A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  He vowed it.

  Jaw clenched, he turned to the closed door—which opened before he took a step. Out came Yvenne, wine goblet in hand and a satisfied smile curving her full mouth, Cadus’s robed figure at her side. “I will prepare a letter to my sister regarding your hope for a new balance between members of the alliance after you have married the commander and secured your throne. I believe your proposal will be much happily received.”

  “It is a proposal happily extended.” She caught sight of Maddek, and her brows arched. Perhaps in query why he appeared ready to rip apart a palace with his bare hands.

  “Commander.” The prince approached him, reassurance warming his voice. “You have served the alliance well, and I was very sorry to hear what befell your parents. I thought then the circumstances were strange but trusted the council had resolved all questions. This new account of what occurred is quite troubling.”

  Troubling? Maddek gritted his teeth.

  His father murdered and accused of assaulting a woman, troubling. His mother imprisoned and raped and beheaded, troubling. Their two Dragons executed and silenced, troubling. His heart ripped from his chest and thousands of Parsatheans grieving their queen and king, troubling.

  Such words were as offensive as sly tongue. Not lies, but truth pale and thin, as if starved of conviction. It was the speech of men who believed that truth had many sides, so they carefully walked in the center, without committing to anything.

  “Given such widely different accounts of events, and that your bride believes there will be an attempt to silence the truth, I offer you and your warriors my protection until this matter is resolved by the alliance council.”

  It would be resolved by Maddek’s sword. Still he nodded with gritted teeth, accepting that protection. Even if it only lasted until they left by cover of quiet night and boarded a ship north.

  Yvenne came to Maddek’s side, her hand curling possessively around his biceps. “I wonder if we might be given quarters separate from the rest of the household and guests?” From beneath her lashes, she cast a shy glance up at Cadus. “For it is my moon night, and Ran Maddek’s attentions have so far been quite . . . vigorous. But if we have privacy, he will disturb no one with his bellows and grunts.”

  “Of course,” the prince smoothly replied over the Parsatheans’ choked laughter. “We will celebrate the blessed event as we sup together with your brother and Minister Gareth. My attendants will escort you there now, so you may bathe and make ready for their arrival.”

  Yvenne bowed her head. “I am in your debt, Prince Cadus.”

  In his debt? Only barely did Maddek stop his growl. His bride owed no one.

  “The honor of helping you is mine,” the prince said. And that was truth, at least.

  But Maddek hated that she needed help from anyone but him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Maddek’s jaw didn’t unclench until they reached their quarters. There attendants and maids flitted about, preparing Yvenne’s bath while Maddek and his warriors took measure of the security of the chambers.

  Cadus had honored the request for privacy and separation. Their quarters were not within the palace at all, but were a separate residence called the Queen’s Nest. Standing amid terraced gardens overlooking the sea, the structure appeared to Maddek not like a bird’s nest, but more like a snail’s shell—or the spiral seashells he’d seen in numerous decorations since entering Drahm. Though rounded, their quarters were not built around a central chamber, but in a swirling layout that raised the floor a level with each turn—and the only route to the main bedchamber was through a circling path of parlors and chambers. And although the bedchamber opened to a wide balcony, it was more defensible than he’d anticipated. From the residence, only one door led into the chambers. From outside, soldiers would have to scale steep walls to reach the balcony at the apex of the nest.

  It was not secure. But it was as secure as could be had here. As he joined the warriors and his bride on the balcony, Maddek saw his satisfaction mirrored in the other warriors’ faces. Yvenne stood at the balustrade, her gaze turned toward the sea. Perhaps watching the ships sailing, for she’d never seen any before this day.

  Soon she would be aboard one. “After the soldiers arrive and are settled in the garrison, I will send Danoh and Toric to the docks.”

  “The soldiers won’t arrive,” Yvenne said, tilting her face up to the sun, her eyes closed. “Such a large number are forbidden to enter the city without the prince’s approval, and Cadus will not give it. Only my brother and Gareth of Toleh will be allowed through with a small personal guard.”

