So Armand had played by his father’s rules, kept his head down, little by little, bought Joshua more freedom so he could spend time with his mother, so that he could see for himself that the House of Denderlain wasn’t the snake-pit everyone in Ackwood believed it to be. So Joshua would one day proudly carry both names and step on that throne and rule, not as lord of Ackwood or Lord of Eedwood but as king of Sives.
Now that vision—everything he had fought for by keeping Joshua a secret, by putting up with his father’s moods, his hunger for power—that vision his mother and he had fought for, what he had promised to her, didn’t matter. If Joshua was the type of man who locked Gandrett in a cell for three days, only to go down and finish her off himself… Raw emotion threatened to burst from him. Devastation.
Joshua had been so peaceful, so noble all those times they had talked. All those afternoons spent together when Armand had snuck away to meet with his cousin. The picture of a united Sives, the Sives his mother had dreamed about, they had painted together, building for the day that they were ready to set the crown upon his head. For Sives to be ready.
“I didn’t deserve it.” Her words were like a blow to the head, and he studied her for a long moment, feeling less the lord everyone expected him to be and more the man he wanted to be.
“If you asked me again, I’d help you,” he murmured as he watched the swelling on her nose reduce under the touch of Dragon Water. Probably the only gift the last Dragon King had left behind in Eedwood. Deelah had left a flacon of it for him so he could get her back in shape. So no one noticed just how badly she had been treated in this palace. His chest hurt as he took in her face. Her beautiful face, brutalized by the Hope of Sives. “I don’t care if you have magic, Gandrett.” He glanced at the bowl. “Magic is all around us. Even if we can’t see it.”
He felt her breath against the inside of his wrist as he reached to clean the other side of her nose.
“You’re not going to report me?” Her eyes were wide like those of a chased animal, but her voice was steady.
Never. “What would I do if they tossed you over the Ulfrayian border? Who would make me laugh? Who would entertain me?”
For some reason, his response didn’t put her at ease the way he’d hoped. So he took a steadying breath—the sort he never usually took with women, and said, “You may have your secrets, Gandrett, and I have mine.” He allowed his free hand to brush a strand of hair from her forehead. “But before you, I never met a woman I even wanted to share them with.”
He listened to his own words as he spoke them. Pathetic. Desperate. And yet—the truth.
Gandrett pulled out of his touch. Answer enough that what resonated in his words wasn’t an option for her. At least, not now that she had just escaped death. He bit back the bitter aftertaste of rejection and dipped the cloth back into the water to dab the magic liquid on her lips for one last time.
“Deelah will be back with food soon,” he changed the subject, hoping to give her the feeling of not being pressured.
Gandrett remained silent. Deep in thought, it seemed a struggle that he couldn’t even begin to understand unfolding on her features.
The bruises were already a light shade of purple when she finally spoke again, “If Joshua becomes king of Sives—” Horror won the upper hand.
“The last time I saw him fight anyone was when they brought him to Eedwood,” Armand admitted with shame. The memory of his cousin in chains. That first time he had spoken to him, explained to him why he was there, that there was Denderlain blood running through his veins. And then the curiosity. That first meeting with aunt Linniue—
“I don’t know what got into him.”
“He was about to kill me, Armand.” Gandrett held his gaze as she spoke, her moss-green eyes weary. “He said it. He was unstoppable. So strong—too strong. I have never fought anyone that strong—” She bit her lip and flinched as she realized there should have been a bruise where her teeth dug into her lower lip. “What did you do to me?”
She touched her face with cautious fingers, probing along the parts that had been injured an hour ago, and surprise spread under her hands.
“As I said,” he found himself capable of a smile, “you have your secrets. I have mine.”
But she was smarter than that, her eyes darting to the bowl in his lap. “The water,” she said and realized that she wasn’t the only one using magic here—even if his type of magic came from a hidden well at the bottom of the north tower that only a few people knew about, including him, his late mother, and aunt Linniue. He knew that Addie, the servant girl was the one to fetch it from the well every day, and Linniue had been using it since the day she had fallen ill.
“It has healing properties.” That was all he was going to tell her about it, he promised himself. He had already told her too much. But for all that was worth, she was different from everyone else he had met. There was a quiet form of beauty in her that he had never seen before, someone whose heart and soul was blessed by the gods and untouched by the corruption of the Sivesian courts.
For a moment, she looked like she was going to ask questions, but then she yawned as if the relief of pain had paved the way for sleep, and when he murmured that it was okay if she rested, that he would be right here when she woke up, exhaustion had already taken over her body, and he set aside the bowl and slid his arms around her shoulders and knees. He lifted her with ease and carried her over to her bed where he tucked her in. It was when he pulled the covers over her that the front of her robe slid aside and revealed two pendants resting on her chest: a small silver one showing the grains of Sives, and one that held shards of emerald. The twin to the necklace Joshua Brenheran was wearing around his neck.
Chapter Forty
Magic. Addie was still trying to wrap her head around it. Gandrett had used magic on Joshua.
The last mages had disappeared when the Fae had gone dormant in the forests of Ulfray, and whatever mages were left were either the Vala-blessed, who all of Neredyn adored like the goddess herself, or those unlucky few who were born with it and who were exiled into Fae territory. A meal for the wicked.
Joshua had told her word for word how Gandrett had followed him almost three days ago, how he had punched the wall to prevent himself from snapping her neck. How he had fought the urge to kill her until he no longer had been capable of lying to his compelled self. Looking at him was like looking at a man with two souls in his chest.
And Gandrett—
Addie had known something was off with Gandrett after the girl had fallen through the wall. Had she used magic back then?
“Fire,” Joshua continued, “is a type of magic that is most definitely not the magic of a Vala-blessed, so we can rule that out.”
She had spent the past minutes trying to figure out how it was even possible. “You have been compelled to remain in the castle for years, and you are wondering how it’s possible someone has magic?” Addie’s words came easily as she spoke to the Brenheran heir, for who she saw wasn’t nobility but a prisoner with a soul broken as much as her own. And equal. “How do you think it works?”
She thought about the last time she had seen him when he had been in control of his senses and actions. “What is different now—” She held his inquisitive emerald gaze. “What’s different from an hour ago when you wanted to kill Gandrett?”