“A flock of doves arrived from Embria,” Rune went on. “A mob from Silver Sun is on its way to Solcast as we speak. They want answers.”
They wanted blood. That was how mobs worked.
But he hadn’t said he knew of her involvement yet, so Hanne reached for a look of innocence. “Who would help finish the device? Another Ivaslander, I’m sure, but I don’t see why you’re telling me—”
“The reports accuse you.”
Hanne gasped and stepped backward, hands flying to her chest. “Rune. Husband. That is a lie. Even if I’d wanted to help our enemies—the kingdom we allied against—when would I have done such a thing? I’ve been with you since the moment you stepped into Embria.”
“Except when you were in the malsite.”
“Yes.” She allowed a note of panic into her words. “And then I was trapped. In a malsite. I nearly died. You know this.”
“I do.” He looked at her, a worry line forming between his eyebrows. “But I cannot ignore this information.”
“They lied, Rune. They lied to you, whoever told you that I had anything to do with the mal-device. I have never seen one. I don’t know anything about them. I would not aid our enemies, and I would not harm Embria.”
The prince frowned, not in anger but in disappointment, and slowly, he stood and walked to the far side of the room, gazing out the window.
Burn it. He didn’t believe her.
He saw her only as a deceiver, which—to be honest—she was, but he wasn’t supposed to know that. Not until it was too late. And if he didn’t trust her, then she was no longer in control of their relationship.
Hanne hated whoever had told him. Burn that miserable informant. And burn the malicists and Abagail and everyone else in Ivasland. Burn that whole burning kingdom.
She would punish whoever had done this to her, revealing her secret before she was ready. They would all pay. But first, she had to restore her relationship with her husband, if that was even possible. If he trusted this informant more than he trusted her, what could she do? How could she regain his trust?
Unless.
Unless she confessed the rest of it. The why. The circumstances.
But telling him all that would be revealing her weaknesses, her fears, and everything she had been so careful to hide. She had few options, though, and Rune—predictable Caberwilline that he was—would respond to this. He would want to protect her.
She closed her eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Rune looked over his shoulder.
She allowed the fear to tremble through her words. “I knew I would die in the malsite. If not from thirst and hunger, then from old age. Time moved differently there, and I had no hope of getting out. None. But then, it came to me.”
The prince didn’t speak, but he was listening to every word. Evaluating. Deciding whether to believe her ever again.
She had to keep going, had to tell the truth.
“The rancor.” She pulled her arms around her, shivering with the memory. “It told me to go to Ivasland and finish their device. It told me how. And it told me that if I didn’t follow its orders, it would destroy me.” That vision of the Dark Shard rose up in her mind, yawning through her like a nightmare that would never fade.
“So you did it.” Rune’s words sounded hollow. Faraway.
“I did it.” She sounded hollow, too, like her voice suddenly wasn’t her own. “I went to Ivasland and gave their malicists the last piece of their puzzle, and then I escaped, because I knew Abagail and Baldric intended to have me killed.”
“You should have come here first,” Rune said. “Before going to Ivasland.”
She stared at him.
“We could have figured out what to do together. I’d summoned the Nightrender already; she could have helped you, too.”
Hanne very much doubted that.
“I wanted to come here,” she said. “I knew you would help me.” That was a lie. She’d only wanted to return to Nadine. But Rune would like it.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I tried. I meant to follow the Brink Way all the way here, but then I saw it. Smelled it.” She shuddered. “The rancor.”
A faint shiver worked through him, too.
“I knew that it would come after me if I didn’t obey its directions immediately. I knew it would kill me.” Worse than that, even, but she couldn’t bear to reveal quite so much to Rune, no matter how much sympathy it would win her. “But it’s over. There’s no point in debating what I should have done when I can’t go back to change it. I did the only thing I believed would save my life so that I could live long enough to come here, marry you, and crush Ivasland. Then, perhaps, the war would end for good. I did it for the chance of peace.”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by water splashing in the fountain and the moaning of wind outside. Rune wasn’t much of a mystery—not usually—as he tended to do what was best for his country, but this time, she wasn’t certain how he would respond. She’d made herself need him, in his eyes, but they had always been enemies. Even now, they were on opposite sides; he just didn’t know it.
Something was different about Rune, though. He was weighed down with grief and anger and a thousand other things. He was king now.
But after a moment, Rune strode toward her, his expression fierce and determined. “Tell me what happened to you in Ivasland. Tell me what they did to you.”
She did. She told him about the meeting with Abagail and Baldric, the way they’d hidden the mal-device even from their own people, and the way she had feared for her life every moment. “If they’d known my identity,” Hanne said tremulously, “I’d be dead. They would have killed me right away.”
Rune nodded, still brooding.
“But I managed to steal the plans to the device,” Hanne added. “It won’t prevent them from building more malice machines, but perhaps the plans will be useful. Perhaps knowing how the machines are built and operated can help us mitigate another attack. I would have shared the plans with you earlier, but…I was so afraid.”
“Perhaps they will be of use.” Still, he wore that expression of exhaustion and disappointment. But no longer anger. She was getting through to him.
“Abagail and Baldric would have killed me,” Hanne reminded him. “They nearly did, but I escaped just in time.”
“And then they came to destroy our alliance.”
“Yes,” Hanne murmured. “They tried to stop our wedding by sending their mal-device to Small Mountain. They mean to starve us over winter. And destroy centers of production, like Silver Sun.”