A man in gray robes stood behind the couple, arms folded and surveying the scene playing out. I found Chiara’s gaze again—this time on me. And the oddly familiar girl next to me. Chiara and Aleksa had no idea of the true danger lurking here. And I couldn’t go to them. Couldn’t warn them.
But I could draw attention away from them.
I put my hand over the girl’s. “Of course, my lady. I am at your service, as always.”
I glanced at Chiara from the corner of my eye. Willing her to get out of here. Her cheeks were flushed, and she stared, not at Janiis or his betrothed, but at me and…oh. The pieces clicked into place. Why the girl was familiar. Cynthia Hallen. The girl we’d sent into Riiga with men to look for King Marko.
Sweat dripped down my back. I’d brought Chiara into a palace with a mage.
The mage who had killed my father.
There’d been no traces where Marko disappeared. Because a mage had been involved. Marko and I had both received invitations. Had I just sprung the rest of the trap?
But perhaps Cynthia knew where Luc was. If I could get Chiara and Aleksa to Luc, I could come back for the mage. For now, they needed to get out of the ballroom.
“Lead on, Miss Hallen,” I said with a flourish. She stiffened when I left off her former title, but her face gave nothing away. She was like Isarr, then. A mask wearer. Safe in Janiis’s court. One I’d have to be careful of.
We fluttered around the ballroom as she introduced me to influential families, most of which had daughters too old or young to be competition for her. We danced a few dances, and I even ventured to ask a few others to dance. All under the watchful eye of Janiis, the hungry eye of his betrothed, and the dark advisor behind them.
I would have to approach them, make them think I was here only for the wedding, accepting a gracious invitation. That I didn’t know who Janiis’s bride was. What they were planning.
I took my time approaching the dais, making sure I’d insinuated myself into several families’ prospects. Moving closer, yet making them wait.
The trio stood and took careful steps down the dais—they were done observing the party from afar. I wouldn’t make them come to me—wouldn’t tip them off that anything was untoward.
“Your Majesties,” I said, bowing with a fist to my shoulder once I’d stepped into their path.
“I expected you a week ago,” Janiis said, staring up at me and puffing out his chest like he could make up for his lack of height by adding to his girth. The advisor stayed behind. No one introduced him to me. But why not?
I dipped my chin. “The duties of a king never end, as I’m sure you know,” I responded. My jaw ached from trying to stay relaxed. “I managed to slip away from my council. Convinced them that observing how you handle the business of your kingdom would help me as I transition into the role of king.” Janiis’s lips pursed and his nose rose into the air the more I flattered him. “And, of course, to congratulate you on your upcoming wedding.”
Janiis looked at his betrothed with a worshipful gaze, and I wondered if he knew what she was. Who she was. A centuries-old murderer, wrapped in the appearance of youth and beauty.
“Atháren,” Janiis said, his nose in the air, “I’d like to present my betrothed, Lady Redalia.”
Redalia. The woman who’d killed my father had a name.
Her hand came up, the long sleeve of her dress trailing down, a long slit in the fabric revealing more and more soft skin. She touched my arm. Caressed it, really. A slow, seductive smile and dark, smoldering eyes washing over me, drenching me with her lust and making me wish for a thousand baths.
Something other slipped through my mind, and the Medallion flared hot, repelling whatever it had been. Soft and gentle; there, then gone.
“I am so glad you decided to come,” she said, her voice pleasant and melodic. “Our celebration wouldn’t be complete without you.”
And then she winked at me. Winked. I vowed never to wink again.
The Medallion went so cold I was sure my skin had frozen to it. I bit into my cheek until I tasted blood. I couldn’t react. Not here. Not now. I had to get Chiara out first. To safety.
My hand was moving toward my sword, so I changed its course to rest on my hip. The man lurking behind the couple stared at me, unblinking. It might have been the light, but his eyes appeared black.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I bit out.
Redalia clung tighter to Janiis, stroking his chest but staring at me like she could drink me in. The lines around Janiis’s mouth deepened and he tugged his bride-to-be away.
