The sun climbed, yet nothing traversed that gate. Not a milk cart nor a deer carcass nor a lump of coal. Even if Robert had had the stomach to slay a man for his royal uniform, there was no evidence the correct garb would gain entrance.
The delay was torture.
He told himself his men would have left the forest by now, following orders to curve north and march toward the main gates of the capital. Which should give Melony the chance to send a courier out the west gate and along the Western Road.
With a message.
The one Robert needed. The one that would pull these five hundred men from Midbury’s wall. And provide him with the chance to gain entry. He had to believe that she would pull these soldiers. To defend her grip on the throne.
Hours stretched, threatening his control over his imagination. He had no doubt he had made an error. All plans came riddled with flaws, and the past two years had taught him to assume his own fallibility. He no longer saw the gate or the wall or the men standing guard.
He saw Aurelia, inside that hidden dungeon. Could not restrain the images of her chained. Beaten. Her flesh bruised, burned, bleeding.
At last, movement came along the estate road.
Not the single horse he had anticipated. But six. Black horses. Traveling fast. Dark muzzles and long manes. Shining coats that rippled under the cresting sun. The team’s muscles fired, pulling a green carriage with the royal crest and clear windows.
Tension ripped through Robert’s stomach as the coach raced past him. No.
The gate swung open. Nothing blocked the path. Not guards. Or weapons. Or a request for papers. The vehicle swept straight through the open gate. Because he had been wrong.
Melony hadn’t sent the message. She had brought it herself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
FINAL CONFRONTATION
Shouts and the pounding of hooves broke through the darkness of Aurelia’s cell. The sounds of a mustering army. Could help have arrived? She knew Robert would never have risked her survival by leading an armed assault. But would the others? Aurelia lifted her voice to yell. No answers came. Her pleas drowned in the cracks of rotting boards, and ultimately the noise subsided to far more terrifying silence.
Then the sound of a key turned in the lock, the scrape of a door, and footsteps. Hands grabbed her, and pain flared in the arm that had begun to heal despite her efforts. Captors dragged her from her cell. Four men. Her legs scraped a path down dirt aisles. Row upon row of tangled walkways, lined first by walls with bars, then empty stalls. Only Midbury featured these labyrinthine corridors.
Was she leaving? Were her captors taking her now to the Central Plaza?
She tried to dig her feet into the ground, to pull back and impede the men’s progress, but her strength was no match for the steel grips and momentum. Failed. I failed to die quickly enough.
No exit emerged to the outside world. No wagon.
Instead plank rails rose before her as a gate swung wide, opening into a corral. The hands dragged her through that gate, then hurled her onto her side in the dirt. Her arm erupted in agony.
She bit back a scream, but others’ laughter came anyway, something strange in its tone.
Again hands gripped her. They shoved her up against the inner left side of the corral, then tied her wrists—first one, then the other—to the top board. She fought the ropes. A harsh tug tightened the one on her left wrist. And a blow struck her injury.
This time she cried out.
More laughter.
A female’s voice sliced through the pain. “And to think people believe you can lead them?”
Five rows of spaced boards formed Aurelia’s new prison. Beyond them, less than six feet away, stood a figure in a hooded cloak, deep green fabric with a crossbanding of dark shadow. “Melony,” Aurelia whispered.
Her sister flung back the hood. Emeralds rimmed her blond hair. Intensity lined the fine bones of her face, and green eyes glared with the same savageness that had emerged on the day of Chris’s death. “You will call me Your Majesty!”
Aurelia struggled to reconcile this harsh beauty with the memory of her glowing younger sibling—a child in wide skirts who had loved to grab her older sister’s wrists and whirl with her around the palace ballroom until both girls fell to the floor, the world still spinning around them.
But Melony had betrayed that memory. And Tyralt.
“Majesty was our father’s title,” Aurelia said.
