The five rebels were all found and executed. The three Caltothian servants that had come with their Lord Tyrus? They never made it out. Commander Audric’s men and the newly promoted Mage Mira ensured every single one of the traitors were put to death before the night had ended.
I doubted they had expected to live. In a room filled with so many of the Crown and King’s Regiments? With so many high-ranking mages and the world’s most powerful black robe? Their mission had only been to kill.
The Crown’s progress carried King Lucius’s corpse back to the capital in Devon. Duke Cassius took his niece’s body back to Pythus by ship with the rest of the court from his own country. The Borea Isles followed the same.
We left so hastily I only got the barest glimpse of my parents and Alex and Ella before I left. Derrick was already riding off with the rest of his regiment friends for the keep. I saw Ian and Jacob alongside him, and a part of me wished I were returning too. Derrick hadn’t forgiven me for what happened to our brother, and more than ever I wanted to make amends.
I spent the whole of our five days south quietly mourning Wrendolyn’s loss. Quietly, because the new king had lost a wife, and both he and his brother a father. All in one night. Despite everything they had experienced at the hand of Lucius’s reign, he was their father—and that in itself was its own kind of misery.
The speech Blayne gave at his father’s funeral was a call for war.
“Gone is the benevolence my father gave to our neighbor in the north. For too long I have watched our great country suffer in the guise of peace. No more. King Horrace sent his chief ambassador to slaughter my father in cold blood… He took the life of an innocent young beauty, my wife—” Blayne’s voice cracked and through the mage’s amplification casting he swallowed. “—Whose flower had barely begun to bloom—” The young king ran a fist across his eyes. “And several great house lords in the attack. Horrace has been paying off our men to weaken our kingdom and turn them against the Crown...”
Blayne climbed the towering steps of his father’s pyre; they led up to the sky. The red folds of his father’s cloak flapped heavily in the wind.
“Jerar will no longer be victim to Caltothian greed. We will fight back.”
The hoards of low and highborn alike shouted their consent, a roar that shattered the sky, as the new king of Jerar lowered his torch.
Flames erupted in a tempest of red. Against the bright summer sun it seared. Red like blood. Red like rage. Red like revenge.
“I PROMISE YOU THIS.” Blayne’s voice boomed down from above. “JERAR WILL NOT BE A VICTIM. PYTHUS AND THE BOREA ISLES WILL HONOR OUR NEW ALLIANCE, AND WE WILL GO TO WAR. IT IS TIME TO MAKE A STAND.”
The streets of Devon were a rumble of cries. The hammer of footfalls and bellows for change. I screamed right along with them. I screamed until my lungs grew hoarse. I screamed for Wren and for Eve and for Caine and every one of our own. All the lives the enemy had taken. All the senseless violence.
It was so much easier to choose anger over pain, and so I screamed.
I didn’t notice the boy with the garnet eyes walk away.
****
“But where did he go?”
Henry shrugged and I ground my teeth, frustrated. How could the prince’s own personal guard let him out of the city unaccompanied? So soon after the attack?
“Your one job is to guard him!”
The man folded his arms, undaunted. “All apologies, my lady, but when the Black Mage orders you not to follow, you don’t follow.”
“It doesn’t matter what he—”
Paige cut me off with a hand to my wrist. “He doesn’t know, Ryiah, let him be.”
“I know, I just…” I trailed off, my arms falling limp at my sides. “He shouldn’t be out there, Paige.” I wasn’t really worried about Caltothians or rebels. They had never bothered to come after Darren during the attack, even when he was weak. After his display during the Candidacy he would be the last one anyone wanted to face. Not unless they had an army at their backs. “I’m worried.”
Darren had been so busy playing his role as the new Black Mage to his brother he hadn’t let himself feel. He had shut out that storm of emotions and been the man the others expected. The way he had dealt with everything in his life.
But tonight. Tonight, he had cracked. Whatever he had been feeling after his father’s death, it had led him to leave. And now he was gone and he shouldn’t be alone.
Not like this.
I started to sprint toward the stables where the regiment had boarded up our horses for the ceremony.
“Ryiah!” Paige chased after me. “Not you too! You don’t even know where—”
I turned around sharply to stop her, panting. “No. You stay. Just this once, Paige. Let me do this on my own. Please.”
Her brown eyes narrowed to mine. She sighed loudly, muttering a curse when she saw my face. “Fine. Two hours. You have two hours to find him.”
“But—”
“A minute longer and I will send out a search party. Henry and I would have done it regardless. The two of you might be the best mages in the realm, but you aren’t invincible.”
I started forward. “Thank—”