  Now his surprise and relief was echoed in the other warrior’s expressions. “He will refuse the soldiers entry through the gate?”

  Yvenne nodded.

  “Still we will secure a ship,” Maddek said.

  She gave him a sideways glance. “You do not trust Cadus’s protection?”

  “I do not trust your brother.”

  “As I do not.” Turning, she leaned elbows back on the marble balustrade. “This night he will attack us in this nest and claim he saved me from a brutal rape at the hands of Maddek and his Parsathean guard.”

  The warriors froze, eyes all locked on her face.

  “That will not be his first choice. After arriving, he’ll make an appeal to the prince, asking Cadus to hand us over to the alliance council so they can conduct a new investigation. That would be simplest for him, as he could kill all of you on the return journey to Ephorn. But Cadus has given a vow of protection and he will not rescind it.” She looked to Maddek. “So this is what Bazir will attempt, instead. As it is my moon night, my brother will think you too distracted between my thighs to prepare a proper defense against the Rugusian guard. Then Bazir will tell the council he killed you while defending himself and his sister in a royal house.”

  Sharp pain knifed through Maddek’s chest. “That is what Zhalen claimed that my father did. Made him into a rapist and an oathbreaker.”

  And suffered no consequences for it. Not yet.

  She nodded. “Bazir will claim that you were taking your vengeance against me, since you were forbidden from touching my father or my brothers. It will be easy for him to persuade the council of that view.”

  All too easy. Because that view had once been truth, though Maddek wouldn’t have raped her. Only thrown her skinned corpse over the Syssian wall.

  Ardyl frowned. “The prince knows you intend to marry.”

  “You think Cadus will not be murdered, too, and his death laid at the feet of a vengeful Maddek and his Dragon?” Yvenne asked her. “Bazir will leave no one to tell a different story.”

  “But we will be prepared for his attack,” Kelir said.

  “We will. And Maddek would be justified in killing him, too—though there will be fewer questions if it is my arrow that pierces Bazir’s eye. For if I kill him, Maddek will not be in defiance of the council’s order not to touch Zhalen’s sons. They need not know you helped me draw the bowstring.”

  Sheer bloodthirst sharpened the smile she turned on him then. Cunning. Vicious.

  A queen.

  “Leave us,” he told the warriors bluntly.

  So hot and hard he was, Maddek barely trusted himself to touch her. Instead he crowded closer, gripping the balustrade at either side of her cocked elbows. Boldly she held his gaze, head tipping back, never retreating even though the rigid press of his body captured her within the cage of his arms.

  “So this is what I made use of this day.” Raw need roughened his voice. “A scheming and manipulative queen.”

  She grinned up at him. “So I am.”

  More than a queen. “And a warrior, finding a defensible position and planning your attack. You brought us here not for the prince’s protection. You brought us here to give us an opportunity to destroy Bazir—but destroy him
by using the very rules that he would abuse.”

  An aroused flush rose beneath her skin as she nodded. “In this palace, he has but three routes to victory. One is by persuading Cadus to turn us over to the alliance council, but Cadus has already offered his protection to us. The second is by overwhelming Cadus’s defenses with the force of two hundred soldiers, but it would be near impossible to justify his actions to the council. So only treachery within the house remained.”

  A harsh laugh shook through him. “My father used to say that wars were not won and lost on battlefields, but in throne rooms. I never truly understood what he meant until this day. You have taught me a king’s lesson without even trying.”

  “Have I?” Her brow creased in a small frown. “I would not have taught you that wars are won in throne rooms. I would say that battles are won in throne rooms, just as they are on battlefields—but they are fought with tongues instead of swords.”

  War or battle, it was a lesson well learned. And her tongue was so sharp and clever and quick. His gaze fell to her mouth. So desperately he longed for a taste. But never would she tell him if she was hurt, so Maddek only knew by her breaths whether he wanted too hard and took too much.

