The end of the Trials was in the Hall of Virtues. The court and the Council of Elders would be assembled there. Elder Cestrum would be there.
Carys looked down the corridor toward the throne room. “We don’t have time to deal with the Council. We have to alert the guards and the city.”
“I can help,” Max called, running down the hallway toward them. In everything that had happened, Andreus had forgotten the boy, who had been instructed to hide in an alcove until their return. “If the bad people are coming, I can sound the gongs.”
Yes, he could. “Go! If there are others nearby, have them help you. Sound the alarm and don’t stop.”
The boy turned and bolted in one direction, and Carys and he raced in the other.
Their leather boots pounded against the stone floors. Servants jumped back against the tapestries that hung against the palace walls as he and his sister flew by—Andreus lagging farther behind his sister with every step. He gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw, and fought to keep up. But it was no use. Carys disappeared out the door to the palace courtyard and he limped after her into the bitter air.
The rumbling of cheers from the city below sounded in the quiet of the night. Underneath it all, there was the sound that made him shiver and move faster. It was the sound of a rusty screech like a portcullis that needed greasing. The sound of the Xhelozi.
“Carys!” he heard someone call.
His sister turned as a woman came through the entrance of the palace in the white-and-blue cape—hood still pulled high on her head.
Larkin had made it through the Trials safely. She had returned.
His sister hurried toward Larkin.
He saw it too late. The outline of a man stepping from an alcove. A bowstring being drawn back. The arrow that flew through the air.
Andreus called out a warning. He raced forward, biting back the pain in his leg as the man notched another arrow and sent it flying into the center of the blue-and-white-striped cloak next to the first.
Larkin stumbled. The hood slipped from her head onto her shoulders as his sister caught their childhood friend in her arms.
“It’s not her!” a woman screamed.
The man with the bow advanced several steps then reached for another arrow. Andreus slipped on the ice as the attacker notched the arrow in the bow and took aim. Fighting to keep his feet under him, Andreus lifted his sword and swung.
The blade sliced through flesh. The bow, along with the attacker’s hand and forearm, thudded to the ground. Blood spurted warm onto Andreus’s legs and the white snow.
Andreus raised the sword again, and buried the blade in the attacker’s neck as his mother screamed, “Oben! No!”
“Larkin!” Carys saw her brother race toward the man with the bow. She caught the glint of the sword in the moonlight before dropping to her knees next to her friend. “You’re going to be okay,” she said desperately as she clutched the stiletto in her hand, ready to kill any who came near.
Larkin looked up at the sky with her deep brown eyes. Carys had always thought her friend had the most beautiful she’d ever seen. They were wide and dark and so often sparkled with laughter. Only now those eyes shimmered with pain.
“Someone get Madame Jillian!” Carys screamed even though she knew what the arrows buried deep in Larkin’s chest meant. The healer was skilled, but there was no denying the gurgling sounds Larkin made as she fought to take in air.
The wind hadn’t stopped the arrows this time, because Carys hadn’t seen the danger. She hadn’t known, and now . . .
“You can’t die,” Carys insisted. She reached for her friend’s hand—slick with the blood that drop by drop was draining Larkin’s life. “I command you not to die! Please, Larkin! Please, don’t die.”
“Carys,” Larkin whispered. “I . . .”
“Shhh. Don’t talk.” Carys squeezed Larkin’s fingers. They were so cold. Too cold. “Save your strength. Madame Jillian will make you better and you can keep telling me that I’m not a lady.”
“But you are,” Larkin whispered. “You always have been. Just a different kind. Free.” A shudder rippled through Larkin. She coughed and blood stained her mouth.
“Please,” Carys begged. “I can’t lose you.”
“Never lose.” Larkin’s eyes fluttered shut. “I’m here. Like the wind. Always . . .” Larkin’s breath gurgled. Her chest shuddered. Her friend’s pale lips parted and the air around them went still.
Larkin—the girl who had taught Carys that there were more important things than crowns and jewels and power—was dead.
Carys held tight to her friend’s blood-streaked, always-capable hand. She didn’t want to let go. Larkin was supposed to get married. She was supposed to leave the city walls and find happiness. Instead she died pretending to be Carys all because she was determined to fight for Eden. Larkin had wanted those she loved to be safe. Only they weren’t. Not yet.
The Bastian army was approaching the walls. The Xhelozi were coming from the mountains. Larkin would insist Carys get up off the cold ground. She would want Carys to continue to fight and protect the city and her father, who didn’t know his daughter was dead.
Carys’s mother shrieked.
Andreus shouted back as Carys slowly released her friend’s hand, pushed to her feet, and turned.
“Mother, no!” Andreus yelled, grabbing their mother, who was standing over the chamberlain’s body.
“She was supposed to die! She has to die!” their mother screamed. The words punched into Carys as if they were the dagger the Queen raised high over her head.
And in that moment Carys understood why Larkin was dead.
The white-and-blue cloak. Larkin’s newly short hair that she had bleached pale to swap identities. The bow next to the fallen chamberlain’s body. The arrows hadn’t been meant for Larkin. They had been meant for her.
