mother has left me to guard her interests as her proxy. We had a ceremony, made announcements—” In a flourish, she held up her wrist and pointed to a smudge of ink there. “She even pretended to brand me with the tattoo every Warlord has carried through the years. But the ceremony was for show. The power is hers. I am but a vessel. That is much different than giving me the power I deserve.”
Amarande’s heart slowed to a stop. Her mother wasn’t just looking out for her best interests. She was still pulling the strings. From the throne room of the Itspi.
Stars.
Now Taillefer spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Princess, it certainly sounds as if this Warlord is insinuating she is acting regent and your mother is the actual Warlord in addition to being the Queen Mother of Ardenia.”
Both girls ignored him.
“Your mother has not relinquished the title to me.” The Warlord let her sleeve fall back. “You, Princess, will buy me the Torrent.”
Yet again, Amarande was something to be bartered. Claimed. Won.
She was so far from where she’d been in the days after her father’s death. And yet here she was again. The same. This time, a pawn between two of her own repressed gender. Three, if one counted Inés. And it was clear that queen would not be counted out.
Three so-called queens, all jockeying for position on their little continent.
Amarande cut her chin at a defiant angle. Bared her teeth. “You can go ahead and try to buy the Torrent with my head, but you will lose it in kind. If not to my mother, who, no doubt, will not give away the title quietly, by Luca’s hand. The Torrent cannot be conquered without the fall of the Warlord. My Luca will come for you.”
The Warlord laughed. Amarande’s face pinched in confusion as she watched the girl toss her head back. Meanwhile, Taillefer sighed and found his voice—as low and heavy as Amarande’s was defiant and resolute. “No, Princess. He will come for you. True love is as powerful as it is predictable.” A sudden jolt of tears pulled at her eyes. “She is counting on it. His people will feel betrayed, the revolution will fall apart, and she will own the Torrent.”
“Exactly.”
Amarande’s mind raced with all that was left unsaid. The dregs of the Sand and Sky fighting it out, with Ardenia as the battlefield, war brought to her people. With herself and her love locked away or murdered. Neutralized. Same as Taillefer on his side.
“We must make haste and arrive at Ardenia’s gates ahead of Queen Inés and her new army. It is not ideal to broker payment in the middle of a battle.” The Warlord’s hands clapped together loudly three times—a signal to the guards. The women immediately entered. Running down the line, she gave orders. “Janea, ready our fastest caracara for flight to the Itspi. Grania, Tomli, clean and feed our prisoners and place them in transport cells. Manu, ring the bell—we leave immediately.”
CHAPTER 40
“WE leave the carriage and head out on the horses. Go straight to the hideout. The rest of the team can take our carriage and follow along with the caravan. We’ll go east, parallel. Cut them off.”
Ula’s plan flowed out of her in whispered breath as they made their way across the Warlord’s camp to where their carriage, cook fire, and the other resistance members waited.
The brim of Luca’s hat was pulled low over his eyes as they skirted through the narrow walkways weaving between tents and carriages, cook fire smoke and coffee scent trailing—breakfast delayed slightly by the spectacle of Amarande’s capture.
“No.”
Ula clutched his forearm, nails digging in, as sharp as her low tone. “No?”
“No. She’s here. We can’t leave. We’re here. We stay with her.”
“Miguel,” Ula snapped. A few people turned at her admonishment, clearly yearning for more entertainment after an exciting morning. Every other word was “Princess” or “Ardenia” slipping through the haze of smoke and chores.
Luca’s dimples flashed and he hooked an elbow around her neck, leaning in to her ear as their bodies came together for what should’ve appeared to be a lovers’ moment. “At the carriage.”
Ula complied with a smile for those around them, before spitting through her teeth, “But Urtzi. With her. Her sister! And with you-know-who at the castle!”
Yes. His worst fears about Osana had been confirmed and heightened knowing her relationship to this Warlord in search of power. Still, he answered, “At the carriage.”
Ula pasted her lips together in another forced smile and tapped his cheek as if he’d made a joke. He laughed, and they quickened their steps, silent the rest of the way. Luca’s mind churned.
Amarande was alive, and here.
Her mother was alive, and at the Itspi.
And apparently, she had a brother and he was on the throne?
