by M. Lynn
And he was ready.
Not in the sense that he knew what he was doing, because he didn’t. But he would learn. He’d grow. He wanted to lead them. Needed to create their path.
He ran a shaky hand through his hair as he stood on the long balcony surrounded by redbrick pillars. What would his father say of him now? Would he be proud? Would Davion?
His eyes drifted out over the land beyond the estate walls where the people of Dreach-Sciene prepared to take back the throne. Pride bloomed in his gut. They’d come from the towns and the villages. There were nobles who’d abandoned their estates to join in with the common folk.
Even before they’d known Trystan still lived, they’d recognized Drake as the enemy he was. There was more bravery, more strength in his kingdom than he’d ever imagined and it gave him hope. When the time came, Dreach-Sciene would rise against Calis Bearne. They’d fight for their homes and their king. Maybe they’d even win.
If he managed to re-unite the Tri-Gard and reclaim their magic.
He turned from the railing. Taking his throne back from his uncle was necessary, but every day they remained here was another day their mission went unfulfilled. The truth of the matter was Ramsey Kane’s recovery seemed as impossible a task as ever.
“Your Majesty,” Lord Coille said as he joined him.
“My Lord.” Trystan nodded.
A large hand landed on his shoulder. “Your father was my greatest friend, let’s dispense with formalities, shall we?”
Trystan smiled. “Of course, Adrian.” It should have felt strange but instead, there was comfort in the familiarity. Trystan had allies.
Adrian looked out across the sea of tents. “Your father would have loved to see this.” He shook his head. “The people rose for us the last time we went to war and we were nearly destroyed. He once told me he wasn’t sure if they’d come for us again.”
Trystan thought for a moment. “He always underestimated how much they loved him.”
“No truer words have ever been said.” Sadness crept over Adrian’s face. “He was a good man.”
“The best.” Trystan breathed out slowly and then turned to face the lord. “What happened? Why is he gone? How did someone…”
Adrian averted his eyes and rubbed his chin. “Your father was arrogant. In the best possible way. He thought that because he could wield a sword better than any other, he didn’t need constant protection. Before magic was taken, there was no man in Dreach-Sciene with more power than Marcus Renauld. But in the end, it wasn’t his skill that failed him or his vigilance.”
“Then what?” Trystan pressed.
“It was his heart.”
“I don’t understand.”
Adrian Coille sighed. “Your mother has been gone a long time, and that was Marcus’s one weakness. He’d never loved anyone like he loved Marissa, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel anything. So, when the seer…”
“Lorelai?” Trystan’s eyes snapped to the lord’s, horror burning in his gaze. “She killed my father?”
Adrian’s slow nod was all the answer he needed. The woman who continued to haunt his dreams. The girl with the cold voice and stinging words.
Someone you love will die by your hand.
Someone you love will sacrifice their life for yours.
Someone you love will forsake your name.
He backed away from the duke.
“She was an agent of Dreach-Dhoun,” Adrian explained.
Trystan’s head jerked from side to side in disbelief. And then he froze. It all made too much sense.
She’d played his father with prophecies and promises.
Was the curse false?
The sacrifice had already come true, but was it real?
“She wants us to bring them to her,” he said suddenly.
Adrian looked to him in question.
“The Tri-Gard. She wants us to take Briggs and Lonara into Dreach-Dhoun. Lorelai set us on the path to finding Briggs. She convinced my father of the necessity with her prophecy.” His mind flashed through everything he knew of the seer. Finding her in the woods. Davion. He covered his mouth. “Davi.”
Adrian’s wide eyes didn’t leave Trystan as he too sifted through every bit of information they had. “What about Davi?”
“Lorelai knew him. She was the person who convinced my father to take him in as a boy.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Trystan turned back to the balcony railing and gripped it until his knuckles turned white. “Maybe nothing now that Davi is…”
“Do you really believe it had no purpose?”
“No.” Trystan pushed out a breath.
Anger spiked through him and he spun as he let out a growl. “Everything we’ve done, every action, every decision has been orchestrated. And all we have to show for it is loss. I’m tired of losing people.”
He pointed toward the people below. Alixa and the rest of his friends were among them. “Every person that helps me could be walking into their own deaths.”
Adrian put a hand on his arm and pushed it down. “A fact they were all aware of before pledging themselves to you. Trystan, my king, I miss your father and Davi didn’t deserve to die, but you can’t stop now.”
Trystan’s shoulders fell. “I know.” He sighed with a shake of his head. “I know.” He met the duke’s understanding stare. “We let her into the palace. I carried her through the front gates myself. We healed her. We trusted her. And she killed him. Do you know how it happened? Where it happened?”
“Trystan-”
“I need to know.”
“I was told it was in his rooms in the late hours of the night.”
Trystan closed his eyes. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“No.”
“My father deserved to go out on a battlefield where he belonged, fighting for his people.”
“Trystan.” Adrian’s gaze reminded him so much of his father’s. “No one deserves the battlefield. Your father was a warrior, but in the end, a fair life would have seen his end come after he’d grown too old for it. And he would have had your mother at his side.”
“I wish I remembered them together.”