“Kill her, Andreus! You have to stop the curse. The curse is real. I’ve seen it in my dreams since I was born. People will continue to die if the curse continues. She is the curse!”
“Mother,” Carys called as the wind began to whisper in her head again. Hurt. Anger. Fear. “You . . .”
“Don’t call me that!” The Queen whirled. “I’m not your mother! He insisted that I lie and I did, but I have never been your mother!”
The white dress billowed. Dark hair whipped around the Queen’s face, framing eyes that were clear and determined and far too sane for the words that she spoke.
“Ulron’s mistress and I became pregnant at the same time.” Carys’s mother held the dagger in front of her. The blade gleamed in the moonlight as the Queen shifted back and forth. “He thought Andreus was his child just as he believed Micah was. He didn’t know that I never intended him to have a child. The curse of his line—the curse his family began when they took the throne—was supposed to end when Micah became King. Ulron’s bloodline would have been removed from power even as others thought it lived on.”
“Mother, you’re not making any sense,” Andreus said, his eyes flicking toward the arching entrance of the palace gate toward the city. The Bastians and the Xhelozi were still coming. “Micah was our brother.”
“Micah was your brother.” Carys’s mother turned back to Andreus. The dagger still tight in her fist. “He was like you. He was Oben’s son.”
The gong began to sound.
But it was her mother’s words that rang in her head. Oben’s son?
Carys looked down at the chamberlain’s body. Micah and Andreus, with their richer skin tone and darker hair, had always looked different from her. Everyone said they favored their mother, and that Carys took after her father. But . . .
Her stomach churned.
The single gong grew into a chorus. The war starting outside the walls echoed in the night, but the only battle she could focus on was right here. Carys unclenched her hands and fought for calm. She had to stay calm. “Andreus and I are twins, Mother.”
“I’m not your mother!” the Qu
een screamed. Rage twisted her beautiful face. “I learned I was pregnant with Andreus just before Ulron told me his mistress was with child. The woman said she had the power of the seers, and Ulron believed her. He had hoped my visions meant his children might have true powers like the rulers in the past used to vanquish their enemies. He claimed you would help him conquer Adderton and any that would rise against him. He wanted you and insisted I owed him my cooperation for making me his Queen.”
It couldn’t be true!
“Mother,” Andreus said, taking a slow step forward. “You’re confused. Carys and I are twins. We were born on the same day.”
She and Andreus were two halves of the same whole. Two faces in the same reflection. Her life was as it was because she had lived it for him.
Their mother laughed. The ugly, bitter sound cut deep into Carys’s heart. “Ulron hid his mistress in the city while she was pregnant and snuck her back into the palace when it was Andreus’s time to be born.” The Queen looked adoringly at Andreus. “The midwife delivered you, my son, then with Oben’s help cut the King’s bastard free. At her birth Carys proved the curse of her family’s bloodline. It was her life that led to her mother’s death.”
Carys shook her head, even as something inside her clicked. It was as if a key had slid into a lock and a door opened. Her mother had never cared when Carys had been beaten to protect Andreus. She had never flinched or wept when Carys was scarred or was in agony. She didn’t care what the Tears of Midnight did to Carys. Never did she encourage Carys to break free of the drug that kept the whispers of the wind and the hurt at bay. Their mother had simply insisted Carys take more because she didn’t want Carys to know the truth. Carys wasn’t a twin. Andreus had never been her brother.
She was the King’s child.
The heir to the throne.
The last of her father’s line.
Yet now more than ever, she felt as if she was nothing.
“You murdered the midwife,” Andreus said.
The woman’s disappearance after their birth finally made a horrible kind of sense. No witnesses could be left alive to tell the King’s secret. With her dead none would be left alive to know that Carys was not birthed by the Queen. Except the Queen herself and the man she said fathered Andreus and Micah.
The Queen smiled. “The King believed Oben slit her throat on his order, but the King was wrong. Oben did it for love of me and to keep our secret.”
A secret that led here—to the death of her father and Micah, the start of the Trials, and now the war that was about to be waged for a throne Carys had never wanted and yet was truly hers by blood.
Her father was dead. As was the mother she had never known.
Seeress Kiara said the jeweled slippers were the key to setting her free. The slippers that belonged to the Queen—a woman who had used Carys’s love for Andreus and the Tears of Midnight to hold her life hostage.
Her brother turned to look at her.
No—not her brother. Andreus—a man who did not share her blood.
She stared into his eyes that were as dark as hers were pale. That was but one difference between them. Now she looked for them all. His dark hair. His tanned skin. The weak heart that she fought to hide because hers had been born strong.
She saw those things that divided them now.
They weren’t two halves of one whole. They were never meant to be each other’s reflections.
“Kill her, Andreus!” The Queen seized Andreus’s hand and pressed the dagger into it. “You were meant to be King. Your father lost his parents when Carys’s family seized the throne. He bore scars so you wouldn’t have to wear them. He sacrificed everything including his own life for you.”
Andreus took the dagger and shook his head. “No. It doesn’t matter what you say, Mother, or what blood runs in my veins . . .” He turned toward Carys and let the blade fall to the ground. “Carys is my sister and you, Mother, are nothing.”
