“I have a message from my lady.”
And held a bloodied sheet in her lap. With a dull roaring in his ears, Maddek reached up for her, helped her shivering and exhausted to the ground. His hands cupped her face, saw her tearful eyes, and steeled himself.
He had delivered Bazir’s head to Yvenne in a bloodied jute sack. Whatever was in that sheet, he would not falter.
“Tell me,” he said hoarsely.
“She says she will never marry a man too weak to protect her,” she recited, voice breaking. “She said your seed took root but like any weed, she removed it.”
Seri pressed the bloody cloth into his hands and understanding ripped through him, tore his heart in two. So hard she had hoped for a child. Not only to claim her throne but because she’d wanted to be a mother—a mother full of love and wisdom, as Queen Vyssen had been to her.
“You are certain?” he asked from a raw throat. “This is hers?”
Tears spilling over, Seri nodded. “I held her hand as she lay on the sheet and screamed.”
She had screamed? Maddek’s heart bled. Only for the greatest suffering would she ever make a sound. “And then she gave this message to you?”
“She did.” Her chin lifted. “But before we reached the outpost, she said that she would lie to save my life. Her father released me so I might deliver this message. And because she told him that you would not come for her, or risk warriors’ lives for her. That you would kill her if any warriors were lost in her rescue.”
Deeper pain slashed through his heart. Those had not been lies, but truth. Those things he had said to her.
Did she know that they were no longer truth? Did she know that he would come for her? Or had those words he’d said long ago destroyed her hope?
So alone she must feel now.
Throat choked by pain and shame and grief, he laid his forehead to Seri’s. “You looked after her well, warrior. I see your fatigue. But will you ride with us? You can share a saddle with Toric and take your rest.”
“I will, Ran Maddek. But I need not share his saddle. I can sleep on my horse.”
A fine warrior already. As they all were. He looked to his Dragon, then to Enox. “You are ready to ride?”
“We are,” she said.
“You are commander of that army now,” he said, though she had no liking of that alliance title. But he was Ran. No longer commander. “So it will be you who gives the order—”
“Ran Maddek,” she broke in. “You misunderstand. It is not only the warriors in the alliance army who are prepared to ride. We are all prepared to ride.”
The sweep of her arm indicated the gathering, warriors as far as could be seen. Not just the army. All of Parsathe, all the members of the seven tribes, willing to ride with him.
Heart thundering, he stepped forward and roared, “Riders of the Burning Plains! Fly with me, and together we will raze the walls that stand between Parsathe and a daughter of the Dragon tribe, chosen by Vela to unite the western realms against the Destroyer, the woman who will be our queen!”
Thousands of voices shook the vault of the sky in agreement. Maddek turned and looked to his Dragon, who appeared as fiercely eager to ride.
He gathered his claws, his shield, his sword. “Let us go claim my bride.”
CHAPTER 44
YVENNE
If her father would but come out farther into the courtyard, she would kill him.
Four days, Yvenne had been back in her tower chamber. Each day she sat on the windowsill, bow and arrow across her lap, waiting for Zhalen to come within range.
She knew not how her mother had silently waited years and years before ripping out his throat. Such patience, Yvenne would never have.
But she had learned well from her mother. After the outpost, Zhalen had thought her weak and broken, with only strength enough to hold on as their horses raced south day after day.
Though he had not been wrong. Not to begin. And Yvenne wondered now whether her mother’s long plan had begun the same way, truly shattered in body and heart and mind. If those first days Queen Vyssen had lain in bed, unmoving and silent, had not been pretense. And if it had been in those shattered and broken moments that she’d decided to continue in that way, and wait for her opportunity.
For that was what Yvenne had done. Truly broken she’d been. Truly weak, barely able to cling to her horse.
Yet it was not the first time she’d had to. Her journey with Maddek had begun in the same way. And that journey had left her stronger than she’d known. Within days, her only pretense was not sitting up straight in her saddle, instead riding as if she’d never had horses or Maddek as her mount. The pretense was hobbling about as if saddlesore, slow and aching. The pretense was always being tired, when in truth she listened and waited.
She’d not found the opportunity she’d wanted on that ride, but she was not sorry. Because when they’d arrived in Syssia, she’d ridden through the gates of her city, and she’d finally seen her people—and they had seen her. No more could her father hide her, though he claimed now that she’d been savaged by the barbarian king and was recovering in her tower. There the Rugusian guard had carried her again, and again she’d pretended to be weak and unable to climb steps.
That weakness and pretense might be why her father didn’t bother to check the tower chamber for weapons.
Because it had not only been her mother and Yvenne who had waited for opportunity. Her people had, too. Word of a queen had reached Syssia before she’d returned, brought in whispers by the soldier Jeppen, and then spreading more loudly after her father and his Rugusian guard had abandoned the city and charged north. And although the guards outside her door now might search the maids as they entered, while Yvenne had been gone, no one stood watch there. So the maids had brought in anything they’d pleased, then hidden it out of easy sight.
And as her father no longer concealed her existence, the tower windows had been unshuttered. So now Yvenne waited. Whether he came through her chamber door or merely walked through the bailey below, she would put an arrow through him.
The sound of the lock lifting on the opposite side of the door had her concealing her bow beneath the cushion of a sofa. Precious few arrows she had, but they were much easier to hide. She lay listlessly in bed when the Rugusian soldier allowed her maids through.
“Your braids have come loose, my lady.” Pym tsked softly. “Let us fix them.”
Without energy, Yvenne moved to her chair and Pym settled in behind her. Brightly the maid spoke of all the clever preparations her father was making to defend them against any attack from those brute Parsatheans from the north. So safe the maid claimed to feel, knowing that the great king who’d once smote the Smiling Giant would the one who defended the city now—and she was so happy to be living in the citadel, where most of the defenses were being built.