by Claire Luana
Wren let out a sob of relief before her eyes widened and she scrambled back, out of the way of the toppling Black Guard, who fell to the platform with a thunk, his dead eyes staring vacantly at them.
Wren balled her cloak in her hands, pressing the wool gently against Lucas’s back while she surveyed the grisly scene.
King Imbris was alone. His sword was lost somewhere in the fighting and he held only a dagger in his hand. The kings’s teeth were bared, his face like a rabid beast, cornered and wild. It was Hale who stood opposite him, his sword at the ready.
Bruxius and the remaining Aprican soldier were still locked in battle—two titans crashing against each other.
Hale’s hair had fallen out of the bun he normally wore it in, and the golden strands hung about his face like an ominous halo. His face was twisted with grief and anger, his eyes bright with vengeance. He was terrible to behold. “Hale, don’t!” Wren screamed, but he didn’t even look at her. He couldn’t kill the king. Not like this. It would be all he ever was—his future—his whole identity. If he gave in to revenge, what would be left of him?
Virgil scrambled to his feet and ran towards the two men and rounded between them, facing off against Hale, his hands outstretched.
What in the Sower’s name is the fool doing? Wren thought, looking down at Lucas, whose blood was soaking through the fabric of her cloak.
“Don’t do this, Hale,” Virgil said, his voice calm, diplomatic. He seemed to have come back to himself, despite the number of his family members who lay bloodied on the boards.
Hale seemed to pause, his sword tip drooping slightly. Wren held her breath, watching the scene.
Bruxius had just dispatched the last Aprican soldier and now stood, his chest heaving. If Virgil talked Hale down, the Apricans could arrest King Imbris. They could see him tried for his crimes. Real justice. Not a bloody coup.
“I’m a friend of Wren’s. I know you. You’re not this man. You’re not a killer. You’re a confectioner.”
“Out of my way, Imbris,” Hale said.
But Virgil didn’t move. “Whatever my father has done to offend, I’m sure we can make amends. We can find a way past this.”
Wren winced at Virgil’s words. They were wrong.
Hale’s face darkened. “Can you bring back the dead, priest?” Hale lifted his sword, and Virgil backed away a step.
Virgil replied. “There is no one who can bring back the dead, not even the gods. But is this what the ones you lost would want of you? Would want you to become?”
A tear slid down Wren’s cheek and two words ripped from her mouth. “Hale, no.” They were quiet, twisted, because she knew, as she had before, that Virgil had said the wrong thing.
“This is exactly what she would want,” Hale said, and he plunged his sword into Virgil’s chest.
Wren felt the pain of Virgil’s death in her own chest, as if Hale’s sword had pierced her through instead. Wren crumpled against Lucas, glad he was too far gone to see his brother die.
The king spun and dashed for the edge of the platform, not even waiting for his son’s body to hit the platform. He was going to jump, try to make a run for it.
Hale bellowed in protest and pulled the sword from Virgil’s body, vaulting over it at the fleeing king. Hale was faster, moving more quickly than Wren thought any man could. Hale swung the sword, and with one clean motion, beheaded King Hadrian Imbris of Alesia.
Bruxius knelt at Wren’s side. “We need to go,” he whispered. “Before your surly friend remembers we have one more Imbris.”
Wren didn’t want to move Lucas in this condition but saw it must be done. She must save Lucas. She clung to this single shining thought, a buoy amongst the horrors crowded in around her, threatening to pull her down into shadow. She helped Bruxius gently roll Lucas onto his back, wincing as his blood flowed anew. Bruxius lifted Lucas up into his arms.
Wren straightened and found Hale standing a few feet from them, his once-golden head drooping, his sword limp in his hand. When he saw her and Bruxius, bearing Lucas, he bore himself up.
Wren took a few steps, positioning herself between Hale and the other men, realizing with painful clarity that Virgil had just sacrificed himself the same way. “Do you feel better?” she asked, blinking through refracted tears. Her words sounded thin, as faint as a gust of wind. “Now that you’ve avenged her, has your sorrow gone?”
“You know it hasn’t.” Hale’s voice was as scratchy as gravel, his gaze haunted.
