Hasstrel would look that way again soon.
People crawled over the ramparts, moved within windows, and circled the various paths through the forest. Their scarlet uniforms flashed like fires, but no one interfered with Safi’s approach on horseback. She was in charge for now. Shambling along at the end of this imperial procession was the Emperor. Former Emperor. She was glad she hadn’t killed him. The Hell-Bards could decide his fate.
After crossing a wide bridge over a dark-watered moat, Safi’s mare reached a wide yard where soldiers and stable hands scurried about. No one argued when she bellowed for a healer. Instead, Hell-Bards rushed to help her. Freed Hell-Bards, who could do as they pleased, who wanted to aid her and wanted to follow a woman who had once been one of their own.
After ensuring Caden would be properly tended and after ordering a search for Leopold, Zander, and Lev, still somewhere out there, Safi followed a guard to a corner tower where stairs descended into the frozen earth. Each step into candlelit darkness tingled against her skin. So mild at first, she thought she imagined it. Then hotter, itchier, until it burned in her eyes and scratched in her throat.
This was the acid of the Solfatarra. Poison on the skin, poison in the lungs. Safi coughed. Her magic frizzed inside her, and the Truth-lens frizzed against her chest too, as if this whole place was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Slivers of panic set in as she walked. No one should have to come here, no prisoner should have to endure. She passed several doors with haggard eyes behind rusted slots. Most of these people, she suspected, were innocents she could free. Anyone else would be moved and healed.
When at last her guard reached a door so narrow, so dark that she saw nothing through the slot, she snatched a weak lantern off the wall and ventured in. Orange light filtered over a long, rectangular space, like two coffins lined toe to head—and over a mound of rags at the back of the room.
The mound coughed, a vicious, solid sound from a throat that had coughed so long, it now had nothing but blood and phlegm to give. She slung the lantern onto a hook and darted forward.
“Uncle.” She grabbed hold of the rags. Here was a hand. Here was an arm. Here was a head, covered in matted hair. If not for the sulfur, his unwashed stench would be unbearable. “Uncle.” She dug her arms beneath his frail shoulders and tugged him upright.
He groaned, but did not resist. Could not resist, actually, and now fresh coughs laid claim to his broken lungs. Something warm hit Safi’s cheek. Spit, she hoped. Blood, she feared.
Eron’s face was hidden behind a beard; his eyes were crusted and fathomless. His clothes shimmered ever so slightly, as if they had once been clean velvet—finery worn at court before Henrick had turned on him.
“Laia,” he croaked.
Safi’s muscles locked. Paused in midlift at her mother’s name. Not once—not once—in Safi’s life had she heard her uncle say his sister’s name.
“Laia,” he repeated, and his fingers clawed into Safi’s forearms. “Why are you here?”
“I’m not…” Safi braced him into a seated position on damp stone. “It’s me, Safi. Your niece.”
He coughed, and more heat splattered Safi’s skin. Then he squinted and leaned in. Three inches he moved before he seemed to see. “No,” he exhaled. “You cannot be here.” With shocking strength, he tore free from Safi’s grip and scuttled backward against the wall. “Go away.” His voice was a splintered snarl. “Go away.”
“I’m here to free you.” Safi reached for him again.
He swatted her. Cold, callused hands in the dark. “You cannot help me.”
At first, Safi thought he meant it was too late for him. That he had lived here too long, so only death waited ahead. But then he added, “You ruin everything you touch, Safi. Leave this place. Go.”
She inhaled slowly, sulfur harsh in her nose and Eron’s words harsh in her ears. A familiar knife slid into a familiar hole above her heart, but for once, it did not hurt her. For once, the knife sliced in … then sliced right through. Because all these years, she’d misread him. All these years, her magic had fed her lies.
Only with her powers removed had she finally seen the truth.
“No,” she said quietly. Then stronger, harder: “No. You don’t mean that, Uncle, and you never have. It was all an act. I see that now. A stupid act designed to make me hate you—and I do hate you. You succeeded in that.
“But I also know you did it and are still doing it to protect me. All those years, you were the distracting right hand to an emperor who wanted me dead. And all those years, it worked. He never looked my way while you assembled your plan—a vast plan that might have started out pure, but has grown so terrible and wrong along the way.
“Which is why I’ve done it my way, Uncle. Do you hear me?” Safi pushed to her feet and grabbed him. Rough, intractable, she gripped him as if he were a child and heaved him to his feet. “I completed your plan with no bloodshed and no pain. The Hell-Bards are free—you are free—and Henrick is deposed. But if you think I’ll rule as an Empress, then you’re going to be disappointed.”
Eron didn’t resist her pull—not that he could have. His muscles had atrophied in the month here, and the instant he was on his feet, coughing overtook him. It was blood spraying from his mouth. Splattering to the stones as he tried to curve away from her.
Safi was stronger, though, and she hauled him toward the exit. Toward the light. When at last his coughing had subsided, they were almost to the stairs. Clean air brushed down, cold and crisp and alive. “Can you manage these steps or will I have to carry you the entire way?”
Eron growled, a sound Safi had once loathed but now found thoroughly delightful. He would heal in time.
“What do you mean,” he rasped, squinting against the natural light. “What do you mean you will not rule?”
She laughed, a harsh sound but not a bitter one. “Just because I was born with the proper bloodline doesn’t mean I deserve a throne, Uncle. Besides, you once told me I wasn’t cut out for leadership, and since Leopold has worked with you this long, I have no doubt he would be amenable to finishing your plan—”
“Leopold?” Eron coughed. “He…” Another cough. “Was not part of our plan.” Again, the brutal hacking overtook his lungs, his ribs, his throat. But this time, Safi did not lean in to help him. Instead, she simply held her uncle upright and stared with unseeing eyes at dark weathered steps that led into daylight.
She had been played then. True, true, true. And quite neatly too. True, true, true. Leopold had not been a part of Eron’s plan; he’d had nothing to do with peace in the Witchlands or Mathew or Habim.
“Oh,” she said on an acid exhale, and something angry settled across the tops of her bones. She was quite certain now that the Hell-Bards would find no sign of the prince in the Solfatarra.
Wherever he was, he would be very safe. And very alone. But had she completed his plan or ruined it? Likely she would never know, so she dismissed it from her mind.
Then, one step at a time into a rising day, Safi helped her uncle ascend. Toward life with wide eyes. All clear, all clear.
FIFTY-FOUR
The Rook King came for Aeduan, as Aeduan knew he would, materializing from snow-shod trees, his gray clothes blending into shadow. Likely, he had been there some time, watching Aeduan. Perhaps throughout the fight with Evrane, perhaps while Aeduan had stood sentry and sheltered her body against the cursed storm.