“Glaciers,” I muttered. We needed to get out.
I caught sight of a servant ducking into the hall and strode after him. Cynthia attempted to catch my eye, but I’d made enough of an entrance. My lungs constricted, too tight for me to make conversation.
“Excuse me,” I said as I exited the stifling heat of the ballroom. The servant jumped and spun to face me. “I would like to be shown to my rooms now. I—” I licked my lips and cursed my hesitation. Columns rose in the edges of my vision. Exactly like those in the crypt back home. Focus. “I’m King Atháren.”
Would those words ever feel natural?
He bowed low. “This way, Your Majesty.”
I paid close attention to every turn, marking the art and delicate vases. Glaciers, if he was supposed to lead me to my rooms but took me to the dungeon instead…I kept my hand on my sword. He moved agonizingly slow. I timed my breath with his steps and followed sedately. No reason for me to be in a hurry to get away. No reason for me to hurry to my rooms.
The Medallion didn’t flash, didn’t warm—no more than usual, here in Janiis’s palace. But my hand squeezed my sword tighter and tighter.
Chiara would be in my rooms. She would be safe.
And I’d have to find some way to tell her she had to leave. Immediately. I’d stay and find Marko on my own. But she and Aleksa needed to get out. Before Redalia cornered me, before I gutted her in front of her betrothed, or before Janiis had me hung for the way his bride was looking at me.
The servant stopped at a room on the left, then bowed away. I slipped in and shut the door behind me. Locked it.
Chiara stood between a wardrobe and a chair piled high with clothes, folding shirts. The ordinariness of the task hit me, stopped me in my tracks. “Chiara?” I asked, a little out of breath. Torches burned in the sconces on the wall, then multiplied as I watched.
She didn’t answer, didn’t turn, just shook out another shirt with a snap. No Aleksa. I darted into the sleeping chamber, but she wasn’t there, either.
“Where’s Aleksa? She just left you here?” I moved until I was right behind her, put my hand on her shoulder to turn her toward me, but she jerked away.
“She went to the kitchens to bring us food and formulate a plan with the staff.” Chiara’s words bit into me, like I’d done something wrong. Like she knew what I was going to say. “I can handle myself. I don’t need a nurse to keep me out of trouble. I may not be able to do much, but I can at least fold a shirt.” She snapped another one out.
“You’ve got to get out. Leave. Tonight.”
She lined up the seams. “That’s not the plan.” She went back to arranging Sennor’s clothes. Snap and fold. Snap and fold.
Stone arches. Torches.
I slapped the shirt she’d just picked up, batting it out of her hand. “Find Aleksa,” I rasped out. “Get out of the palace. Out of the kingdom. Enzo sent me to keep you safe. You will go.”
She yanked another shirt from the pile. “Not without my father. You don’t get to take my choices from me. You don’t get to go to some fancy party, smile and laugh with all the nobles, with Cynthia, then tell me I can’t stay.”
“Miss Hallen?” Tombs. I shook the image away. I paced in front of Chiara, scrubbing my hands over my face. “Everyo
ne wants something from me. Miss Hallen wants to be elevated above her family. Every mother wants a better title for their daughter, every father wants connections to the mysterious northern kingdom.
“But if they think they can get something from me, if there’s a chance their family could rise in rank, they’ll be less likely to help Janiis bury me. So yes, I played it up. I smiled and laughed and shook hands.”
She pulled another shirt up, slowly this time, fingering the stiff material. “I—”
“And, oh yeah,” I continued, my steps wider and faster now, “the woman standing next to Janiis on the dais? The bride-to-be? She looked at me like she knew me, like she wanted to cozy up to me in a dark hall. She’s also the mage who killed my father. So Cynthia’s claws in my arm kept me grounded enough not to attack her right then and there—”
Glass shattered.
I spun and drew my sword. No one. I stepped to the side. My steps crunched. Petals, orange petals drenched the ground.