“Let us go,” Wren said. “I’ll get them out of the city. They won’t bother you or your new friends.”
“He’s a threat as long as he’s alive,” Hale said hollowly.
“No one has to know he’s alive but us.” Wren gestured to the emptiness around them. The sounds of fighting rang in distance as the other Aprican soldiers no doubt seized other parts of the city. But on this platform, in this moment, they were blessedly alone.
“Wren!” Thom shouted from the edge of the square, now empty but for the bodies littered about. “The bulk of the Apricans forces are in the city. Our exit is only safe for a few more minutes. We have to go now.”
Wren turned back to Hale, her voice thick with tears. “Hale Bartholomew Firena. You promised me you’d never hurt me again. Was that a lie?”
He shook his head, his turquoise gaze cast on the ground. Once those eyes had sparkled with such life and vibrancy. Now, they seemed dull. “That’s not fair. You know it wasn’t.”
Wren heard screams in the distance, the thudding of boots.
“We’ve got to go, lass,” Bruxius said under his breath.
“Then let us go. And know that there is still one person in this world who knows the real you.”
His face crumpled and he jerked his head towards the stairs. “Go before I change my mind.” His words were choked.
And they ran. Bruxius thudded down the stairs before her, leaping over the crumpled bodies of Cedar Guards, blond Apricans. As they ducked into a narrow alleyway at the far end of the square, the Aprican forces in sky-blue uniforms were already flooding the space, swarming up the platform.
Wren turned back, compelled by some force she didn’t understand.
In the distance Sim Daemastra summited the stairs, his black robes and white face stark against the gray sky. He laid a skeletal hand on Hale’s shoulder as he stood, surveying the wreckage before him.
She couldn’t be sure from this distance, but Wren thought that she saw the glisten of tears wetting Hale’s cheek.
Chapter 39
The acrid smoke hung thick over the Maradis skyline. The Alesian army had held on for a day against the Aprican onslaught, barricading themselves inside the palace, attacking the invaders with stones the size of kegs and barrels of hot tar. It was a noteworthy accomplishment after the king and the entire royal line had been ruthlessly slaughtered in the square before the courthouse. Or so they said. The bodies of the three youngest Imbris children hadn’t yet been found.
It was the Alesian navy that had surrendered first, a move that led to the rapid erosion of army morale and the eventual surrender. Somehow, the Centese princess had escaped the chaos of the square, making her way to the harbor, where she and the fleet of her kinsmen promptly abandoned the city. When the Alesian navy saw their allies abandoning them, they knew it was only matter of time until the Aprican fleet wore them down. In the end, the Alesian navy had dropped the chain blocking the harbor and the might of Aprica had sailed into Maradis Harbor.
Wren now stood in the shadow of the palace, the hood of her cloak pulled up against the drizzle. Callidus stood next to her, uniformed in a black suit, his hair coiffed, his face impassive. Once again, his ice-blue eyes were sharp. The only change to his appearance was the checked indigo scarf wrapped around his neck like a shield, hiding the hideous purple bruises from the world. That and Thom, who stood on the other side of Callidus, his arm wrapped around Callidus’s bicep, almost unconsciously bearing his weight, supporting him in his we
akness. Callidus still had trouble drawing breath, but he had insisted that they come today.
A sea of faces surrounded them—Maradians drawn from the warmth of their hearths to see their future. To hear the end of their tale. To learn whether it would be a tragedy. Though there had been relatively few civilian casualties when the Apricans had taken Maradis. On that point, it seemed, General Marius had been speaking the truth.
Wren pulled her cloak tighter as a gust tried to grab it, her mind swirling with far more tumult than the wind. She thought of Lucas, wondered where he was now. After they had fled the square, Trick’s friends from the Vintner’s Guild had secreted them out of sight, to the safehouse above the coffee shop Thom had heard Trick speak about. There, Wren had paced a furrow in the wooden floor as a trusted doctor had been summoned for Callidus and Lucas. Both would live, though they would both forever bear the scars of the day’s near-misses.
