The ground buckles beneath me. What happened? Did Perrote find her, did he tell her that she wasn’t a princess, that there’s no throne to inherit? And did she tell him that Brindaigel was compromised, that I was still out there and willing to fight? Killing each other would be useless then, but if they worked together . . .
“Corbin,” Perrote says, and the lack of title echoes through the assembled men. “The bastard prince in his charming robes of office.” An eyebrow arches as he looks down his nose at North in his bloody shirt and tattered coat. Both his hands hang like useless claws at his side. “Ruling Avinea doesn’t suit you any more than it did your father.”
Captain Chadwick stands taller, affronted, a hand falling to the pommel of his sword.
“Perrote,” North says, shoulders back, spine straight. Tension rolls off him but his voice remains smooth. “I do hope Avinea has treated you well during your brief visit with us. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to greet you myself when you arrived. I would have given you a . . . very warm welcome.”
“The welcome we received was quite sufficient,” Perrote says, sniffing. “I didn’t have high expectations.”
The silence sparks with growing friction, as charged as the clouds above us.
“Can I presume that Tobek is still alive?” North asks at length, looking to Bryn.
She snorts. “Alive,” she agrees, “last I checked, but he did lose a lot of blood on the ride into New Prevast.” Her smile turns cold. “Bumpy roads and clumsy horses.”
“Well.” His voice is tight, controlled, but his nostrils flare and black pulses of poison flit across the back of his hand, fed by his anger. “I look forward to hearing all about Brindaigel and how its resources might best serve its true king. As it is, you find me in a rather inopportune moment—”
“And its queen,” says Bryn.
North’s muscles tighten even further. “What?”
“My father informs me that I’m further removed from the throne than I originally thought,” says Bryn, chin angled high. “And therein lies my problem, your majesty.” Her eyes cut toward me. “I was raised to be a queen and anything less is a waste of my time.”
A bloody, savage hate fills me with an overwhelming need to hurt her, any way I can, no matter the cost to me. Likewise, the black pulses turn into bold lines as North fights against his own rising fury. “If you think—” he starts.
“You stand on the brink of war,” Bryn says, her dark eyes glittering, “and I offer you the weapon you need to win. And I also offer a little advice, your majesty.” Snapping back her skirt, Bryn withdraws a small dagger from her boot. She presses it to her wrist and smiles that cold, cruel smile. “Never tell your enemy what your weaknesses are.”
North’s voice is all warning. “Don’t.”
I barely flinch, too numb to feel pain. Someone holds me steady, Captain Chadwick, I think. “She’s bleeding,” he calls as Bryn completes the line down my arm, from my elbow to my wrist.
Settling back in her saddle, Bryn shares a sly, pleased look with her father. “So,” she says, tapping the bloody dagger against her darkly painted lips. “Let the negotiations begin.”
Twenty-Five
ON NORTH’S ORDERS, I RIDE to New Prevast with Captain Chadwick, who clears his throat every few minutes and apologizes every time the horse jolts my body into his.
It’s a long ride.
North keeps ahead of us, Darjin curled behind him in the saddle, in line with Bryn and her father. They don’t speak to him or to each other. Whatever truce they might have called has not forgiven their perceived sins.
“Usually his majesty only brings home jars of rocks,” Captain Chadwick jokes at one point.
I humor him and force a smile. He clears his throat and doesn’t speak again.
New Prevast is a city cradled by the sea, built from the same granite that forms the Kettich Mountains at its back. Most of the city is arranged around a half-moon harbor, but the palace sits apart, on a spit of land that curves out to sea before angling back at the mouth of the bay. The spit is mostly flat green moss and black sand, but a wave of earth rises along its northeastern side in a natural wall, protecting the palace from the harsh winds and wild waters of the open sea beyond. In contrast, the harbor waters are calm, more placid, filled with a meager handful of fishing boats lashed to a quay and the columns of a covered bridge that connects the palace grounds to the city itself. Everything sparkles in the rising dawn, and I catch North watching my reaction. He quickly looks away when my eyes meet his.
While there are more people here than in Revnik, the city still feels empty, almost haunted, as we ride to Saint Ergoet’s, into a courtyard tiled in checkered white and gray stone and surrounded by a two-storied, columned promenade. A bell tower rises at one corner, and vines drip from the moss-covered roof, heavy with blossoms that fill the air with a softly spiced smell. Men in dark robes pause to kiss their fingertips and hold their palms toward North as a younger boy in lighter gray hurries to take his horse.
Dismounting, North faces the rest of us. “You’ll forgive the humble accommodations,” he says, eyes on Perrote. “We rarely entertain foreign dignitaries.”
“Why don’t you live in the palace?” asks Bryn with a look of dismay at the unadorned courtyard.
“The palace is meant for the King of Avinea,” North says, patting his horse’s flank before allowing the stable boy to lead her away. “As yet, I’m merely the regent.”
She snorts, derisive, exchanging dark looks with her father. “The sainted North,” she says. “We’ll make a sinner of you yet.”
“The palace costs money to keep,” North says flatly. “It is not all virtue, Miss Dossel.”
Captain Chadwick helps me down, gentle but steady. Despite his age—only a few years older than North—he commands quiet authority, directing half his men to their barracks and the other half to posts throughout the monastery. Then, with his hand on his sword, he rocks his weight back on his heels to await North’s order.
North looks toward me and through me. At some unspoken gesture, Chadwick clears his throat and offers me his arm. “If you please, Miss Locke,” he says. “A warm bath and a hot meal are waiting for you upstairs.”
I hesitate; no one else is being dismissed.
But North doesn’t contradict the offer, and wounded, I accept Chadwick’s arm.
He guides me through an arched, open hallway leading to a dining room on one side, a sunken kitchen on the other, before taking a flight of rickety stairs leading to the open promenade on the second floor, past doors marked with slotted windows and numbers hanging on the wall. One of the doors is propped open, a single cot inside, a bloodied face framed against a graying pillow.
Tobek.
His face is swollen with bruises, his throat paler than the sheets pulled to his chest. He sleeps under the watch of two guards—one of North’s and one of Perrote’s. A girl holds Tobek’s hand as she perches on the edge of a hard-backed chair by the bed. Long gold hair falls down her back in softly brushed waves. Iron chains are locked around her feet.
My heart stops. “Cadence?”
She looks up at my voice, but Chadwick ushers me past, toward another set of stairs, before I can see her face.