“Ren?”
I spun again. Stopped my sword midswing. Not assassins. Chiara.
“Ren?” she said again. Her voice sounded so far away, like she’d called down to me from the top of the cliffs.
I flinched and dropped my sword. Stumbled. Orange bits of pottery scraped into my skin as I fell to my hands and knees.
I pressed my now-bleeding hand against my chest, trying to keep my heart inside my ribs. My lungs constricted, and every breath wheezed in and choked out.
Magic swirled to life inside me, reaching to my mind, my heart.
But the hand on my back, gently rubbing side to side, settled me more than the magic. I closed my eyes. Matched my breathing to hers.
“Can I tell you something?” I finally asked into the quiet stretching between us. Chiara didn’t respond, but her hand continued its slow trek across my back. “Hálendi deserves better than me.”
Her hand paused. I sat back on my heels, breaking the connection between us. I shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t—
“Why do you feel that way?” she asked, head tilted. She didn’t dismiss my feelings or try to prove me wrong. A knot lodged in my chest loosened.
I picked up a tiny shard of orange. “People think being king means you have power. That you control the fate of an entire kingdom.” I’d always thought that about my father. And it wasn’t until he was gone that I realized how wrong I’d been. “But the king is the least powerful person in the kingdom. You have no control over what happens. Even with magic, I couldn’t help my mother—or my father.”
I tossed the pottery shard away. “Even with the best training in the Plateau, I’ve been losing the battle with my own council and doing nothing but stanching wounds with patches and makeshift bandages to keep my people from bleeding out.
“There’s always more. I don’t think…I’m worried it will take more than I have to give.” I paused, but Chiara didn’t say anything, so I whispered, “I can’t protect you and save your father. I can’t do it all. And I can’t bear to fail you.”
She was silent so long I finally pulled my eyes up to meet hers. Those ridiculous eyebrows somehow made her more beautiful, with her cap off and braids pinned around her head like a crown.
“We’ll do our best, Ren. We’ll do all we can.”
I wiped the blood from my now-healed hands onto my trousers. “I’m sorry.”
She tipped her head. “For what?”
“If I’d come south earlier, if I’d trusted the Medallion, maybe your father wouldn’t be here right now. None of us would.”
She twisted the hem of her too-long tunic between her finger and thumb. “I’m glad you weren’t there, Ren. You would have been in the same situation as my father.” Silence stretched around us, pulling at all our cracks. She cleared her throat and dug her elbow gently into my side. “Besides, if you were captured, who would come rescue you?”
What was supposed to be a chuckle came out more like a sob. “Jenna?”
For some reason, she winced at that, but I wasn’t sure what I’d said wrong. Jenna was all I had. Even if she’d found a new family, I hadn’t.
I studied Chiara as she stared down at her hands. She’d come all this way for her father. Sat here and patiently listened to me panic. No one except Jenna had ever cared enough to dig deeper, past the carefree facade I showed to the world.
Maybe I did have more than Jenna.
“Admit it,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. “You would have come for me.” I hoped she would have, at least.
Her cheeks turned the most beautiful shade of rose pink I’d ever seen. She chuckled and I decided I could listen to that sound for the rest of forever. “Sure, Ren. I would definitely come to your rescue.”
A knock came at the door, not loud, but I leapt between Chiara and the door, and she scrambled to jam her cap back on her head.
“Your Majesty,” Cynthia whispered as she shut the door behind her. “I thought—”
She froze when she saw the broken vase. My sword on the floor. I picked it up and shoved it back in its sheath. I wouldn’t last another hour in this cursed palace. There were too many threats.
“You’re dismissed,” Cynthia said, and it took a moment for me to realize she was addressing Chiara.
“She stays,” I said gruffly.
“She…” Cynthia studied Chiara again, who glared at me like she wanted to burn a hole in me. “Was it your idea to pretend to be a boy servant to Atháren?” Cynthia sneered, one hand cocked on her hip. “You make an even worse boy than you do a princess.”
