Destined for a King

by Ashlyn Macnamara

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  Silence reigned for a long moment, while Kestrel’s lips moved, clearly repeating the terrible sentence to himself.

  “I’ve already ordered Thorne’s release. Have him brought to me immediately.” Taking command was easier than dwelling. If he dwelled, he might once again relive his brother’s death. He might once again remember how the utter tangle that had enmeshed his sister was also his fault.

  “Thorne?” Kestrel voiced the name in a hoarse whisper made all the more vehement by the softness of his tone. “What in the name of all that is holy does he have to do with this? You cannot possibly intend to leave your sister where she is now.”

  “I do not.” He fought to keep his voice steady. Fought for all the required authority.

  “Thank the Three. For a moment there, I thought you had it in mind to allow her to fend for herself.” Yes, and that was censure lacing the commander’s words.

  “Take heed you do not forget yourself. You are fortunate to question me behind closed doors.”

  “There is nothing to question. If you will not go after your sister, I shall.”

  “No, you will not. I need you here to order the battle when Magnus’s troops attack. For surely they will.”

  “And you would abandon your sister.”

  Torch lunged at the other man, his hands fisting in the front of Kestrel’s jerkin. Friend or no, Torch was within a hairbreadth of releasing his fury. “I am not abandoning her. I will go after her just as soon as I take care of another matter.” He had to wed Calista first, with all the proper ceremony. Not that he believed Magnus would balk at handing Jerrah over to his men once he learned what Torch had done, but when the truth came out, Magnus would come off looking like a barbarian. “And for that I require Thorne.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Kestrel said between clenched teeth.

  “Let there be no misunderstanding. Remember your oath. I command you to stay here at Blackbriar.”

  Kestrel made no reply. He simply bowed himself out, leaving Torch to face the contents of the message. His brother dead and now his sister. Still alive, yes, and tough—though female, a fighter as much as either of her brothers. But in Magnus’s hands she might soon wish she’d suffered the same fate as Griffin. To the Faceless One with it all.

  He let out an incoherent cry of rage and heaved the parchment onto yesterday’s coals. It caught on a hot ember and a tendril of smoke curled up the chimney.

  Calista roused herself from the bed and crossed the chamber to lay a hand on his arm. “You’ve done me no harm.”

  Torch rounded on her. “Are you really so naïve?”

  Harsh of him, yes, but life was harsh, and the sooner she faced that fact the better. Hadn’t he learned through the long years he’d spent awaiting his hour that life would find a way to slap him in the face every single time? He’d not had a stroke of fortune since he was a boy of five and his mother smuggled him out of the keep at Highspring Moor. They’d escaped with their lives, but to what sort of existence?

  Calista dropped her hand and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t suppose so, no. Not now. And yet, I can vouch for the fact that nothing has happened between us that we didn’t both want.”

  “Do you honestly believe you’ll convince Magnus of that? Even if I wed you, he will not see past your stolen innocence, and hand my sister over to his men.”

  “If you don’t believe me sorry for that, you’re much mistaken. But neither is the situation your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

  “Known, yes.” He reached for his shirt. “The dream…Once that blade passed through Griffin, once he died…” How he stopped his voice from breaking on that word, he couldn’t say. “Once he died, I came back to myself. I did not see what happened to my sister. How do we know for certain this isn’t some ruse?”

  He watched her as she shook her skirts, creased beyond repair from her sleeping in her gown, among other things. Her hair fell in a hopeless tangle about her shoulders. For all the world, she looked exactly like she’d spent the entire night at bed sport, which wasn’t so far from the truth.

  She kept her gaze downcast as she set her bodice to rights. “I felt hands grapple me when I was in Swift’s body. I do believe she has been taken.”

  Damn, there went his last hope, as fragile a filament as it was. “Then I must go after her.”

  “How?” She finished tightening her laces and stared up at him through wide gray eyes. “You don’t even know where she’s been taken. As for the rest, it may already be too late.”