  Hands circling her waist, he lifted her atop the balcony’s balustrade. Her fingers clenched on his arms for balance but he would never let her fall from that seat.

  Perched on the railing, she was as tall as Maddek, her eyes on level with his. Her linen-wrapped thighs clamped around his sides when he pushed between them. After the ache of denying himself her kiss, no time did he waste taking another taste, pushing aside the front of her robe and revealing her breast.

  He should kiss and tease. But with ravenous hunger, he sucked her taut nipple into his mouth. Always he wanted her too hard. Too much. But her gasp was pure pleasure, her soft moan and the arch of her back a plea for more.

  That he would give this night. Releasing the engorged bud, he growled against the soft swell of her breast, “And the bed?”

  Panting, eyes heavy-lidded, she looked down at him. No reply she made. Because his mouth had erased the thoughts from her head, he realized with smug satisfaction.

  He kissed the glistening ruby of her nipple before reminding her of what this lesson had been. “Is the bed also where battles are lost and won? They are fought with swords and tongues.”

  She came back to herself with amusement curving her lips. Her two-fingered hand cupped his bearded jaw, her thumb caressing the smiling corner of his mouth. “Perhaps it is. Particularly if a warrior views a woman as a fortress, with walls that must be battered down.”

  His chest tightened. Vela had truthfully revealed what was in his thoughts. Yet Yvenne seemed neither surprised nor angered. So well did she know him.

  But it was not only Maddek she knew so well. “How many suitors do you have?”

  “Suitors?”

  “You knew Cadus would stand firm. All depended on that. And you knew because your mother watched him. As she watched me.”

  Coolness slipped into her gaze. “She did.”

  “How many suitors did she prefer over me?”

  “I have no suitors, Maddek.” She sharply tugged at the point of his beard, as she did when she believed he didn’t listen to her. “My mother watched many people. Some she considered as partners for me. Some she did not. But none knew she observed them, and certainly none courted me as a suitor does.”

  “Why not choose the ones your mother favored? Why not Cadus, if his only fault is that he stands so firm?”

  In hot irritation she shoved at his chest. He moved not a bit.

  A fierce snarl curled his lips. “I stand firm, too. Whom did your mother prefer?”

  She set her jaw. With a flick of her hand, she closed her robe, covering her breast. Withdrawing from him.

  Maddek flicked it open again. “Who?”

  Her chest heaved on two sharp, angry breaths. “Why do you ask? Did you not trust the vow I made with Vela as witness?”

  “I do trust it.” Yet jealousy still burned in him, a poisonous blister. Jealousy he resented. Jealousy Yvenne did not deserve. Jealousy that Banek said the goddess deliberately prodded . . . so that he would overcome it. “Vela gave me a lesson to learn. I need to have the heart of a king.”

  A heart that burned true. Not because it was always afire with foolish jealousy.

  She sighed heavily. “That might only mean she wants you to tear my father’s heart out.”

  He would do that, too. “And what manner of heart do you want me to have?”

  For a long moment she gave no response, only regarded him steadily. “That is not the question a king would ask.”

  It wasn’t. As he well knew. It should not matter what manner of heart she wanted him to have, but what manner of man he wanted to be. “What heart will best serve my people?”

  Approval lit her gaze. “My mother’s first choice was Dagenoh of Toleh.”

  The captain who had brought Maddek news of his parents and had stepped into command upon the Lave—and who was also son of Gareth, the alliance council’s minister, and nephew to Toleh’s king.

  Truth forced him to respond, “Dagenoh would have been a good choice of a husband and king. A fine warrior he is, clever and fair—and he would have helped you free your people.”

  “He is too fair,” said Yvenne. “And like everyone who has studied under Toleh’s monks, he favors reason and diplomacy.”

  Maddek could find no fault with that. “Why not choose him, then?”

