The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  Leaving himself exposed.

  In a flash, Geneva lunged and with her nearer blade—three feet of true Basilican steel—thrust straight for the vulnerable flesh of Luca’s unprotected torso.

  “No!” Amarande leapt for Geneva’s sword arm. She got both hands on the outside of her mother’s arm, and yanked, spinning her around. Her own dagger fell, skittering across the marble floor.

  The whole motion sent them both stumbling unsteadily toward the tapestry-covered wall. Amarande careened into it first, the woven depiction of some dead Ardenian king doing absolutely nothing to cushion the blow to the back of her head and upper back. Breath knocked out of her, Amarande held fast to her mother’s arm, bashing her wrist over and over into the stone wall in an effort to release the sword from her grip.

  Blood.

  There was blood on her mother’s sword. Luca’s blood.

  “Luca?” Even in her own ears, Amarande’s voice was strangled. “Luca, are you—”

  Geneva smashed her body backward, driving Amarande even harder against the wall, so hard that her skull thudded off the unforgiving stone with a terrific crack. The world immediately became slow and muffled, her perception blurred by tears and a sudden pounding in her head.

  Amarande tried to focus her addled vision, barely able to make out Luca in the chaos before her. Ula and Urtzi were pressing in, Osana dashing after them. Ferdinand shielding them all from Geneva’s second blade, still lashing out as Amarande maintained her grip on the sword arm that had struck Luca. It was futile, of course, because Geneva couldn’t truly reach.

  And so, with one great swing, Geneva arced her second blade toward her daughter, pressed against the stone.

  In a flash of steel and bootstrikes, Koldo attacked.

  The general rushed Geneva’s flailing sword with her own, smashing it flat against the stone wall behind her. For a split second, Geneva’s body was stretched in a cross—Amarande still pinning one side with both hands, Koldo going for the other with her sword.

  But then, just as Koldo reached maximum pressure, Geneva dropped that sword. Koldo’s own sword lost its leverage, and she went stumbling away.

  With a great crash, the general careened into the heavy wooden council table, papers and figurines scattering. And as Koldo’s body hit, Amarande’s attention caught on another movement from that side of the room—Taillefer slowly backing away toward the door from where he’d come, apparently no longer entertained.

  But Amarande was not yet done with him.

  “Taillefer! Someone stop Taillefer!”

  To Amarande’s surprise, it was Luca who heeded her call. In a blink, he scooped up her fallen dagger and slung it end over end toward the new King of Pyrenee. Amarande did not see the blade make contact, as Geneva spun to face her daughter and punched the tapestry in what at first seemed to be a missed strike to Amarande’s kidney.

  But then the stone at Amarande’s back rumbled to life. The entire length of the wall behind the tapestry rotated, the princess and her mother with it. Geneva’s face broke into a calculating smile.

  “Before this castle was yours, it was mine.”

  And, as they were plunged into utter darkness, Amarande’s mother laughed.

  CHAPTER 62

  THE panel was stone again. The entire party save for Taillefer rushed it, prodded at it. The tapestry was gone and the wall completely solid.

  A secret passageway.

  Luca had lived at the Itspi his entire life, had combed every corner with Amarande—every stairwell, every floor, every nook and cranny. They’d even spent years using the library dumbwaiter as their own personal secret entrance into the yard.

  But he’d never seen a wall move.

  He stabbed at the stones the same height as the one Geneva had struck, Ferdinand and Urtzi punching ones farther up, Ula and Osana jabbing balled fists and braced shoulders into ones farther down.

  General Koldo hauled herself up from where she’d landed on the table. She was bleeding from the head, a huge gash over her eye from where she’d made contact with the massive piece of scrolled furniture.

  “Koldo,” Luca called to her, “do you know—”

  “The library.” As she said it, she collected Geneva’s discarded sword, caught eyes with Luca, and tossed it his way.

  “Is that the only place?” Ferdinand was already pivoting for the double doors, not waiting for his mother’s answer.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t need to tell me twice.” Ula raced after Ferdinand, Koldo, and Osana. “We’re coming, Amarande!”

