“Hup!” Moldark called.
The wagon jerked, moving forward, the driver whipping the horses, whistling for them to go faster. The light shifted from dim to daylight. The wagon tilted, starting uphill. Rendicryss’s heartbreaking bellows carried out of the arena until the sound cut off abruptly. She must have been pulled into the keep. Tears poured down my face. I’d failed her. I’d failed Griffin.
The wagon continued the steep incline. I could only guess we were returning to the castle.
Griffin would never make it out alive from the balcony.
This was all the prince’s doing all along, with Raleigh’s help, but to what end?
The blanket covering my head, Moldark carried me over his shoulder through what smelled like the kitchens. He lunged upstairs, padded through long echoing hallways, bending right and left, wending a familiar way, heading to where this day had started.
My room.
Inside, he dropped me on the bed and left, closing and locking the door. I rolled back and forth until the blanket fell off my face. On my stomach, facedown, all I could do was wait, hoping, praying, Griffin would come through the hidden grate behind the bed.
But he never did.
I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, a man stood over me, shaking my shoulder. It took me several blinks to connect the face to the voice. Clean shaven, dressed in a formal black cloak, rather than his usual dirty tunic, Raleigh looked like a completely different person. He wasn’t alone. Six more soldiers I recognized as palace guards were there, standing near the door, in similar tidy cloaks. All beardless like Raleigh, their hair was uniformly cropped short. They stared at me, hands on the pommels of their swords, but didn’t come any farther into the room.
My gaze fell on the moon outside the window. Night had fallen. I took deep breaths, drinking it in, taking comfort that her power was there for me. As soon as my hands were free, I would wield it.
Raleigh gave a half-hearted grin, hauling me off the bed. He placed me on my feet, then removed the gag. “I would remove the irons, but your powers have grown to where I consider them too great a threat.”
My mouth was dry; my jaw ached. “Where is Griffin?”
“Griffin? Alive. In his rooms. Where else would he be? He has a big match tomorrow. He and Malcolm. The finals, you see, against your favorite draignoch, followed by a celebration of the prince’s wedding.” Raleigh smiled. “We will all be there, you included, so long as you do as you’re told.”
Griffin was alive, and tomorrow Rendicryss would be in the arena. I needed to be there as well, unshackled. How? What would I have to give up? “What do you want?”
“Right now? For you to follow me.”
The leg irons made it difficult to do more than shuffle, especially down steps. His men in front and behind, Raleigh walked beside me the whole time, a hand on my shoulder.
“Do you think I’m going to run?” I asked at one point.
His sardonic laugh was expected but irritating. “Your days of running are over. You cannot hide anymore, lass. What you can do is be smart. Take what rightfully belongs to you when it’s offered.”
“I don’t understand. Did you stage a coup?”
He laughed again. “No.”
As we passed the Great Hall, there was no music. No sounds of mingling guests or smells of scrumptuous platters of food.
“I suppose there was little to celebrate after what happened in the arena today.” I thought of Cornwall and Egrid, and how Malcolm, Esmera, and Sybil were planning two funerals. The three of them rallied around, took care of each other, like the prince told me once he wanted to do for me. Only their love and kind gestures came with no cost. I thought Xavier’s care came from his heart too, but in the end I wondered if I wasn’t simply like one of the bones in his hair, collected because one day I might serve a useful purpose.
Perhaps that was what it meant to have family. People who did things for you without expecting anything in return. Griffin popped into my mind unbidden. He never asked me for anything in return for his aid. Like Thoma had done for him when he was young. Friends. True friends, I supposed, could be like family. With time, would Griffin and I have that? I hoped so. But we would have to survive what came next.
Raleigh grew quiet, contemplative, nervous even, which only added to my anxiety. “There is much to celebrate,” he finally said.
We walked to the end of the hallway, climbed several flights of stairs, exiting where the short bridge led to the king’s tower. I shivered, not because of the cold night air, but at the gruesome scene before me.
In the middle of the bridge, King Umbert sat on his throne. Arms and legs bound to the chair. Mouth gagged. His nose bent and covered in dry, caked blood, like it had been hit many, many times. One eye was swollen shut, turning yellowish purple. He looked barely conscious.
Xavier was beside him in the same place he had stood for the past week, only his hands were tied to the back of the throne, and his mouth was gagged. His staff sat in two pieces at his feet. The sapphire missing.
All horrible, but it was what I saw on the other side of the bridge that caused my heart to skip several long beats.
Bradyn and Buffont. Bound, gagged, and on their knees. Twenty soldiers in their new black cloaks stood beyond them, filling in the rest of the bridge to the king’s tower.
I tried to walk to Bradyn, but Raleigh’s firm hand on my shoulder held me in my place.
The line of soldiers parted. The prince walked down the center, his eyes fixed on me. His cloak was also now black rather than red. A new crown on his head. Not a simple band of gold like his father’s, but ornate, with peaks and valleys, decorated with obsidian stones. He was carrying a smaller version in his hand, the obsidian replaced with sapphires.
The prince held the crown up as he came to stand before me. “Blue looks lovely on you.” He tried to put the crown on my head. I retreated, bumping into Raleigh. “Did you think I only wanted to bed you?” Jori grinned as he did after the first time Xavier and I performed in the Great Hall, when he’d won a bet with Griffin, taking his Phantombronze dagger. He was gloating over his father’s conquest, and mine. “I thought you would want them on their knees. Paying homage to the real Ambrosius, and my queen.”
I opened my mouth to speak. He patted my chin sharply, closing it. “I’m speaking. You are listening.” Jori placed his palms on my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. “What you did today in the arena. That was a thing of beauty. A single day of training with Griffin and you’re on your way to using your gift. He has turned you into a weapon, as I asked him to.”
“You never asked him that!”
Jori’s lips curled into a mocking grin. “His wooing. Breaking into the Oughtnoch—twice. His late-night visits through the secret passageway underneath your bed. Why do you think I put you in that room? Do you really think my best friend would turn on me for a girl he met seven days ago? Beautiful or not, he’s not that stupid.”
Griffin couldn’t have . . . wouldn’t have . . . seeds of doubt spread like hot iron, leaving a wake of blistering anger.
“Oh, I can tell what you’re thinking. But don’t be so hard on him. He only did as I commanded.”
I spat, hitting Jori in the eye.
Raleigh grabbed my elbows behind my back, yanking hard, nearly taking my arms from their sockets. “She’s like a rabid dog, Your Grace. You really want to wed her?”