Andreus met her eyes again and she understood the question she saw in their depths.
The wind howled in her mind. Their mother raged.
Carys looked down at Larkin and put her hand on her heart and then lifted it to the sky, and the whispering of the wind faded.
Larkin hadn’t been born in a palace and she had not shared a drop of royal blood, but she had been Carys’s sister.
Carys looked back at her brother and nodded. She and Andreus weren’t siblings by birth. They didn’t need to share the same parents to be connected, because they shared a heart.
Carys saw the tears in Andreus’s eyes as he understood without words what she was saying. Dreus was her twin. He was her brother, and they would stand together not because blood dictated they should, but by choice—tonight and always.
His stomach was like lead. Each breath felt as if he were inhaling glass. Nothing was the same. So many secrets. So many lies.
Larkin dead. Killed by Oben—his mother’s chamberlain. The man who was his father. The man he had known all his life and had barely known at all. His father—the man Andreus had just killed.
Andreus looked at Carys again. Her light-colored eyes met his. Steadfast. Resolute. And filled with love. He didn’t need to hear the words to know what was in her heart and mind. She was his sister no matter what his mother said. No matter what he had done. He had made mistakes, but he had learned from them and he would stand by Carys. He would fight for Eden beside her. She was his family.
The gongs continued to ring.
The cheers that had filled the night turned to shouts and screams. In the distance, he heard the sound of metal striking metal. The fighting had started.
“We have to fix the lights and arm the gates.”
Everything was different, yet nothing had changed.
He let out the breath he was holding and turned toward the arching palace entrance.
“Andreus, you have to stop her.” His mother clawed his arm. “The curse . . .”
“If there is anyone cursed, it’s you!” He shoved his mother away from him and walked away with her screams chasing behind him.
“Graylem is at the gates,” Carys said, falling into step beside him. Her stiletto was raised and ready. “He will do what he can to hold them until reinforcements arrive, but I’m not sure how long our forces can hold out against the Bastians and the Xhelozi. If we had more time . . .”
He knew what she was thinking. With more time they could order anyone who couldn’t fight to take refuge within the palace walls. They could arrange those ready to defend the city in places where their fighting could do some good. But there wasn’t more time.
“I have to get to the walls of the city to fix the line Elder Ulrich’s men cut.” The Xhelozi had grown bolder—attracted to the darkness that wasn’t just from the night, according to the seer Carys had talked to. The lights might not be enough to push them back, but he had to try.
His leg burned and threatened to buckle, but the sound of the gongs, his sister running next to him, and the shadows he could see beyond the walls kept him upright. Carys held his arm as they went down to the stables for the second time that night. They rode to the base of the steps where Graylem was directing guardsmen, merchants, and common citizens to the southern gates.
The sound of rusty cries brought everything to a standstill. All eyes turned toward the southern walls. The shrieks clawed the air again followed by the faint sound of human screams.
The Xhelozi had arrived and had met the Bastian forces.
Dozens of people on the city streets shouted in fear. They pushed at one another and raced into the darkness for their homes. But there were others, like the men Larkin and her father and Graylem’s guards had recruited, who stood their ground, waiting for orders. They would do what they could to defend Garden City.
He dug his legs into his mount and galloped down the street. His sister kept pace on her horse next to him. The high-pitched cries of the Xhelozi grew more frequent and sounded closer now.
Andreus urg
ed his horse to go faster. The lights had appeared to darken first on the southeasternmost section of the wall. The Master working with Elder Ulrich must have told him it was the logical place to strike if one wanted to sabotage the lights without damaging the entire system. It would also be the easiest to repair, something Elder Ulrich would have wanted to do quickly after his plan was complete.
Doors slammed as the people of Eden took to their houses. Andreus raced down another street as the hooves of his mount and that of his sister clattered on the cobblestones.
The shouts and screams and shrieks from beyond the walls grew louder. The crash of metal rang loud in his ears. Something crashed against the gates and the ground beneath him seemed to shake as he and his sister turned their mounts down the road that led to the light connection he had to repair.
Andreus yanked on his reins and slid from the horse when it came to a stop. His sister was right beside him—guarding his back as she had always done. They reached the walls, and Carys lifted a torch as he scaled several rungs of the ladder. The sight of the two mangled cuts that had removed a section of the line kicked him in the gut. He had hoped whoever had disabled the lights, knowing that the city would need the lines for safety after this night passed, would have taken more care.
“It won’t be perfect, and it might not last long, but I will find a way to give us some light.”
The gongs continued to crash.
Screams and sounds of swords striking swords clashed in the air.
“What do you need?” Carys asked.
“Twine or strips of fabric. Something I can use to attach whatever conductors I come up with together.” If he stripped the tar off the line wire and used the silver on his belt . . .
Carys reached down and grabbed her hem. Her stiletto flashed in the torchlight. Seconds later, she handed him several long strips of black fabric.
The Xhelozi screams mixed with human ones. His sister looked toward the wall. She shifted her weight and looked back at him. He knew Carys wanted to see what was happening—but she wouldn’t leave him alone. After everything he had done, and everything they had learned, she was still acting as his shield.
Eden Conquered Page 24