  Taillefer hissed out something of a laugh. “I knew that library had a hidden passageway—Amarande denied it. But I knew. Go on; I can certainly entertain myself while you settle this family feud.” His voice was weak—Luca’s dagger had speared his fine aubergine collar against the door from which he’d appeared. Taillefer didn’t reach for the latch, but he would the moment they disappeared; that much was guaranteed. “I’ll wait.”

  “You had to tempt me.” Ula wheeled on him, sword out and Urtzi at her back. “I have much to say to you after your treatment of Luca, Taillefer.”

  Luca waved her off. “I will say it. Go, Ula. Your sword is meant for Geneva if Amarande doesn’t get her first. Go, for Ama and for Lygia.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Ula replied, firmly.

  Taillefer sighed. “I have what I want. I have no quarrel with you, wolf cub.”

  “We have all the quarrel. You don’t get the quarrel,” Urtzi spit. Apparently, he wasn’t leaving either.

  Luca needed to be quick. Amarande could not wait, even with the others’ help. She needed him. And them. But they also could not let this evil boy out of their sight and near the ships still lingering in the harbor.

  “If you think we will let you leave with your word and a handshake, you’re wrong.” Luca lunged for Taillefer’s weapons, drawing his sword and dagger from their sheaths. Taillefer did not fight, hands limp at his sides—Luca did not trust that. A bluff. “How are we to know you won’t leave here and order your mother’s troops to attack Ardenia?”

  “You don’t.” That same wheeze they’d heard through the fabric of the Warlord’s tent chased the words out of his mouth, along with a cough that racked his entire body. If it had happened during his earlier performance, Luca’d missed it. “But it won’t be a problem.”

  Taillefer grinned, but it was not a healthy thing. Blood framed each of his teeth in stark red, as if he’d sunk them into a still-beating heart.

  It was then that Luca realized that he hadn’t just caught the fabric of Taillefer’s collar while pinning him; he’d caught his neck.

  A weak slice to the jugular.

  Not an assassin’s smile, but also not easily fixed. Blood bloomed around the blade, thickly seeping into the fabric. The cold blue of Taillefer’s eyes sought Luca’s. “You’ve killed me. Fitting, after what I did to you.”

  Ula placed a hand on Luca’s forearm. “Come, Luca, we don’t need to watch this. You didn’t mean to do it.”

  “Wait. Please.” Taillefer’s voice was weaker here, and Luca did not have it in him to leave. “I need you to tell Amarande something.”

  As much as he hated this boy, Luca had to give him this. Taillefer was one to have the last word. He already may have been at death’s door, but Luca had slammed it in his face. Taillefer’s trip to the stars was on him.

  “The poison at the watering hole. That was me. It’s the worst thing I ever did.”

  Luca swallowed, breathing hard though the action was over. “Don’t say that. Don’t lie with your last breath. You killed Sendoa with poison in his water, the same way. I know it. Don’t deny it.”

  Air wasn’t filling Taillefer’s lungs. No inhale. No exhale. Nothing. Luca could not look away as Taillefer’s face paled.

  “I didn’t kill Sendoa. My poison did—Renard did.” Taillefer’s voice was failing now, but he kept talking. Kept explaining. “I cataloged every vial. Knew what I’d sent t
o Domingu as a sample. One additional vial of hemlock was missing and so was my brother the day King Sendoa died.”

  Taillefer coughed again, so hard his body slumped afterward, the knife blade all that was keeping him upright. With his final breath, the brief King of Pyrenee showed remorse for his part in the act that started it all.

  “Tell Amarande I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”

  CHAPTER 63

  HER mother had the single sword.

  A head start.

  The advantage of knowing where she was going.

  Amarande was sprawled face-first on the floor—the same rough sandstones as the walls, not the smooth, showy parquet marble. Painfully, she pulled herself out from beneath the ornate tapestry, its weight falling upon them as they spun into this space.

  A hallway.