All the times the princess had wondered after her mother fell on top of one another in
Luca’s mind, intertwined and thick as a bird’s feathers. As she’d grown older there were always comments about how much they looked alike, padded with theories as to where her mother had gone and what had happened. Or how the disappearance was simply a cover for what had been orchestrated by her father’s hand—that theory was one at market, never within the Itspi where the king’s true character was properly understood.
Until Luca’d met Ula and the resistance, he’d always thought he knew King Sendoa as well as he might have known his own father. Now he wasn’t sure he’d really known him at all.
Luca drew in enough breath to fill the emptiness in his gut.
Amarande. Focus on Amarande.
Everything was spidering together, strands in a web. In the meadow on the day of King Sendoa’s funeral, after Taillefer came upon them and inquired about Amarande murdering Renard for him, he’d asked her if all the royal players were all like the second son of Pyrenee. Even though neither of them knew what was to come with Taillefer, Amarande’s answer was immediate.
Greedy? Backstabbing? Opportunistic? Every last one of them.
Luca now understood the web was much wider than he’d thought. Understood, too, that he would not leave this caravan until she did, preferably at his side.
His whole chest—his heart, throbbing under the strain of his wound and stitching and all the layers of protection—pounded with the truth that he could not be anywhere else knowing Amarande was here and in the Warlord’s clutches. Not with the promise he’d made to her as they vanished into the dark after the wedding, alive despite it all.
Never let anyone take either of us again, promise?
Always, Princess.
On the heels of that promise had come the confirmation that she loved him. He’d loved her for so long and had found his own way to say it for years … and yet it seemed like an impossibility that she felt the same way until the words slipped into the air between them as they ran for their lives.
The carriage came into view, the cook fire still smoldering. Their companions sat stoking their own breakfasts, trying very hard not to appear to be watching them too closely as they approached. Luca nodded to Petri and gathered Tala’s faux name. “Call Simu, would you?”
Then the two of them disappeared into their carriage, and Luca drew the entrance flap tight. The sliver of light from the window disappeared, and suddenly they were shrouded in the haze of canvas curtaining full daylight.
“No,” Luca said again, louder. “We don’t leave. We stay.”
“You heard them!” She flung both arms out in exasperation. “They are expecting you to go after her. It would be against my oath to let you walk right into the trap they are laying for you.”
“They expect me to come; they don’t expect me to already be here. I am here. I stay here.”
Ula was silent. Breathing hard. She held up a finger and squeezed her eyes shut. And, when she had calmed herself enough, she gripped the meat of her own arms as hard as she could and willed herself to look at him.
“I am aware and understand that the Warlord is changing our plans for us. Based on her own designs for power and her arrangement with Geneva, it would have changed whether Amarande came into the equation or not.” Ula sucked in a shaking breath. “But you know how Tala feels about the princess. He is distrustful of … her hold over you. I worry that if we stay—even if that aligns with the original plan—it will be seen as abandoning the end goal for Amarande. They will believe your loyalties are divided, and not equally or in their favor.”
Luca sucked in a deep breath. It felt like he could inhale all the air in this carriage and it wouldn’t be enough. His heart took up the whole of his chest.
“No, my loyalties are tied together, closer than before.” How could he explain this? Luca swallowed. “We will still do all the things you mentioned. We send riders to warn them. And then Tala takes that plan he’s had working for nearly my entire lifetime and he pivots again. Whether that attack comes tonight or in Ardenia itself, we cannot change the fact that he now has two targets—this Warlord, and the actual one, pulling the strings. The road to defeating the Warlord now cuts through Ardenia—stars, the future of the Sand and Sky runs through Ardenia.”
Luca let that thought sit, watching Ula’s tightly balled fists loosen as she came to visualize, understand, and locate obstacles. “And what if they steal her away from this caravan? Straight on through to the castle, wrapped up like a bow. Before the resistance gets here? Or, worse, during the fight?”
Luca did not blink. “We rescue the princess.”
“What if we get to the Itspi and the transaction has been made?”
“Then we storm the castle.”
“Are you insane?”
“No, only knowledgeable of what we’ve done before.”
This made her smile, but she chased it with a scoff. “Before we had Urtzi, who, despite the trouble I give him, accounts for a lot. And we didn’t storm anything—we hid out and fled. There was no storming of the Bellringe.”
Luca’s dimples flashed. “For someone who once called herself a pirate, you are surprisingly lacking in a sense of adventure.”