  “No, perhaps it isn’t. Not when I hold his intended the way he holds my sister. If he harms her without provocation, what, in his mind, is to stop me from harming you in the same way or worse? Don’t you see? As long as he believes I’ve treated you with honor, he cannot afford to treat my sister with any less honor, for fear of what I might do to you.”

  “And how will you stop him from discovering what has transpired between us? He already knows you hold this keep. Clearly he has ways of gathering news.” Her gaze focused on his chest. “Do you think he has a Stone of his own?”

  The possibility had never occurred to him. “Not that I am aware. I suppose he might, but Stones like these are rare, even among the Avestari, who actively seek them. He’d have to know the lore, and he’d have to have been fortunate enough to find one.”

  “Then what will you do to stop him from learning what’s happened?”

  “This is why I must act without delay.” Another thought occurred to him, at once heartening and terrifying. “Although Magnus may come to me instead. I hold this keep. He’ll want to take it back. And now he has a bargaining chip on top of everything else.”

  A scratch at the door had him reaching for his sword belt. “Come!”

  “What are you doing?” Calista whispered. “The more people who discover I spent the night with you, the more likely word will get out.”

  She looked ready to duck under the bed, but she was too late. Thorne came into the chamber, freezing in his tracks when his gaze landed on his daughter. His expression hardened to granite. Yes, the situation is every bit what it looks like. Your daughter caught with me in her bedchamber, her hair and clothes in disarray and the sun barely risen. The servants haven’t even been in to light the fire.

  “You summoned me?” Thorne asked carefully.

  “Indeed.” Torch crossed his arms and leaned one hip against a bedside table. “I’d like to negotiate my wedding contract with your daughter.”

  “Wedding?” The question was wary, almost disbelieving.

  At the same time, Calista interjected. “No!”

  Gods, he should have sent her off to dress, but he was the one in her chamber and not the other way around. “Sweetling, I don’t think we’ve a choice in the matter anymore. Not after last night.” That last was calculated of him, to be sure, but he had to secure Thorne’s agreement to the proposal.

  “But your sister—”

  “My sister knew of my plans to wed. She would never ask me to change them over a small snag.”

  “Small snag?” Calista went white and shook her head. “You call what’s happened a small snag?”

  Gods, he sounded callous, but he had to. He’d learned the trick from a young age, out of necessity. Hide your true feelings behind a shield of sarcasm or charm or coldness, but above all hide them. That way no one could discover your weaknesses. “I’ve no other choice but to call it that. And we will rescue her. But my marriage to you was always the goal here.”

  “Perhaps we ought to discuss this at another time,” Thorne put in. “When emotions are running less high.”

  In the blink of an eye, Calista’s complexion went from colorless to bright red. “You mean once you’ve gotten rid of me, is that it, Father? Just like you decided my fate once before without even consulting me?”

  “If you disapproved of the match between you and the king, you had only to speak up,” Thorne said mildly. “I daresay you’re being offered an alternative, of s
orts, now.” Thorne glanced from Calista to Torch and back, his gaze lingering a moment longer on the tangled blankets strewn across the bed. “One might even say you’ve made your choice already. Or do you think Magnus will blindly accept a union with this man’s leavings?”

  Calista’s jaw dropped. “Leavings?”

  Overwhelmed in a hot wave of rage, Torch launched himself at the man and grabbed two fistfuls of velvet doublet. “Daughter or no,” he grated, “you will not refer to my intended in this manner. She will wed me. No child of mine will know the life of a bastard.”

  Beneath his ruddy complexion, Thorne paled.

  Torch inhaled through his nostrils. Control. Damn, but that quality had deserted him sometime in the night. He needed it back. Now. He uncurled his fingers from Thorne’s garments. “Honor demands I make this offer, but I daresay I would have made it either way.”

  “Do you have any specific objections to this man?” Thorne asked.