Sarcasm sliced back. “And he suited it so well.” Melony lifted a ringed hand and snapped her fingers. “The four of you,” she commanded Aurelia’s captors. “Guard the exits.”
“But Your Majesty,” one of the men protested. “The stables have far too many—”
Her posture went rigid, her words sharp. “At once.”
The four men departed.
Then the ringed hand flicked.
And a fifth man stepped from the shadows, his movement jerking as though his long limbs were too much for him to control. There was something discomfiting about that figure. The narrow torso. Black hair sticking out in all directions. Filbert? Aurelia’s heart snarled as she recognized Daria’s older brother. What was he doing here?
He reached for the top rail of the corral. And lifted a leather rod. Ten feet of tapered leather braid uncoiled from a straight handle. Slit tails fell to the earth, then carved their way through the dirt as he bridged the open gate and entered the corral.
Aurelia told herself Filbert would never hurt her. He had always stammered and blushed in her presence. He might bear the uniform of a palace guard, but he was among the sweetest men she had ever met. He was loyal, true. To the crown. She had never seen him disobey an order. But neither had she ever seen him harm a living soul.
Crack! The whip sounded.
Her body jolted as though it had been struck.
And Melony laughed.
Aurelia’s heart thudded in her chest. Surely her sister had misjudged. This was no simple riding crop, nor even a cat-o’-nine-tails designed for torture. A stockwhip could tear a human torso in half. Perhaps death was not beyond reach after all. “Did you poison our father?” Aurelia prodded.
Melony drew close, opposite the rails. “Our father was poison,” she replied. “He wanted to give all of Tyralt’s money and power to a man.” She clasped the ropes on her sister’s wrists. “You, of all people, should understand that I could not allow myself to be bound to Anthone.”
Crack! Again the whip sounded. Filbert emerged on the right side of Aurelia. His gaze avoided hers, pinned instead to that ringed hand. Why, of all people, would he be chosen to punish her?
And there was the answer. He had been chosen. Her sister had chosen him.
Melony’s laughter failed to drown out Filbert’s steps as he paced away. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Aurelia fought to channel her fear. She needed him to harm her. She needed his help to avoid the Central Plaza. And she needed her sister’s wrath. Aurelia tried another tack. “Yet you preferred to let Anthone take the north by force?”
Melony sprang back from the rails. “Why is it everyone thinks you’re intelligent? If we look at things the way they stand, it seems to me the sister with the intelligence is me. Yet constantly I have to hear about how you slipped through my plans, how there is no success with you still a threat, how you still aren’t dead.”
Aurelia recognized her stepmother’s animosity in Melony’s words. “From your mother?”
“Of course.” Quick steps strode farther from the rails. “My mother is always a fount of advice. ‘Why are you such a fool, darling? Why bother poisoning your father with her still alive? And why attack her life when you could so much more easily have destroyed her reputation? Why couldn’t you wait for that reckless girl to destroy herself?”’ Green eyes glared at Aurelia. “And you would have; wouldn’t you, sister? You’re still with him!”
With him.
The ringed hand thrust into the air.
And the first strike rip
ped at Aurelia’s back. Pain tore through her body, the force thrusting her against the rails. As did the knowledge of who had wielded the whip.
“But I couldn’t fathom you would make it so easy,” Melony railed on. “I was certain your espoused love of the kingdom would interfere. Then you’d bow and scrape and do whatever our father demanded of you. All the power in Tyralt would go sucking its way into the hands of some man our father thought could control the country. And I would still be the unrecognized bastard daughter of a king.”
Aurelia gasped for breath. “Our father … never hurt you.”
“Hurt? What would you know about pain? You were his daughter.”
“As were you.”
“Oh, no. Not in public. Not ever.”
Had the king really never named Melony his heir except on paper? What must it have been like to learn that the truth about her birth was one of her father’s greatest fears? But he had chosen not to imprison his youngest daughter after she had tried to kill her sister. “He loved you,” Aurelia said.
Again the ringed hand lifted.