Ula sighed. “That night we spent in the Pyrenee camp, I was so taken with your love for the princess and her love for you that I argued with Amarande in our tent. I told her that true love is the most powerful force on earth—we just forget it because those with power here deal in fear rather than love.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Prove me right, Luca. Prove me right.”
Relief peeled off him in one shattering sheet. “I intend to.”
A knock came—Tala. Luca drew open the entry flap. The leader wore a deep hat like his and careful attire. He stepped inside without a word and Luca drew the carriage shut again.
“You’ve heard.”
Tala nodded. “What don’t I know?”
Luca sent forth all he knew. About Amarande, Taillefer, Inés, Geneva, Ferdinand. The names swirled around them, Luca’s knowledge of Sand and Sky intrigue from his meadow time with Amarande creeping into the small space. Then, when he was finished, Luca took a heavy pause and laid out the argument for what he wanted to do.
“Geneva holds the keys to the Torrent, this Warlord holds Amarande for a trade, and Inés holds designs on controlling the whole continent. We cannot change the collision course of these powerful women—the wheels and ships and lines of soldiers are already in motion. We can only do our best to prevent it. And we undercut both Warlords if we save Amarande. My heart and the resistance are currently aligned”—he looked between them—“and if you can’t see that then it is because you don’t want to.”
Breathing hard, Luca left it at that. Almost.
“Argue with me, but I need you. And so does Amarande. We will have a plan. We will account for everything. And in the end we will win.”
Ula was still as stone. Tala scraped at his stubble.
Finally, the longtime leader of the resistance stood. “I will tell the others.”
CHAPTER 41
AMARANDE was stripped of her clothes and scrubbed painfully clean. Her wounds were slathered in clove oil and sealed with honey before being wrapped in linen where appropriate. It was quite clear the Warlord had no intention of allowing any infection to linger before they arrived in Ardenia.
The Warlord did not want Amarande to suffer from dehydration or starvation either. Once the princess was deposited in a specially fortified traveling cart, she was given cool water, muddled cherries, sheepherder’s bread, cheese, and spiced dried meat.
It was the best she’d eaten since that last night on the Gatzal, when she and Luca, Ula, Urtzi, and Osana had sat cross-legged under the stars and enjoyed roasted fish they’d caught themselves. Sprayed in lemon juice and wrapped in seaweed, it had been delicious.
So much had changed since then and her stomach ached, having difficulty digesting both this amount of food and the possibilities of what might come. She wished she knew what to do. Her father and his tenets were
silent in her mind.
By midmorning the chaos that was the camp packing up ended, and the mood shifted—they would be on the road, and soon. Men and women bustled around her cart, readying, moving, doing. Amarande stood and watched from the open bars that lined the long sides of the cell. This particular cart had two sides, divided by a solid wooden wall, the same as the roof—Amarande was sure they’d gotten the wood and wagon wheels from the frequent raids conducted on neighboring kingdoms. For at least an hour the other side of the cart was empty, but then came a thud, footsteps, and the clang of the locking mechanism.
A moment later came Taillefer’s voice. Nearly cheerful, though worn with exhaustion. “When were you planning to tell me your mother was the Warlord? That seems like information that would’ve been nice to have, oh say, when we witnessed dead bodies floating at the watering hole. Or when we stepped up onto the portico at the Warlord’s Inn, or, possibly when we snuck into the Warlord’s camp for supplies.”
Frustration tugged at Amarande. With him. With herself. She blew out an impatient breath. “I did not know she was the current Warlord. And I only knew about her previous occupation because Ferdinand confirmed it for me when I guessed. He also does not prefer to lie.”
Taillefer’s tone was snakebitten. “What else don’t I know? You have been holding back more than simply that truth. And though it is not an outright deception, a lie by omission is still a lie.”
“Even the best of us are willing to lie for those we love.”
As soon as it was out, she realized she’d built upon an answer the Warlord had given. Taillefer did not call her on it. Instead, he added, “The worst of us, too.”
She nearly asked him who he loved enough to lie for because the prospects were slim.
His mother wanted his head on a pike.
His brother was murdered by Amarande’s own hand from a series of events he orchestrated.
And sickness took his father so long ago that it seemed an impossibility that he would benefit from a lie told today.
The Queen Will Betray You Page 25