  Calista narrowed her gaze on Torch. Then she crossed one arm over her waist in support of her opposite elbow. Her index finger tapped her chin and she studied the rafters for a few moments. Damn her for drawing it out. She was playing now, and he had no choice but to endure. A small enough price to pay in the end, when they were both asking her to decide the course of her life.

  “Let me think…He has no castle, no lands to speak of, a reputation as a heartless marauder. No, I can’t think of a single reason I’d agree to such a union.”

  Torch glared at her. “You know better,” he said, infusing his rejoinder with a note of warning. “And I can lay every single one of those same accusations at the door of Magnus Ironfist.”

  “You can if you wish to end up on a gibbet for treason, but pray, do not drag me and my family down with you,” said Thorne. “A man can lay accusations where he will, but if he cannot prove them, they’re only so much wind.”

  “I intend to prove them in time, as your daughter well knows.” He kept his gaze riveted on her, willing her to give in. “She’s now aware of a great many of my ultimate goals, and I would ask her to help me rather than hinder me. I aim to right a great wrong among the lords of the Strongholds. I ask only for a little patience and trust.”

  “You ask a great deal of me.” For a man who lived and died by Torch’s decree, Thorne displayed more than his share of defiance. “A great deal too much.”

  “Not to mention lands and a castle,” Calista supplied. “Which is where I come in.”

  It is more than that now, and you know it. If only the Scrying Stone permitted him to speak those words directly into her mind; he did not wish to voice them in front of her father. Not when the man was still an enemy. Still a king’s man. One who would bear watching.

  “I’ll require far more than just the Blackbriar lands before I’m finished.” No, he’d have to win the other Strongholds to his cause, one castle at a time. The others would be harder. He could only arrange one allegiance through wedlock. “But it’s a start.”

  Thorne raised his brows at his daughter. “I am still awaiting your reply. Will you toss your lot in with this upstart and damn us all?”

  “As if I truly had a choice in the matter. I have none after last night.”

  Yet you gave yourself freely. He stopped himself just short of voicing that thought aloud. He was certain neither Thorne nor Calista would appreciate it. “Then let the negotiations begin.”

  Chapter 13

  Torch stalked across the yard in a high dudgeon, ignoring the clang of swords of his men at practice. Damned Thornes, both father and daughter. If he’d known they’d be so difficult to deal with, he’d have left Calista for Magnus and chosen another bride. Damned pride that pushed him to take as much as he could from the Ironfist.

  Thorne had had no choice but to allow the marriage, but he’d still chosen to complicate matters. “What do you offer my daughter other than this keep?” he’d said, unable to prevent the smugness from creeping into his tone. “The keep she’s grown up in, when Magnus offers Highspring Moor.”

  The barb had stung, but Torch had no choice but to bear it. At this juncture, he wasn’t about to reveal his true identity to a man he did not trust. Not that Thorne was likely to take him at his word, for all that. “I offer her protection, which is more than Magnus can.”

  “Do you really believe that, when the man can raise an army of ten thousand and surrounds himself with guards?”

  Torch pushed aside thoughts of his sister and brother. When he was finished with the Usurper, Magnus was going to need every last guard to protect his sorry hide. “I do. And the protection of this keep has been good enough for your daughter her entire life. It can suffice until I find more suitable lodgings.”

  Thorne hadn’t borne that barb much better than Torch had held up under his, but he’d moved on to other matters quickly enough at the reminder that he hadn’t been able to hold his own keep. “As for the wedding itself, I see no reason to rush matters.”

  “The wedding will take place as soon as it can possibly be arranged.” The sooner he married Calista, the less likely word would get back to Magnus that he’d anticipated his wedding night.

  Thorne had raised his brows above his hairline. “And so you would bring the king’s wrath down on us all.”

  Yes! Torch’s mind had screamed. Now more than ever, with his siblings added to Magnus’s tally of sins. The more Torch provoked the Ironfist’s wrath, the more likely Magnus would descend on them without taking the time to raise an even larger host. “You don’t believe he’ll pay his respects one way or the other? To deal with you, since you yielded this keep? Then he’s likely going to demand I swear him allegiance. Cast your lot in with me, and I will shield you as I shield myself.”