And the lash fell.
Aurelia muffled her scream on her shoulder. My death now can help save my people.
“You don’t know what love is,” Melony snarled. “You never recognized its absence. And you still don’t.” She lifted a dagger from her bodice. “Naming Robert Vantauge as the supreme commander of your army? Honestly. How could you believe he loves you when he has everything to gain in your relationship?”
Present tense. Again. Did that mean he was still alive?
The thought defied pain. “You know love means more than status,” Aurelia challenged. “You were in love with his cousin.”
Green eyes hardened. And she knew she had struck the artery. Melony’s chest heaved as though her back was the one on fire. “Don’t you dare speak of Chris.”
“Why?” Aurelia prompted. “Because he tried to kill me?”
Her sister was shaking. “He had no place in that arena.” Her voice caught. “He was not supposed to be there.”
No, Aurelia thought, it was only supposed to be me and my assassin. Her mind lurched to that nightmarish morning over two years ago when she had first learned that her sister hated her. The stone walls of the royal arena. The closed gate. The slow realization of being trapped.
Then Robert’s retelling of his own experiences: his cousin’s interference in the plan to capture the assassin, the discovery of Chris’s role in the plot to kill Aurelia, the dual that had ended in his death. And the ultimate revelation of who had wanted her dead.
Perhaps that last could serve as a weapon now. Her sister need never know the reveal had been an accident. Aurelia whispered, “Chris gave you away.”
All color drained from Melony’s face. Her hand lifted again, the one with the knife.
And the lashes fell. Three. Four. Five. Aurelia’s screams filled the emptiness. Surely death was inevitable.
Six. Seven. The screams turned to sobs. Why must her spirit refuse to give in?
Her blood drained to the ground, her vision swimming a crimson red.
“Such weakness,” Melony sneered. “And the people think you are the strong one?”
Aurelia moaned, yielding to real weakness and stalling for a reprieve. “I’m your sister.”
“Half-sister. You were always closer to that wretched lady’s maid than to me.”
Daria, who hated Aurelia now. Slowly the red blur shifted to rails. Hard, wooden stripes.
Melony laughed, as though aware she had found her own verbal weapon. “I had her father imprisoned and tortured, you know, after you disappeared. I thought he might know something.” She shrugged. “He didn’t.”
Revulsion blocked the air. Aurelia fought the binds on her wrists, her right tearing loose. The left remained tight. Why had Daria not told her? Perhaps she had not known. Perhaps she had only suspected.
The ringed hand was back in the air.
“You aren’t a queen,” Aurelia said. “You are a murderess.”
“I gave him every incentive to help me,” Melony stated. “It’s not my fault the old groom didn’t know anything. Really, sister, when are you going to take the credit for all of the deaths you caused?” The hand flicked.
But this time the lash did not fall.
“Kill her,” Melony ordered Filbert.
And Aurelia closed her eyes in gratitude. She would die here, where her people would never see her weakness. Where she could never betray them.
But still the strikes did not come. She struggled to turn toward her torturer.
Filbert had dropped the whip. His face was ghost white.
Melony scoffed at him. “Of course your father is dead. He has been dead for almost a year. It changes nothing, save whether you would like to join him. Now finish her.”
Slowly Filbert moved his head in a distinctive shake.
Then a blade from nowhere buried itself in his chest. “Fool,” Melony snarled.
Aurelia realized her sister had hurled the dagger.
He sagged against the boards, his head rolling to the side. At last his eyes rose to Aurelia. Sorry, his lips moved.
She should have seen enough deaths now not to tremble. But the man in front of her was no longer her torturer. He was a boy. A tall, gangly boy who had stood at the palace gate and let her slip through it to freedom more times than he would ever know. A boy who had been the pride of his father’s life, the object of his sister’s defense, and had tried so hard to please. Everyone.
Blood bubbled from Filbert’s mouth, then trickled down his coat. And his gaze froze.