Trick’s friends had already arranged the Imbris children’s passage out of the city. They were to be hidden deep in the cargo hold of a Tamrosi merchant ship laden with Alesian goods destined for Aprica. But as soon as it slipped through the breakwater of the harbor, it would deviate from its destination, meeting with another vessel that Trick, Lucas, and Ella would be transferred onto. From there, the remaining heirs to the throne would sail for…she didn’t know. No one did, except for Lucas, Ella, and Trick, and the skeleton crew of the second vessel, who would be paid handsomely for their silence. All she knew was that two days had passed with no word, and that meant they had made it to safety.
Wren fingered the thick silver ring she now wore on her thumb. It was carved with the profiles of two falcons who held a milky-white stone between them in their beaks. Somehow it was supposed to help her find Lucas if she needed him. She grimaced at it, at the mystery it now presented. It was best not to think about Lucas right now. Best not to think that he was heir to the Alesian throne, rightful king of their domain. Best not to think about Hale, or Sable, or Virgil, or how it had all gone wrong. The part she had played in this city falling, in Lucas’s mother and brothers dying. Best not to think about anything.
The steady hum of the crowd quieted as someone emerged onto the balcony that fronted the royal palace. Even from a distance, Wren could see the dull glint of the crown atop the man’s head. This was their new king. King Evander of Aprica. He looked old—downy, white hair incongruous against his tanned Aprican skin. Perhaps he had once been virile, but his hands now gripped the railing of the balcony for balance. He wore a suit of creamy white with gold trimmings on the jacket. It was ridiculous attire, something dreamed up by fabulously wealthy men who lived amongst white sand beaches and painfully bright aquamarine skies. It could not have been less suited to Maradis’s perpetual drizzle and accompanying mud. On the king’s left and right, Wren recognized the two men—Sim Daemastra, looking unnatural even from her current vantage, and General Marius, champion of the Maradis invasion. Behind them were a handful of blond soldiers in sky-blue uniforms, their hands resting on sword hilts. Wren’s breath hitched in her throat as she recognized one of the faces—a face that had once belonged to her friend, and now, was worn by a stranger.
“Hale,” she breathed.
Callidus and Thom looked at her, and she nodded with her chin.
The king lowered his hands and began to speak. From his mouth poured silken words filled with vacant platitudes and empty promises. It was too much. Wren felt the world tilt around her. She didn’t think she could bear it.
Callidus took her hand in his, twining his cold fingers through hers. Wren squeezed it tight as their new king’s words washed over her, mingling with her misery. She didn’t hear what he said that day, not really. She couldn’t look away from Hale, from the distance between them. She couldn’t think beyond four words that resounded in her mind.
What had they done?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read The Confectioner’s Coup! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Wren’s adventures as much as I enjoyed writing them!
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Claire Luana grew up reading everything she could get her hands on and writing every chance she could. Eventually, adulthood won out, and she turned her writing talents to more scholarly pursuits, going to work as a commercial litigation attorney.
While continuing to practice law, Claire decided to return to her roots and try her hand once again at creative writing. She has written and published the Moonburner Cycle, the Confectioner Chronicles, the Knights of Caerleon trilogy with Jesikah Sundin, the Faerie Race trilogy with J.A. Armitage, and is currently working on several new fantasy series.
She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two dogs. In her (little) remaining spare time, she loves to hike, travel, binge-watch CW shows, and of course, fall into a good book.
Connect with Claire Luana online at:
Website & Blog
Moonburner Cycle
Moonburner, Book One
Sunburner, Book Two
Starburner, Book Three
Burning Fate, Prequel Novella
Moonburner Cycle, Box Set
Confectioner Chronicles
The Confectioner’s Guild, Book One
The Confectioner’s Coup, Book Two
The Confectioner’s Truth, Book Three
The Confectioner’s Exile, Prequel Novella
Confectioner Chronicles, Box Set
The Knights of Caerleon, with Jesikah Sundin
The Fifth Knight, Book One
The Third Curse, Book Two
The First Gwenevere, Book Three
Gwenevere’s Knights, Box Set
The Faerie Race, with J.A. Armitage
The Sorcery Trial, Book One
The Elemental Trial, Book Two
The Doomsday Trial, Book Three
Orion’s Kiss