I stalked closer, and she had the decency to step back from Chiara. “I don’t remember inviting you to my chambers.”
“An oversight I’m willing to overlook, for now,” she said, and looked up at me through her lashes. Now I wanted two thousand baths. “We need time alone—so I can give you information.” Her lips pursed and she looked Chiara up and down again. “Now that I think on it, you might look better in those trousers than you did at the last ball.”
“Enough,” I growled, pointing at the door. Chiara didn’t need this, and I definitely didn’t.
“Wait,” Chiara said, pressing her hand against my chest. “What information?” she asked Cynthia. I had the crazy urge to hold her hand to my chest, to keep it there forever. But she snatched her hand back and folded her arms like I’d burned her.
Cynthia brushed her hair over her shoulder and widened her eyes dramatically. “I haven’t seen any of the men Prince Enzo sent with me since arriving in Riiga.”
Chiara frowned. “That’s it? Your information is that you have no information?”
“No,” Cynthia snapped. “Koranth is pulling Janiis’s strings like a marionette—”
“Koranth?” I interrupted. “As in—”
“As in the former ambassador who helped Brownlok attack the palace and ran off with a shade blade. Who used me as a shield in the hall to escape.” Chiara swallowed hard. Another threat I couldn’t fight.
Koranth had a shade blade. Graymere’s shade blade. So there were two mages in the palace.
“Koranth has control of the entire city. He uses Redalia like some sort of watchdog to enforce his decrees.”
“Did Koranth see you?” I asked Chiara. We were in over our heads. If he knew she was here, we were probably already too late to ever escape the palace ourselves, let alone with Marko.
“No, he didn’t see me. Everyone was looking at you.” She set her hands on her hips and widened her stance like she was preparing for battle. “I don’t think we should trust her.”
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “I’m all you have.”
“I’d rather have no help than yours—”
“Stop!” I said, rubbing my temples. My magic was still working in the background, keeping me from falling into another attack. But maybe this was why the
Medallion had drawn me south—two mages controlling a kingdom would definitely disrupt the balance of the Plateau.
“I know, anyway,” Cynthia said, looking at the floor. For once not taunting or gloating. “King Marko isn’t here. I noticed that all on my own. And anyone—Turian or Riigan—who mentions anything about it disappears for a day, then returns…different.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“They’re themselves, except on certain topics, like someone scooped their ideas out and replaced them with what Janiis would have wanted.”
Like when Redalia had spoken to me, the soft, gentle nudge from within that the Medallion had flared against?
“How did you escape that fate?” Chiara asked.
Cynthia huffed. “I play the fool. Here for a husband only.” She adjusted a tendril of hair that had fallen loose. “And it’s worked. So far.”
“Can you prove it?” Chiara asked, and I wondered if there was anything Cynthia could say to ever prove herself. But it didn’t matter—we needed to get out of the palace. A palace with a mage, a man with a shade blade, and an angry king was not where I wanted to sleep.
If the Medallion wanted me to defeat these mages, I’d find a way to do it without them having a key to my bedchamber.
“Luc had me hire a room above the abandoned tailor shop off the main market street. He’s searching the city for any sign of Marko, but says Riigans aren’t a trusting lot and he doesn’t hold out much hope of finding anything.” Cynthia stared at the floor again, a line deepening between her brows. “He’s gotten a few notes to me here in the palace, saying he’s still alive, still searching.”
Chiara looked to me and I shrugged. “She’s telling the truth.” The Medallion hadn’t warned of any lies. “Can you get a message back to Luc?”
Chiara shook her head, but if Cynthia had made an alliance with Janiis, we were never leaving the palace anyway.
“Can you?” I asked again. She nodded. I tore a scrap of paper from the desk near the fire, and wrote, Beach will celebrate day after wedding, pull to the west, prepare at the top. I hoped he’d be able to figure out the message. That he’d find a way to warn Enzo.
Untethered Page 19