  “Because he would have tried appealing to my father with that same reason and diplomacy. And while he attempted to find a resolution that avoided bloodshed, my father or brothers would have stabbed him in the back.”

  That was likely truth, too. “And Cadus?”

  “He is a man whose heart longs for justice but whose head is bound to law. He has persuaded himself that if rules are followed, then it is the same as justice. So although he hates the route his sister has taken with Goge, he did not push against her, because he deferred to her position and her rule. Her word is law—but sometimes the only justice is burning rule and law to the ground.”

  Maddek agreed. Yet now nothing he’d learned made sense. “Why would your mother prefer them, then?”

  “Because they both suffer from the same flaw—they rely on diplomacy or law to provide resolutions. But she believed that I could prod them to action.”

  “I believe you could have, too,” said Maddek, and she smiled. “But you preferred a warrior, hot of blood.”

  “Hot of blood, yes. And hotter of head.” Her lip caught between her teeth before she added, “But I could have found a hot-blooded warrior anywhere. For a time, we watched the wandering king of Blackmoor—until he pissed in one of Vela’s offering bowls. You are not that hotheaded, even when she insults you.”

  Or not that foolish. “Why then?”

  Her brows arched.

  “Why choose me over other warriors?”

  “Many reasons,” she said, then nothing else for a breath, and he thought she might leave it at that vague response. Until she added, “But I decided during the campaign against Stranik’s Fang.”

  Almost ten years past? “Because you saw me fight?”

  “Because I saw when you didn’t fight. I saw you hold out your hand.”

  To the Farians. Instantly Maddek could see them again, as he’d seen them countless times in dreams and nightmares in the years since. The priests had enslaved the savages in dark caves and left them to die in cavernous pits. Maddek had been only a captain in the alliance army then, leading a small group of soldiers to make certain no more priests remained in the caves. Instead they’d found thousands of Farians, half starved and stinking, eating their dead to stay alive.

  The Farians were not human, though they shared similarities in shape and expression to the people
of the western realms, and the savages spoke their own language made of hoots and clicks. But they were only as similar as humans were to apes—and despite the rapes, never had been born a mix of Farian and human.

  He’d heard many different stories of their creation—that ancient human mothers drank silac venom while the children fed at their breasts, that a bat-winged ape had mated with an ice walker and their pale-skinned savagery was the result. Most stories claimed that they’d dwelled in cavernous tunnels within the Fallen Mountains until the god Hanan rocked the world with his fuckings, and then they’d poured forth from those broken caves. Maddek knew not what was true and he cared not. Because he could still see the crying Farian children, the desperation of mothers and fathers—and that they’d had no way to escape the pits.

  Until Maddek had reached down and helped them out. Dozens he’d pulled from that pit before his soldiers had found a rope to throw down. And there had been some too weak to climb, so he’d been the first to carry them out.

  “My mother described it all to me,” said Yvenne quietly now. “And how the Tolehi monk in your group had advised you to leave them to starve, because freeing them meant they would begin attacking the southern realms again.”

  Which had been truth. Yet he’d given his orders, anyway.

  “I have recognized the faces of Farians that I freed that day,” he told her now, his voice thick. “Children then. Grown later into savage enemies that I’ve killed.”

  “I know you have,” she said softly. “But do you regret your orders to free them?”

  He shook his head. “I cannot.”

  A small smile curved her mouth and she cupped his bearded jaw in both hands. “And I do not regret that being the reason I choose you. Had you given me cause to regret that decision in the years following, then perhaps I would have chosen Cadus or Dagenoh. But I have not.”

  “You did regret it,” he reminded her. “The morning after I pulled at your tongue.”

  “And no longer regretted again by evening.” Her eyes were alight with laughter. “Or perhaps I regretted until you put that stave into my hand. Take a lesson from that, Maddek. I am also hot of head—but you only need to give me a weapon and I will forgive you almost anything.”