The Heir and the Spare

by Kate Stradling

  “The broken wing,” Clervie murmured. “It wasn’t the injury she had when she came home from Capria.”

  “No, it was the dozens she received before she ever left our shores,” the marquess snapped. “She lived among you, silently enduring, because if anyone learned who she really was, her father would have brought her home, and nothing any of you could do held a candle to Lisenn’s abuse.” On that declaration, he flung himself down the corridor.

  Jaoven, hot on his heels, clamped a hand on his shoulder to haul him back.

  Aedan wrenched away. “I don’t have time to waste. Do you understand? We have been watching over her for years, and now to lose her when a more prolonged safety was in sight—?” Anguish twisted across his face. He resumed his path, checking to his right and left at each doorway they passed until they arrived at the bottom of a staircase.

  Jaoven’s pulse escalated as he kept pace beside the young nobleman. “Why didn’t we know this before now?”

  “I just told you. We were using you to get rid of our tyrant queen before she could ascend. If you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll run away.”

  They reached the next floor. Before Jaoven could answer this counsel, a voice rang out from the other end of the gallery.

  “My lord!” A servant jogged toward them, waving her arm. With a cagey glance toward the Caprians, she motioned the marquess toward an open door, a neglected drawing room with pale light filtering through its leaded windows.

  “They’re with me,” Aedan said, glancing toward Jaoven with a warning in his eyes. “You can speak freely.”

  But still she urged him through the open door. “The guards are patrolling in this direction.”

  They all ushered inside without further argument, and the servant shut the door. In deathly silence they waited as two sets of footsteps marched along the gallery they had vacated, the floorboards creaking.

  When the patrol had moved beyond hearing, the servant whispered, “She’s in Lisenn’s rooms, we’re sure of it. A page saw two guards leading her up the stairs.”

  Aedan cursed. “She went with them willingly?”

  The servant, helpless, shook her head. “They must’ve told her a tale.”

  “Why was Lisenn’s room not the first place you checked?” Jaoven asked.

  “Because Lisenn was supposed to be in the chapel annex with her attendants, putting on her wedding finery,” said the marquess.

  “She hasn’t been there for half an hour,” said the servant. “They dressed her, and then she left again.”

  He punched the wall, swearing. “Capria, do you want to help? Of course you do. Just look at your stupid face. You need to delay the wedding. Go to the chapel, tell them you need to renegotiate something in the treaty, or pretend you’re sick. I don’t care. Lisenn probably means to secure Iona before the ceremony and then deal with her after the knot is tied. King Gawen wouldn’t countenance losing his spare any earlier than that.”

  “You think he’s involved?” Clervie asked.

  “It’s his royal guard leading Iona into danger,” Aedan snapped. “Of course he’s involved.”

  “We can go to the chapel,” said Denoela, catching Clervie’s sleeve. “We’ll tell them Jove was delayed. It’s roughly what we meant to do anyway.”

  The marquess opened his mouth to argue, but Jaoven cut him off. “I’m coming with you. If she’s not in Lisenn’s room, where else do we look?”

  “The dungeons are accessed through the cellar beneath the kitchen, but the staff would know if anyone passed that way. She’s in the tower.”

  At the door, the servant peeked up and down the gallery. “We’ll keep an eye out for the patrols,” she said and then slipped through, beckoning for them to follow.

  They split ways, Denoela and Clervie trailing the servant while Jaoven crept behind Aedan to another set of stairs. The next landing opened to narrower halls. They passed through a small library. When they arrived at a broad study, voices echoed in the corridor beyond, approaching.

  The marquess snagged Jaoven’s sleeve and yanked him into the slim space between a set of heavy curtains and the windows they concealed.

  And not a moment too soon. From beyond their hiding place, King Gawen said, “You should not have acted so prematurely. It wouldn’t have killed you to wait.”

  “It has been killing me, by degrees, slowly,” Lisenn replied, a harshness to her that Jaoven had never heard before. He edged to one side, glimpsing the pair through a gap between the curtain and the wall. Her sneer could have turned a man to stone. “Watching everyone fawn over her, precious Iona. And you knew it was killing me. That’s why you pulled her into all of those encounters with the Caprians, to show me how easily she could strip everything I wanted out from under me.”