  Amarande blinked. Torches lined the walls in an alternating pattern, vast shadowy voids clouding the narrow, downward-sloping floor before her. The darkness was such that at first she couldn’t see her mother, only hear her sprinting footsteps in the distance. Then, as her eyes adjusted, Amarande caught a glimpse of a figure, dressed in a ball gown, barreling forward, sword held out in front of her, and clearly limping as she craned back over her shoulder to check her lead.

  The Runaway Queen was fleeing, yet again.

  Oh no you don’t.

  Amarande spun into action, boots churning beneath her. She had no weapon. Her arm smarted. Her legs burned, as she went from stationary to all-out sprint.

  Amarande’s heart lurched at the idea that after all these years she was the one chasing after the Runaway Queen.

  Geneva flashed in the distant light again. Amarande was gaining on her—the yards of lace and silk and all the underpinnings easily weighed double the sword she carried. And though her mother was indeed strong and trained, she’d likely spent very little time working agility drills in a ball gown during her reign as the Warlord.

  Amarande gained on her with every passing moment. Fifty feet behind. To twenty. To ten.

  Her mother came to a halt at a dead end. Geneva dropped her skirts and began punching various stones on the wall.

  How many hidden doors were there?

  Amarande now understood exactly how Geneva had managed to move about the castle with a stolen infant and escape into the night. She knew the Itspi’s veins as well as its bones.

  That knowledge didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that Amarande had no weapon. She and her mother would go through that wall together or they would end it here, in this hallway, alone. “I won’t let you run away again. Surrender or fight. There is nothing else.”

  Geneva turned around to face Amarande. “There’s winning. I want to win.”

  “Win what? Ardenia? Not going to happen. The Torrent? You’ve already lost.”

  “As long as I live, I can gather opposition. So can the previous Warlords. They’re alive, you know. And they are not the sort to let their legacy go quietly.”

  “Do not threaten me, Mother.”

  “It’s not a threat to you; it’s a threat to your boy up there.”

  “A threat to him is a threat to me.”

  “Fine; then I’ll beat you both.” Fury seethed about her fine features. “I have a great interest in keeping the Torrent safe from patriarchal imperialism. You know, the exact kind of thing that has left my own daughter powerless.”

  “I am not powerless.” Amarande was unarmed, yes, but she always had the power she needed. “And if I’m not mistaken, you used that patriarchal imperialism to worm your way back into this castle and steal my crown.”

  “I believed you were dead. I believed I would save Ardenia.”

  “No.” Amarande shook her head, eyes not wavering. She reached for the nearest torch, not as a weapon, but to hold between them, so that she could read every inch of her mother’s face. “You believed you’d gain control over Ardenia, and add to your domain, Warlord. You swear up and down that you love Ferdinand. No. You loved what he could do for you.”

  “That is not our relationship.”

  “Is it not?”

  Geneva’s hands still scrabbled about the stones behind her. Sword hand and free hand pushing anything beneath her fingertips, looking for just the right pressure point. Her sword was in striking distance. Amarande did not retreat—the torch, her fists, her wits. There was much she could use. But if Geneva got that panel open and she was left in this hallway, she would lose her chance entirely. And so she stayed less than an arm’s length away.

  Geneva tried out a smile. “I wanted a relationship with you, you know.”

  “You voided that possibility the second you ran away.”

  “I came back.”

  “And locked me in a tower! Keeping me prisoner isn’t a relationship; it’s manipulation. It’s not love. You do not love me, no matter what you say. And I could never love you.”

  Those eyes, so much like her own, narrowed, her mother’s upper lip snarling.

  “Is that supposed to cut me, Princess? Is that supposed to hurt me down deep?” Though smiling, Geneva’s expression was as cold as the worst of a Pyrenee winter. “It may have in the past. The woman I was when I kissed your forehead good-bye? Sure. The woman I was when I stole into Koldo’s midnight quarters and snatched her sleeping babe? Possibly. The woman I was when I lashed that baby to my chest and ran for the stable, only to find Lygia awake, nursing her cough with boiled water and honey? Maybe.”

  She paused here, taking joy in watching Amarande’s heart drop. The princess’s breath went shallow.