  The matter was settled now—with the father, at any rate. He only needed to bring his intended to heel. By all the gods, what had happened to her when her father came in? She’d been pliant enough in his arms. Beneath him. More than pliant. She’d been responsive and soft. Everything he could want in a bedmate.

  And he’d made damned certain she’d enjoyed herself. Even afterward, when he’d read the note, she’d reached out to him with comfort. The reaction had given him hope for their future as husband and wife. It made him think they might eventually develop a kind of partnership once he took back his kingdom—or even before. She possessed all he needed to see him through the dark days ahead, and she was strong enough to bear up. He’d seen that during the time she’d cared for him.

  But her father had come in, and she’d turned cold and recalcitrant. Why? What had changed?

  A shout from the yard, close at hand, drew him from his musings.

  “You bloody, bloody idiot. How many times must I tell you?” One of his men was standing over Owl, who lay on the ground, his blunted training sword lying just out of his grasp. Hawk held his own blade to the boy’s throat. “You need to pay closer attention if you’re going to defend yourself properly. Now up with you and try again.”

  Gods, the boy’s troubles on the training grounds had gone on longer than could be borne. Torch walked over to the pair. “What’s the boy done now?”

  “What hasn’t he done, more like,” Hawk growled. “He was supposed to practice and clearly he hasn’t. He keeps dropping his bloody blade at the slightest provocation.”

  “Please, m’lord.” Hells, the boy was practically sobbing. “It hurts too much.”

  “You think that hurts?” Hawk raised his blade, presenting the flat. “I’ll show you something worse.”

  “What seems to be the matter?” Torch asked his squire. The boy needed training, to be certain, but he usually presented more mettle than this.

  “What isn’t the matter?” Hawk asked. “First he can’t concentrate, and now he can’t even keep a sword to hand. We may as well leave him behind with the maids and dotards for all the good he’ll be in a fight.”

  “Please, sir. My hands.” He held them up, still encased in leather gauntlets. “They sting.”

&
nbsp; Torch had been on the receiving end of enough of Hawk’s disarming moves to understand where the boy was coming from. The man had a way of striking that made the blade vibrate. Dropping the weapon was easiest, but even that hurt. Maintaining the grip was far worse. “You’ve got to grit your teeth through that. There’s nothing else for it. Your enemy isn’t going to wait for you to stop and gather your things in the middle of a battle.”

  “I know, sir, and I tried. Please. Something’s not right.”

  Something certainly wasn’t right about the boy’s voice. He normally displayed more fortitude in front of the older men. He normally tried harder as well.

  Torch grabbed his hand and yanked at the fingers of his gauntlet. Owl let out a cry and tried to pull away. This was more than just his hands stinging from a mere disarming. The pain ought to diminish, in any case. Torch relaxed his grip, and tried again.

  The gauntlet wouldn’t move. “What in the name of the Faceless One?”

  He pulled harder, and Owl’s breath came out in a hiss of pain. “Stop. It hurts too much.”

  “What have you done to your hands?”

  “Nothin’, sir. I swears.”

  Torch exchanged a look with Hawk. His jaw was just as taut as ever, but a glimmer of concern had come into his eyes. “Perhaps we should cut them free, my lord.”

  “No, sirs, and beggin’ yer pardon. I wouldn’t know where I might come by another pair.”

  “The next time a leather worker comes by the keep,” Torch said, “I’ll purchase you new gauntlets myself.”

  He pulled a knife from his belt and inserted the blade between Owl’s wrist and the gauntlet. The leather split beneath the blade’s sharpness, and Owl let out another cry. The flesh above his wrist was swollen and covered with red blisters crossed by angry scratches. As he eased the gauntlet from the boy’s hand, more damaged skin came into view.

  “By the Three, boy, what have you been into?”

  “Nothin’ sir, I swears it.” The reply came too quickly, and Owl refused to meet his gaze.