  Her father grunted a laugh. “And everyone gravitated toward her as I warned you they would.”

  Lisenn growled. “They never will again.”

  A ball of lead formed in the pit of Jaoven’s stomach. Aedan’s restraining hand upon his arm alone kept him anchored in place, a reminder that they needed to be silent and unseen until the Wessettan king and his heir had moved on.

  “Calm yourself,” King Gawen said. “A bride should be smiling.”

  “I would be smiling if you hadn’t interfered.”

  He caught her chin, forcing her to look at him, a deathly rebuke in his eyes. “I told you you can finish the job once you’ve wed your prince.” The air around him fairly crackled with malice, his tone enough to quell even his sadistic daughter.

  For Jaoven, however, those words produced the opposite effect. Iona was still alive. If they could get to her, they could smuggle her out while the king and the crown princess waited in the chapel for a groom who would never show.

  Beyond the curtain, the king made an indulgent sound, patting his daughter’s cheek. “There’s your pretty blush. Let’s go down, shall we? We wouldn’t want to delay unnecessarily.”

  Lisenn jerked away from him, her silk skirts rustling as she led the way. King Gawen’s stronger stride echoed in the corridor, receding into the distance.

  When the echoes vanished, Jaoven and Aedan eased from their hiding place and bolted across the study. The hall to Lisenn’s bedroom lay beyond the open door. Aedan poked his head out and drew it back in.

  “There are two guards,” he said. “Do you have a weapon you’re willing to use?”

  “Yes,” Jaoven said curtly.

  The marquess nodded. “Good. Count to five, and then follow my lead.”

  The wait, though short, was excruciating. They knew Iona was alive, but what state would she be in? What exactly had King Gawen interrupted?

  Aedan, squaring his shoulders on an inhale, strode out into the hall. Jaoven followed on his heels, and they approached the pair of guards.

  “What are you doing here?” the nearest man asked, his hand upon the sword at his waist.

  A charming smile leapt to Aedan’s face. “Is Princess Lisenn in? Her groom has a wedding present for her, but he wanted her to have it before the ceremony, and of course I came to help the delivery so they don’t see each other.”

  The guards exchanged a glance, though they relaxed a degree. “She’s not here. You must’ve just missed her on your way up.”

  Brightening all the more, he swatted the back of his hand to Jaoven’s chest. “That’s even better. You can leave it in her room and she can find it as a surprise after the ceremony.”

  “No one is to enter Princess Lisenn’s bedroom,” said the second guard.

  The marquess cocked his head. “Not even her future husband? That seems rather—” With no warning, he drove his fist into the man’s face. Jaoven clocked the second one, a satisfying crunch of bone reverberating against his knuckles. The pair of guards buckled, hardly aware of what had hit them.

  The prince and the marquess exchanged cagey glances as they shook the ache out of their hands. “Not bad,” said Aedan.

  “Likewise,” Jaoven replie
d, and he reached for the door.

  To their chagrin, it was locked. Aedan cursed and rammed his shoulder into it, but to no avail.

  “Stand aside,” Jaoven said. After a self-conscious glance back the way they had come, he directed a mighty kick just above the lever.

  The wood splintered on a crack, the door swinging inward. They dragged the pair of guards inside and shut the door behind them as best they could. It hung ajar, broken where the latch should have been.

  “Iona,” Aedan called, confiscating a pair of manacles from his charge to secure the unconscious man’s hands behind his back.

  No answer.

  The bedchamber, although sumptuously furnished, seemed completely devoid of life. Jaoven left the pair of guards to Aedan’s care in favor of investigating. A glance in the wardrobe showed only an extensive collection of colorful gowns. The space beneath the bed had not even a speck of dust. After a cursory check of the area, the pair of men met each other’s gaze, frustration mirrored in their expressions.

  “If she’s not here, where is she?” Jaoven asked.