  Geneva continued, voice hard as the Basilican steel still in her grip. “The woman I was when I crushed Lygia’s throat as she made to sound the alarm? No. The woman I was as Warlord and the woman I am now? Never.”

  Amarande’s heart was in her boots, but she held fast. Did not wrench her eyes from her mother’s still-girlish face.

  “The person I became the night I left this castle no longer feels pain. You cannot cut me, Amarande. You cannot hurt me. And you and your love will not defeat me.”

  “I will. I have. If you would just surrender—”

  “I am not surrendering. I’ve said as much.” Geneva’s teeth flashed. There was truth to what she had said—All sigils in the Sand and Sky are predators by design. Trade one for the other and you still get the teeth. And now her eyes narrowed. “Why haven’t you cut me down? Lit my hair and dress on fire with that torch? Relieved me of my sword and stabbed me through as I frantically searched for my way out?”

  “I—”

  “Why, darling daughter? Why?”

  The threat of tears pressed against Amarande’s eyes as her heart climbed out of her boots, pounding with what she must do. She set her grip on the torch. “I don’t want it to end this way.”

  Her mother’s lips curled. “Not all princesses get a happy ending. Queens don’t either.”

  Amarande swung the torch then, the flame aimed straight for Geneva’s head.

  As Amarande ran through the motion, tears crawling into her eyes, her mother ducked, the torch connecting with bare stone of the wall behind.

  There was a groaning shudder. The wall finally moved—revealing the concealed exit. Amarande lurched forward to brace herself as the floor spun, too. Arms up, torso exposed. Weapon neutralized.

  And that’s when the distinct sting of a blade entered Amarande’s thigh.

  Not the sword. A dagger. Geneva crouched over an exposed boot as they spun. Amarande registered the boot, then the blade. Not so different from the one she’d grown up with.

  “A gift from your father.”

  Amarande swayed, her hands wrapping around the dagger hilt as they completed the turn.

  The walls shuddered to a halt. Amarande slumped all the way to the floor as Geneva got to her feet, not retrieving the knife. Knowing exactly where she was and where she’d be running.

  Amarande blinked.

  The library. The turntable had yawned open: A massive bookcase spun into the passageway, c
overing the hidden doorway.

  Stars, Taillefer’s hopes were true.

  More heavy tapestries bled from the walls, stained windows rinsed with noon light, her ancestors peering down in stony silence. And, as the last queen of the Ardenian line pulled the knife from her own leg, her mother met her eyes.

  “I did love you, Amarande.”

  Although her mother’s sleeves were charred from the torch, Geneva was not gravely injured. She could walk away. Run away. Again.

  Without another word, Geneva turned away, leaving it at that after all those years.

  Her mother may have been finished, but Amarande was not.

  Just like that day in the meadow, her body knew exactly what to do.

  Amarande swung her good leg out as hard as she could, knocking her mother off her feet in an instant. Then Amarande crawled atop her mother, pinning Geneva’s arms between her knees, her weight on the woman’s belly, her elbow thrust across her windpipe.

  The knife a whisper from her neck.

  Amarande’s leg wound was weeping at a terrible rate. Fueled by adrenaline, her strength was both false and fleeting. Blood bloomed across her trousers.

  The doors plowed open, Koldo leading the way as her ragtag soldiers followed. They’d wormed their way through the hallways and down a flight—the only direct line from the north tower to the library the one they’d taken, apparently.

  “Ama!”

  Koldo’s call was not much different from that awful day. When she’d thundered toward the meadow, alone and crying. This time, Ferdinand and Osana were at her flanks. Then Luca appeared, sprinting from behind, Ula and Urtzi on his heels.

  Amarande caught eyes with Luca.

  That was all the opening her mother needed.

  Geneva thrust a thumb straight into Amarande’s leg wound, and the princess’s body seized as she cried out, vision fading to white. Her mother shoved Amarande and her blade aside, and scrambled free.

  The princess clawed blindly toward where her mother’s body had been. As the white in her vision began edging black, Geneva crashed against the revolving stone door, hitting it hard enough that the whole mechanism began to slide shut—Amarande’s body positioned between the concealed door and the jamb as they hurtled toward each other.