None of the three kingdoms deserved peace, but Hanne would bring it to them anyway.
Abagail’s shoulders curled in, as though the weight of constant war decided to make itself known again. Of all the kingdoms, the war had affected Ivasland the most. They had few natural resources and the climate was not kind to them: crops struggled in the oppressive heat, rain mostly refused to fall, and when it did turn wet, towns were washed away by huge storms.
Ivasland needed peace. They were desperate for it. They would die without it.
“Are you certain you know how to finish the device?” Baldric asked. He managed to keep the despair out of his tone, but Hanne had seen the condition of his kingdom, even the state of his throne room: filthy, dusty, dry; an endless parade of petitioners; and beggars on every thoroughfare. He wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all her.
Briefly, Hanne closed her eyes and recalled the rancor’s voice, the terrible way it spoke, the threat of the Dark Shard if she didn’t succeed. Every word it had uttered was etched into her mind, carved with the hot knife of pain.
“I’m certain,” she whispered.
“Very well.” Abagail stood up. “Finish the device, and we will grant you asylum here in Ivasland. You’ll be entitled to a proper education, just like everyone else. But know this: if you fail, or we discover you’ve lied to us, you will be immediately executed.”
18.
RUNE
Just as Rune started to fall asleep, his mind conjured up pallid gray flesh and the reek of ozone and rot. Heat rushed through his bandaged hands. Jagged teeth closed around his throat, piercing soft skin. He was going to die. He was going to bleed out. He was going to become a decaying black mess on his own bed.
He jerked awake, gasping, his heart racing as he scanned the darkness of his room for the rancor.
But it wasn’t there, just like it hadn’t been the last seven times he’d startled away from sleep, not having rested at all.
Rune groaned, just to hear his own voice and prove to himself that he was alive. The rancor was dead. He’d seen the Nightrender kill it. But the beast lived on in his mind, and he couldn’t stop seeing the way it had looked at him before it died. He couldn’t forget the cacophony of its voice as it had said, Such a sad thing you are. But my king could make you great.
Bile rushed up his throat as he lurched out of bed and stomped around his room. It was a real noise. An intentional noise.
But even as he fumbled his way through shaking a light globe—difficult with the bandages around his hands—he couldn’t help but think of those blood-soaked words the rancor had uttered.
The vein of magma where he had nearly died.
The plants surging up to strangle him.
The guards’ bodies strewn across the ground.
Everything about the malsite had been too much. He’d spent the night after staring at the forest-dappled sky and trying to comprehend what had happened to him, how his world had become completely different from how it had been that morning.
One sleepless night hadn’t been enough to make sense of his new world. Apparently he needed at least two.
“Perhaps tomorrow night, I’ll simply pass out from exhaustion,” he muttered to the globe of light, still cupped in his hands. The burns throbbed. Earlier, the grand physician applied a pain-numbing salve to the burns and scrapes before wrapping his hands in bandages. It had given him a few hours of relief, but now it was starting to wear off.
Ah, the puppet prince.
Rune shuddered and—a moment later—realized he was checking under his bed, like a child afraid of an imaginary monster.
But this monster was real.
And dead, he reminded himself.
But what of the rancor king it had spoken of? He was still alive, still sending his army through the Rupture, still planning to send them into Salvation.
A loud bang sounded against Rune’s door, making him jump. The light globe nearly fell from his hands, but when the bang came again, he realized it was only someone knocking. He breathed out long and slow, hoping his heart would lower from his throat and back into his chest where it belonged.
As Rune started for the suite door, he remembered that it was after midnight. Only bad news came this late.
Perhaps it was an assassin—a polite assassin who knocked first.
The door opened before he could get to it, and—dashing his hopes for a polite assassin—his parents walked in. Both were still wearing the same clothes from earlier, which meant they’d been with the Crown Council since Rune had blabbed the Nightrender’s secrets—both the secrets he was keeping for her and the secrets he was keeping from her.
He’d done his best to avoid thinking about that, how he’d estranged the single best hope for Caberwill. She’d trusted him, and then he’d ruined it all in a fit of fury. The only other time he’d felt this bad about something…Well, he would always be paying that price, every time someone called him crown prince.
Guilt drove its claws deeper into Rune’s heart as he took in his parents’ tired expressions, the slowness with which they moved, and the weariness of their postures.
“Rune,” Opus said softly, and it occurred to Rune that they weren’t exactly angry—not like they had been earlier, or any of the other times Rune had disappointed them. No, they just looked wrung out, as though the meeting had cost them years, not hours.
None of this—the council running late, his parents too tired to yell—was a good sign.
He wished again for that assassin.
“What’s the news?” Rune sat at the table, motioning with his bandaged hands for them to sit as well.
They did not sit.
“The council meeting was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed”—Opus rubbed his temples—”quite heated.”
“No one came to actual blows,” Grace said. “But I think I would have preferred that to the verbal sniping.”
Burn everything. Rune was so tired. He wished he’d asked the grand physician for a sedative so he could have avoided this conversation until morning. “Well, skip to the end, I suppose.”
“The council has many grievances, all compelling. We went in circles for a long time. There are those on the council, first, who are unhappy that you failed to follow through on your apparent promise to the Nightrender. ‘He swore to join her in battle against the malice’ was the exact phrase. There is fear that this will fatally offend her.”
“They wanted me to help her against the Incursion?” Rune scowled. “That doesn’t sound like the council.”
“It was Charity.” Opus crossed his arms. “She, in particular, thought you should have immediately gone through the Soul Gate with the Nightrender.”