  “Wait.” Aedan held up a hand. With confusion knitting his brows, he turned a full circle and then eased backward to the nearest window, where he craned his neck. “The outer wall has a turret on this corner of the castle.” He straightened, shifting his attention to a row of bookshelves. “There’s more space in here than we can see, maybe a whole extra room. The entrance would be somewhere along there.”

  Jaoven sprang toward the shelves. He tugged and pushed on the frames, each in turn. The second in line clicked, and the panel swung inward, revealing a small landing with only arrow slits for light. Three steps led upward to a plain wooden door that blocked access to the area beyond.

  Aedan shoved past him and gingerly pushed it open. Jaoven, his pulse thundering in his throat, peered over his shoulder to steel and iron implements glinting in the glass-filtered sunlight. Curved hooks and twisted rods hung from the ceiling, alongside spikes and knives. The very sight turned his stomach.

  A small, catching breath in the corner broke the stillness.

  “Io?” the marquess called, stepping fully into the room of horrors.

  “Aedan?”

  The single word, barely more than a whisper, spurred both men. They bolted around the table that blocked that corner from view, skirting to avoid bottles of acids and poisons, skewers and blades.

  Iona, secured to a low wooden platform with her limbs extended from her, had a sickly pallor to her skin. Her eyes widened when she recognized Jaoven at her cousin’s side, but she quickly recovered.

  “Hurry. She’ll come back if the wedding’s delayed.”

  Meaning the prince’s presence here would only bring Lisenn upon them all the sooner. He dropped to work the leather strap that secured her left arm, with Aedan crossing around to her right. They made short work of the buckles, the rough, red skin beneath testament of her struggle.

  As they moved to the restraints upon her ankles, she said, “Careful!”

  Aedan had already pulled back the hem of her silken skirt, but he hissed and drew his hand away from an ankle swollen within its stocking. An odd angle jutted further up, midway along her shin. His huge eyes sought hers.

  “It’s broken,” she said, forcing a smile as though it were a joke, even as tears spilled from her eyes. “She broke it so I couldn’t run.”

  Jaoven already had the restraint off her left ankle. “Check the door,” he told the marquess, urging him out of the way. “I’ll carry her. Just make sure we have a clear passage out of here.”

  He had seen his share of mangled limbs over the course of the Caprian war, most of them worse than this. The larger bone was certainly broken, but it was a clean break, and the smaller bone seemed possibly intact. Jaoven cast the leather band aside and scooped Iona up as she struggled to rise.

  She hissed and looped her arms around his neck.

  “You’re in shock,” he said, weaving between Lisenn’s gruesome collection of steel and iron implements, mindful not to peer at any of them too close.

  She grimaced. “I know. I’ve had broken bones before.”

  The reminder made him wince, but he almost forgot himself when she buried her face against his neck and breathed a deep inhale. Under almost any other circumstance, the intimacy of that act would have brought words of adoration tumbling from his lips. Instead, he tightened his hold on her, determined to see her safe whether he ever had a chance to confess his heart or not.

  At the door, Aedan motioned him to hurry. He angled Iona out of the room, careful not to brush her injured leg against the stone walls as they crept back through the bookcase into Lisenn’s bedroom proper. The guards were beginning to stir. Aedan withdrew a dagger and thumped them both on the back of the neck with its hilt.

  Jaoven, meanwhile, set Iona on the edge of the bed. She flinched as she moved her broken leg. “How soon before King Gawen comes looking for me?” the prince asked over his shoulder.

  “I guess that depends on how long your people can waylay him.”

  He didn’t doubt Denoela or Clervie on that count. Both were inventive. If anyone connected his absence from the chapel with Iona’s, though, it might set a broader search into motion, and Lisenn could take that as an opportunity to return to her handiwork.

  Grimly Jaoven looked Iona in the eyes. “We have to get you away from here. There should be a carriage waiting for me in the front courtyard. If we can get that far, I can smuggle you to my ship and out of the country altogether.”

  Her brows arched in wonder.