Adrian chuckled softly. “Trust me when I say this, my boy, if you ever want to know what your mother was like, all you have to do is watch that sister of yours.”
Trystan smiled as thought of the Rissa that existed before this mission. Sarcastic, but quick to smile at the same time.
Adrian patted him on the back once more and bowed quickly. “Your Majesty.” He left Trystan to his thoughts.
Lorelai.
This changed things. He couldn’t just walk into Dreach-Dhoun with Briggs and Lonara. Not now that he knew Calis wanted just that.
He hated to think what that meant.
It seemed never ending. Their fight. He re-entered the estate to go over tomorrow’s preparations. Lorelai’s actions had set off the events that led them here. She’d set them on this path to civil war.
But he refused to fight his own people inside the palace walls. Not when there was another way.
Trystan’s mind worked swiftly over the new information and his eyes did not see her before he almost ran over her. Rissa hid near the balcony door.
She set her jaw and turned hard eyes on him. “It was her?”
“You heard us speaking?”
“What do you think?” She took a step away from him. “All this time.”
Was she putting Lorelai together with Davi in her mind? Making the connection? That knowledge had thrown everything he knew into question. Even Davi’s loyalty, and he hated himself for that.
He refused to cloud Rissa’s feelings with doubt. They might never know why Lorelai wanted the orphan boy in their household.
No, if she didn’t think of it, he’d let her anger rest solely with the seer.
She shook her head, her pleading eyes finding his. “Please.” She rubbed her hand over the hilt sticking up fro
m her belt. “Tell me I get to fight something tomorrow. I need…”
“Ri.” He stepped towards her but she backed away.
Her jaw clenched. “We need to take it back, Trystan. They stole Father from us. They cannot have our home.”
Lord Coille might be right. No one deserved the battlefield. But some yearned for it. For the first time, he saw that desire in his sister.
There were no words he could say to make her see any different, and he wasn’t sure if he should even want to. He’d need Rissa fired up when they reached the palace. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Taking a deep breath, he met her gaze. “Yes. Tomorrow, we will push them from our home.”
He wished he could say something to clear the fog of anger from her mind.
He was angry too, but he was also king. And a king didn’t have the luxury of giving in to his anger.
Once they regained his throne, he’d tell her what he’d pieced together from Lorelai’s treachery. He’d tell them all. Because there was one thing he was now sure of.
They couldn’t risk taking any of the Tri-Gard members to Calis. Briggs and Lonara would have to stay behind.
They’d be forced to enter Dreach-Dhoun without their new allies’ magic to protect them. But not yet. Tomorrow, he had an uncle to defeat.
Chapter 15
“I never thought I’d be this terrified to come home.”
Rissa’s whisper was meant for Trystan’s ears alone rather than the small army of two hundred strong behind them. There had been no shortage of volunteers once word got out that Trystan was marching on the castle. He had selected a few to accompany him. The others were left behind to protect Whitecap. With Briggs and Lonara’s use of magic, the Dreach-Dhoun soldiers would soon be crawling over the town and someone had to be there to protect the people.
The chosen followed his orders without question. He’d never truly realized how deep Dreach-Sciene’s loyalty lay with his father until he’d seen the gathering at Coille’s estate. Drake would soon find out stealing a title did not a king make.
The trip to the palace was uneventful to say the least. No one seemed to be traveling far in these dark times. No doubt, Drake’s claiming the throne and Calis’ stronghold on their lands had a common link. Even with the deserted roads, they had taken no chances. They’d forgone the open road the closer they’d gotten to the castle, choosing instead to push their way through the dead forests of Aldorwood. Not that Trystan was foolish enough to believe they could enter the castle without being seen. Two hundred could not sneak in without someone noticing. But he wanted to give them as little notice of their arrival as possible for the plan to work. They should have no time to prepare. Drake was expecting Trystan’s small party of six, not two hundred.
Lonara suggested the evening arrival and Trystan had agreed. Arriving after dark meant fewer servants and innocent villagers cluttering up the courtyard. Any attack meant casualties, and the fewer innocent victims, the better. Only the guards were expected to be patrolling the grounds and most were not traitors to Marcus and his children. The majority, Rion had told them, were told of the deaths of Trystan and Rissa and had no choice but to put their faith in the remaining king. But, Drake did not accomplish this feat of taking the throne alone. There were a few in Drake’s inner circles that were not so innocent. Royce Eisner was one. There would be a battle. Trystan was just hoping to keep the death toll of his people to a minimum.
He turned slightly in his saddle to look at Rissa, her pale skin shone bright in the watery moonlight. “Terror is only one of the things I feel right now, sister.” Glancing back over his shoulder, he raised his voice. He infused it with steel, admitting to none of the fear he felt inside. “The plan stands. We all know what we must do. Wait for the signal and pray we achieve this with minimal loss of life.”
“Trystan.” Lonara’s voice floated softly out of the dark. “Are you sure you don’t want to take the castle with magic? Drake will be waiting for you, and he will not be as concerned to the wellbeing of the innocents as you are.”
