“I do.” Jori wiped it off, his smile still frozen in mocking perfection. “But there’s wedded bliss and then there’s marriage. We all have choices to make. That’s what pivotal moments are all about. My father taught me that.” He sighed. “Maggie, I don’t want to keep you in chains, but I will. I will cage you just as I have done your Rendicryss.”
I was stunned into silence by the use of her name. I’d never told him that. Only Griffin knew her name. He’d lied to me. He’d told Jori everything. He’d used me. This castle was a tomb filled with twisted souls grasping for power. With hallways and secret passages, a maze to use for lies and deceit, and I’d fallen for it all.
I needed my dragon. I needed to leave. I stopped struggling, feigning surrender, hoping Raleigh would let go of my arms, but he didn’t. If anything, he held on tighter.
Jori padded to the other side of the king, finding a wooden handle. He shifted it and a large square section of the bridge in front of his father dropped. “Do you know what this is, Maggie?”
Jori untied Xavier. He led him by the rope binding his hands until he stood beside the hole. A fall of more than a hundred feet stretched before him, ending on hard ground. A fall he wouldn’t survive.
“It’s called a murder hole.”
“Murder? You intend to kill all these people?”
“That all depends on you, my lady.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You’re right. You’re not a lady.” He laughed at my unease. “But you will be a queen.” His penetrating stare searched for reaction, but I gave him none. “First things first. This will be a new start for you and for me. A beginning together, so we must rid ourselves of traitors in our midst and start our journey together with truth. Xavier’s betrayal began the day we met. After your performance, healing that squirrel, I came to see you that night, but first, I spoke with Xavier. I told him what I suspected happened and made a bargain with him. Keep his mouth shut. Bring you safely into the city, and he would be well rewarded.”
I suppose I should have been shocked. Xavier knew everything from the first, and led me like a lamb to the slaughter. But I wasn’t surprised. A thought that registered on Jori’s face.
He half smiled. “He fed and clothed you. Kept you alive in the Hinterlands before the curse was lifted, when you were nothing but a helpless child. He could have so easily sold you. So you trusted him.”
I took a step back, bumping into Raleigh again. “How do you know about the curse?”
Jori laughed at me in response, pulling Xavier against him. “Fresh start, Maggie. Is he worthy of standing beside you? I think not.”
Jori wrenched Xavier forward, then drew him back before he could fall. Xavier’s eyes were impossibly wide. His body shook, his face wet with a river of tears. He tried to speak with the gag but only mumbled. If I had to guess, it sounded like an apology.
I hated him for what he had done, but I didn’t want him dead. “Don’t! Please.” I kicked Raleigh in the shin with my heel. He sucked in a sharp breath but held fast to my arms.
“I do this for you.”
Xavier coughed and gagged around the fabric that refused him his last words. Wind swept the bridge. His bones clacked, this time serving a purpose, foretelling his end. Xavier plummeted through the hole. Even after his screams stopped, I could still hear them. A sound that would haunt my dreams, turning them to nightmares forever more.
Jori stepped back, giving me a resigned pitiful stare.
“You’re no better than your father,” I whispered.
Jori’s expression turned to one of disbelief. “A man obsessed with something he could never have. A cruel master. And yet you fight, for him? I offer you a crown. I offer you a place beside me, to rule over these lands, and conquer more.”
“Tell Raleigh to remove the shackles from my wrist and I’ll show you what you’ll get if you place me beside you on the throne.”
Jori stamped his foot.
Raleigh yanked my arms, forcing me to my knees.
“You’re a coward,” I growled.
“And you’re stupid. But I can live with that in a wife, especially one as lovely and as powerful as you.”
“So long as I’m chained like my Rendicryss.”
Jori padded behind me and took my cuffs from Raleigh. He forced me up and shoved me forward, beside the murder hole.
“Look at him.”
I refused, training my eyes on Bradyn’s fidgeting knees. I didn’t want to see Xavier like that. It would be all I would remember if I did. Wind howled over the bridge again. I couldn’t stop shaking.
Jori removed his cloak, placing it on me. It was still warm from his body heat. His curling breath fell over my shoulder. “He’s nothing. You, you are everything. Don’t you see that?” He pulled me back, shifting to stand in front of me. He grasped my chin, tilting it up, forcing me to look at him. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” He tried to kiss me. I turned away, my stomach heaving. He pushed me into Raleigh, disgusted.
A beat later, his demeanor changed. His expression returning to arrogant prince. “Would you like to know how I know about your curse?” His big brown eyes twinkled with unspoken secrets. “I can tell you do. You’re quiet, and you’re never quiet.”
He stepped back and flicked two fingers at the soldiers standing closest to the tower entrance. It took three men to carry whatever was beneath the red cloth out the door.
They set it down with great care. Jori ripped the tarp off. My hair stood on end. I had seen that before. A true memory returned. Me, with my back bare, holding on to that stone while the banshee beat me with a switch. That came from her cave.
“The part my father left out of his story was that he went back to find the prophetic woman. It was long after the draignochs were defeated. After he’d been declared king and built the Walled City. He still hadn’t found the magic she spoke of and went seeking more guidance. He never found her, but did find a cave where another woman lived with her deformed son. My father tortured her, eventually killing her when she produced no useful information.”
Jori gestured at the four-foot-tall standing stone. “Except, he overlooked this.”
It was a pillar common to the people of my childhood. Carvings on it told of each cave dweller’s story. This one declared me a lost child of the forest and my dragon as the magic that got away. The script was carved into the edges, not in images but in our ancient language. The banshee and her son, Armel, had kept a record of me.
“He took this even though he didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was. Kept it in the corner of his chambers. I would sneak up, trying to decipher it, but could never figure out what it said.” Jori walked over to his father. He leaned over and whispered in his ear. “But it was the biggest clue of all.”
His father woke then, struggling against the ropes binding him to the chair, but he wasn’t going anywhere. The prince laid a firm, condescending hand on the back of King Umbert’s bulbous neck. “After it was translated, of course.”
“You can read it?” I asked in disbelief.
“No. But I found someone who could. The woman’s son. Deformed. Smashed nose. Hunched over. Eyes not on the same plane.”