  “A waiting carriage?” Aedan drily asked. “Were you getting cold feet?”

  “Something like that,” Jaoven said. “I’d already decided against the marriage before you found me. Clervie and Denoela should be the only Caprians left in the castle. Elouan is with the coach. Everyone else should be at the docks by now.” He shifted his attention to Iona, the whiteness of her face wringing his heart like a sponge. “Will you trust me to get you out of here?”

  He expected a sarcastic response, a rebuff even as her circumstances forced her to accept the offer. Instead, she only nodded, and the faith in her eyes almost undid him.

  “Keep a tight hold around my neck as I carry you. It puts your weight on my shoulders instead of only my arms.” He scooped her up again, and she obediently wrapped around him.

  “Sorry about my weight,” she murmured, evidence that the wry, contrary princess yet lurked beneath the traumatized picture she presented.

  “You’re light as a bird,” he said. “The analogy is apt. But it’s the distance we have to go that might wear me out. Is the hall clear?”

  Aedan, peeking out the door, beckoned. They exited the room to an empty corridor and skulked along its lengths.

  Chapter 24

  Pain radiated through her shin and up her leg, into her hip. Iona focused on her breath and that radiating pain, trying not to wonder why the prince of Capria had decided to call off his wedding on his own.

  Trying, and failing. Had her warning against Lisenn belatedly struck its mark? Or had another concern dismantled the treaty he had so fervently desired?

  She swallowed, tightening her hold upon him as instructed, ashamed to rely so wholly upon him when their last several encounters had been nothing but contentious. They passed through the shrouded study and the library, and down the first set of stairs. As they emerged in the wider gallery of the floor below, a voice called behind them. Jaoven turned, and Iona’s stomach dropped. A royal guard was jogging their direction, the red of his cloak a harbinger of death.

  Aedan stepped into his path, holding up a hand. “We found Princess Iona injured in the hall upstairs. Can you help us get her to the infirmary?”

  The man hesitated, glancing between the prince and the marquess, carefully not meeting Iona’s gaze.

  So he was privy to her sister’s plot. All the royal guards must have been, the whole company selected by her father and her sister for their loyalty to th
e crown.

  He reached gloved hands toward her. “I’ll take her there myself. You’re wanted in the chapel, Your Royal Highness.”

  Jaoven had already angled away from the grasping fingers, but Iona cringed all the more into his keeping. Aedan, for the moment forgotten, sucker-punched the guard and then thrust his elbow down on his neck when the man doubled over in pain. A tangle of limbs and red cloak hit the floor.

  “Where did you learn to fight?” Iona weakly asked.

  He flashed her a grin. “That was nothing, Io. You should see me when I’m angry.”

  Much as she wanted to laugh, her heart constricted. “They’re all part of it. You can’t get me out of here when a hundred guards stand between us and the exit, not unless you have an army of your own.”

  Aedan hesitated, his attention shifting to Jaoven and then back to her. “I sort of do, but they’re all in the chapel right now.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The noble houses of Wessett would prefer your ascension to the throne over Lisenn’s. Now that she’s attacked, they’ll rise up to defend you.”

  “Get them,” said Jaoven. “We can part ways here, you toward the chapel and me toward the courtyard. Get Denoela and Clervie as well. If it’s only three of us against the whole of the royal guard we won’t make it past the castle gates, but if you have the army you claim, call upon them now.”

  Aedan studied him, uncertain. “And if you run into more guards?”

  “We’ll bluff our way to safety. They won’t attack me without orders. Hurry now, before anyone else on patrol comes.”

  The marquess stabbed a finger toward him. “If anything happens to Io, I’m holding you responsible.”

  “I’ll hold myself responsible.”

  On that exchange of bluster they split directions. Aedan broke into a run and disappeared at the end of the gallery. Jaoven strode the opposite direction, intent upon a broad set of stairs that led toward the back of the castle.

  He turned a corner and stopped short.

  Queen Marget stood frozen in their path, like a startled roe. Iona’s breath caught. Was her mother part of the intrigue? Had she planned this outcome alongside the king all these years?