“We can’t use magic when we don’t know where we stand. Magic cannot differentiate between loyalists or traitors. Let us decide that. You just make sure you and Coille get everyone inside at the signal.” Nudging his horse, and with a slight wave of his hand, Trystan started down the small incline to the castle below. Only five others followed his lead; Rissa, Avery, Edric, Alixa, and Rion. The rest remained hidden in the shadows as commanded.
The towers of the castle, visible above the gates, were awash in welcoming light and back-lit with a thousand stars. The sight of it was inviting and welcoming and would have warmed his heart if he had any heart left to care. Knowing his father no longer waited inside, but instead his treacherous uncle, filled him with a deep-seated need for revenge.
The horse’s hooves echoed in the arid night air. The weather had changed again. Cold escalated into a simmering heat, relieved only by the coming of dusk. The heat of the day still lingered on his skin and he wiped the beads of sweat from his upper lip.
“Ri, as soon as I give the order, raise the signal. We cannot have the guards locking our people out. Avery, you take the left guards, Rion, the right. Do not take any unnecessary lives. We do not wish to cause harm to any still loyal to us—”
“We know what we have to do, Trystan.” Rissa’s curt words interrupted his. “Drake and Royce are the only lives we take tonight.”
“For once we agree, princess.” Alixa’s voice floated over Trystan’s shoulder, adding to the unease caused by his sister’s callous words, but he ignored it. He had much bigger things to worry about at the moment.
Torches burned at the castle wall entrance, firelight glimmering off the thick iron gates. Shadows lurked beyond and disembodied voices floated out to them as they brought their horses to a standstill just out of the range of light.
“Who goes there?” a voice asked. “Identify yourselves.”
“Is that you, Fields?”
Silence followed Avery’s question. Then, “Who’s askin’?”
“It’s me, Avery. Open the gate. I’ve brought the prince and princess back home.”
A longer silence.
“You lie. The royals are dead. King Drake said so.”
“King Drake? How can Drake be king when Trystan Renauld is still very much alive?”
Murmuring and shuffling from inside met Trystan’s ears. The guards argued amongst themselves. Sliding from his horse, he walked slowly into the firelight. “Avery does not lie, soldier. I have returned and I am your rightful king. Open the gate and let us in.”
The guard’s broad, flat nose squished as he peered through the iron bars in disbelief. “Impossible. You all died in the Isenore mountains. The king said so. He also said we ain’t supposed to open the gate for no one without the captain’s permission.” He squinted into the torchlight. “Although you do kinda look like the young prince under all that hair.”
Trystan spread his hands wide, trying to assure the guard of his identity. “My uncle was… mistaken, as you can clearly see. And I understand you not wanting to disobey orders. Call for Captain Brown, then. Tell him of our return. He will know what to do.”
The guard grew silent and shifted his eyes away as if struggling with his words. “Brown ain’t the captain no more. King Drake had him arrested and imprisoned for treason weeks ago. Patterson is our captain now.”
“Treason?” Trystan snorted in derision. “And you believe that? Brown was as loyal to my father as I was. There was no way the captain was involved in any sort of treason. You lot should be ashamed of yourselves for going along with that sham.”
“Who said we went along with it? And it ain’t King Marcus he’s accused of treason against. It’s King Drake. Can you prove you’re the young prince?”
Trystan narrowed his eyes. “Can you prove I’m not? And if I am, will you take the chance of disobeying me, Lieutenant Fields?”
Fields hesitated for a moment
before flashing a mouthful of broken teeth. “Well played, young sir, and I believe you. But I still can’t disobey captain’s orders without risking my neck.” He turned and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Go fetch Captain Patterson. Tell him he’s needed at the gate.”
“The Captain’s already retired for the night. He’s not going to like being interrupted,” a voice answered back.
“Yeah, well you ain’t gonna like my boot up your arse, boy. Now go fetch him and tell him we have someone at the gate claiming to be Prince Trystan.”
“Prince Trystan?” Trystan heard the questioning voices as more faces crowded the gate and stared out at him.
“It can’t be him, can it?”
“It looks like the young prince, but it’s too dark to see proper.”
“Yeah, I think it is.”
“It’s an imposter. Has to be. The royals are all dead. King Drake said so.”
Trystan ignored the blabbering as his companions dismounted from their horses and joined him at the gate. This was it. He glanced over at Rissa as his hand settled on the hilt of his sword.
“Ready, sister?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Another commotion followed in the courtyard and the staring guards scattered as a bevy of soldiers emerged from the shadows. Even in the low firelight, Trystan observed the shining new armor and honed blades. As they approached, he identified the colors of Isenore. These were not his father’s men.
“Open the gate.” A taller shadow moved into the flickering light and Trystan recognized the hawkish features of Patterson, a man he remembered as an average soldier, but yet was now somehow the captain of the guard instead of the fiercely loyal Brown. Patterson had clearly chosen a side, and it wasn’t Trystan’s.
Trystan’s heart pounded in time with the clanging of the metal gears as the heavy gate began its ascent. Walking abreast with his companions, Trystan slowly made his way into the courtyard of what was once his home. The rising gate made one final jump and settled against the stone wall with a resounding clank that faded into a pregnant silence.