Melony swept through the gate, gripped the dagger’s handle, and pulled it free. Then turned away.
As if his life had been nothing.
Aurelia stared at the corpse. “They aren’t my deaths,” she whispered. Her hand grappled at her throat. Her head felt as though it wanted to float away. Her eyes refocused on the knife. “They’re yours. You bartered with Anthone for his help in having me assassinated.”
Her sister sniffed. “You were never worth more than a few horses.”
“Those horses were the center of an entire culture!”
Melony wiped the blade on her cloak. “It’s not as though the tribes were of any value. The real question is why they weren’t eradicated earlier.”
Aurelia’s stomach churned with horror. “And the people of the frontier?”
Her sister lowered the blade and stepped close. “Can you be as naïve as you sound? The frontier is a haven for the malcontent. Anthone’s choice to destroy them was ideal.”
“And you thought he would stop there!”
Melony’s face flared. “I had a plan. But you … you destroyed everything. First I have rumors sailing in from Darzai. Then messages start arriving. ‘The barbarians of the Valshone have traipsed out of their mountains.’ ‘The criminals of the Asyan are crawling from the forest.’ You drag out all the worst members of society. Raising the rabble!”
They are Tyralt.
“You and your revolution.” Melony pressed the blade to her sister’s throat.
This war can end one of only two ways. Aurelia lifted her chin. Her sister had no concept of this country. She thought it was a crown, a court, a throne—symbols that were as worthless without the people who believed in them as the silver key now gripping that emerald gaze. What purpose can my death serve with her free to ravage Tyralt?
Melony stepped close. “I am going to destroy all of them.” Her free hand wrenched the key from her sister’s neck.
And in that instant Aurelia snatched the knife.
And with a final breath, she ended the war.
Chapter Twenty-Three
TUNNEL OF DARKNESS
Madness swept out the open gate through which the carriage had entered and disappeared. Horses, servants, officers. Shouts slaying order into chaos like the shreds of Robert’s mind. Melony had come here. Of course, she had come here! Why had he not seen that his plan would tr
igger her flight of the capital? He wanted to launch himself into the madness. To spring from the trees and thrust his way into the flood of hooves and men.
His conscience defied the instinct. He knew now that plans existed only until action commenced. At which point they became about choices. If he rushed ahead too soon, his rashness would only condemn the young woman he had meant to save. Instead he inched forward, still clinging to the forest’s cover.
Soldiers were pulling away from the wall, moving toward the gate. Their numbers swelled, and at last he allowed his body to dissolve among the crowd, his boots gliding in a purposeful slant. He slipped around shoulders and behind muskets. And emerged, in the lee of the gate’s edge, elbow to elbow with a lad who had all the earmarks of a wide-eyed stable hand.
Other stablemen bobbed nearby. No doubt waiting, like Robert, for the madness to slow. No one watched him. He had become as invisible as all the other men at his side. Though his heart thudded as recklessly as the pounding of boots and hooves.
He honed his gaze again on the gate, his mind focused on one thought: that Aurelia was trapped inside. With Melony.
At last the outward rush began to thin. He shot a glance over his shoulder. Officers, now on horseback, were reining in the chaos. Soldiers had begun filing into rows and preparing to march. Robert knew he could not afford to wait for the servants also to fall back into hierarchy. He needed to cross the opening in the gate. Now.
His spine pressed tight to the stone edge, and he stepped into the breach. Then lurched back. A wagon careened past him, the sides scraping the stone along where he had just stood. Robert swallowed. A second wagon burst forth. Then a third. And a pause.
He tried again. Hooves swerved around him. Individual horses. He could see another wagon, the driver readying himself from within. Go, Robert told himself. Keep going. He dodged more hooves. And then he was through, just as the fourth wagon launched into motion.
He pulled away from the gate, his lungs gasping for air, his chest bowed down, his hands hugging his knees. He struggled to regain his breath, then lifted his head.
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