Tuk’s eyes widened, though not as wide as Mia’s. Dom was the assassin? None of this made sense.
Tuk gave voice to the word bubbling up inside her: “Traitor.”
Domeniq rubbed the back of his head, his coarse black hair cropped close. It was a tic she knew well: whenever he was uncomfortable, he rubbed his head and flashed that crooked smile. But he wasn’t smiling now.
Dom bent and drew the serrated silver dagger from Lyman’s throat, the sound of bisected bone and cartilage slurping off the metal. He stepped forward. The stone at his neck burned a deep midnight blue.
“I’m sorry, Tuk,” he said.
Tuk brought his broadsword down hard, his aim straight and true. But Dom was quicker. He parried the blow, catching the side of the blade in one of the twisted ripples of his dagger, twisting his wrist and knocking the sword off course. Mia had never seen Dom move like this. She knew he was a gifted swordsman, but he’d been holding back in their training sessions: now he was all flash and lightning, powerful and stunningly precise.
One step and a feint was all it took: Dom fit his blade cleanly into the space between his opponent’s ribs, impaling the heart in its bony cage.
Tuk sputtered, skewered like a pig on a spit. The cliff of his body crumbled and fell, his giant mound of a chest heaving with effort, his large brown eyes blinking back tears. His face twisted in shock. He had been betrayed.
Dom stooped beside the large man and put a steady hand on his shoulder. It was hard to see from her hiding spot, but Mia was almost certain his smooth brown face was creased with grief. He bowed his head.
“I’m sorry, brother. You didn’t deserve this.”
The moment Tuk’s heart stopped, a shivering emptiness swept through Mia, like a gust of cold down a dark corridor.
She was tired. So tired. Fatigue bled from her pores. Should she try to heal them? All the animosity she’d felt toward Tuk and Lyman had evaporated the moment they fell. They didn’t deserve to die. Not at the hand of their friend and brother in the Hunt.
But somehow she knew they were beyond saving. Their hearts were silent. The men were gone.
The horror of what she’d witnessed shuddered through her, turning her limbs to jelly. She was losing her grip on the tree.
She felt Quin’s hands firm around her waist. He held her to the bough, encircling her torso with his arms, holding her steady. His face was crushed into the back of her head, his nose buried in her hair, and she could feel his breath all the way down to her follicles. His slender hip bones pressed into her back, piercing the thin smocks that lay ruffled between them.
Wulf and Beo plowed into the clearing in a cacophony of yips and howls. Domeniq snapped his fingers and whistled. She felt Quin’s body stiffen. If Dom hurt those dogs . . .
But he didn’t hurt them. He placed a hand on each of their golden heads, scratching them behind the ears. They wagged their tails.
“Wulf! Beo!”
A magnificent white mare galloped into the glade, with Princess Karri astride.
“The dogs had the scent,” she shouted.
Dom stood. “They must have lost it, Your Grace.”
Karri looked fierce in the moonlight. Her short white hair stuck out in a dozen directions, and the gown she’d grudgingly worn for the wedding was filthy and torn. At her hip, instead of a bouquet of posies, she now wore a longsword. Mia thought it suited her much better than the posies.
Karri nodded toward the two dead men. “What’s this?”
“My brothers in the Hunt.” Dom nodded at the dagger protruding from Tuk’s mountain of a chest. “Wound’s still fresh. Their attackers can’t have gone far.”
Mia was reeling. Dom had just killed them in cold blood, and now he was framing someone else?
Karri dismounted her horse and crouched to inspect the dagger.
“Gwyrach?”
Dom shook his head. “Magicians have no need for blades.”
“They do if they’re attacking from a distance.” She pressed a boot into Tuk’s shoulder and tugged the blade out of the wet wound. “It’s not Glasddiran.” She tested the weight, tossing the knife from one hand to another, catching it neatly by the green hilt. “Steel is light. Winged on the tip.”
“Pembuka,” Dom said. “Look at the stone in the grip, Your Grace. It’s aventurine. Nothing from around here. My money’s on the glass tribes in the far west—they like their weapons with a thin blade. There must have been at least three men, maybe more, to take down two Hunters.”
He stretched his arms overhead, showcasing the ropy sinews of his back. Dom had rippling muscles and a physique straight out of the novels Angelyne loved. Mia felt a pang. Angie.
“We find who killed these two,” Dom said, “and we find your brother.”
“And Mia, too?”
Mia was surprised, and more than a little pleased, that Karri cared about her safety. Dom cocked his head.
“Her too. Whoever killed these Hunters took both the prince and his winsome bride.”
His winsome bride. If she ever got out of this alive, she made a mental note to slug Dom in his nether regions. Unless he killed her first.
Princess Karri furrowed her brow, weighing her options.
“Were there any Pembuka guests at the wedding?”
“There aren’t many Pembuka left in Glas Ddir, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps not. But there are some.” She shook her head. “Yet another reason my father’s bigotry will be the death of him. He thinks he has stemmed the flow of foreigners, but they are still here, and they hate us now more than ever.”
She looked evenly at Dom. “If I were to rule this kingdom, all would be welcome. I would fling open every gate and crumble every wall.”
Her words sent a thrill through Mia, reminding her why Princess Karri had all the makings of a great queen. Reopening the borders would unlock a world Mia had never known. A conversation with her mother came flooding back, one she had lost in the aftermath of her death. Wynna rarely spoke of her past, but there was one night, toward the end, when her cheeks had grown rosy from blackthorn wine, and Mia was able to nudge her into loose-lipped nostalgia.
“The world of the river kingdom is all you’ve ever known, Mia—a world of terror and restraint. The fire kingdom was different. I went to Fojo Kara??o to study medicine, but I learned so much more. Imagine a place where Pembuka, Luumi, Fojuen, and Glasddiran all live peacefully side by side. Imagine languages and cultures and histories blending together—not without tension, but with a spirit of curiosity and exchange. And magic. In Fojo, magic was not so different from love.”
Mia arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“I know you don’t believe me,” her mother said, her words softened by the wine. “But magic was a way of bringing pleasure to the people you touched. You could love anyone you wanted, no judgment, no fear. Men could love men.” A smile danced on her lips. “Women could love women.”
Her laugh was a nip of spirits, the kind that burned the throat. “It might have been that way here, if Bronwynis were still alive.”
“If Fojo was so perfect,” Mia asked, “then why did you leave?”
Sadness flickered in her mother’s eyes. “Mark my words, my raven girl: love can be a beautiful thing. But the people you love are the ones who hurt you most.”
Now Mia saw the conversation in a different light. Perhaps her mother had loved a woman—a Gwyrach—who had once used magic to bring pleasure instead of pain.
If her mother had loved a Gwyrach in the fire kingdom . . . a former lover who bore a decades-long grudge . . . had this same Gwyrach slunk into the river kingdom three years ago, fueled by bloodlust and revenge?
The blade of an epiphany twisted in Mia’s gut.
The people you love are the ones who hurt you most.
In the clearing, Princess Karri hoisted herself back onto her horse.