She lowered the material from her face and whispered, “Why now?”
Cass’s expression betrayed nothing, which meant there must be something hidden beneath. If there’d been no talk of the kingsmen’s plans, he could have said.
The why now echoed in her thoughts because it had not just been the kings who’d decided to move. Miri had left as well. She meant to save Thom and Nan from danger, of course, but they’d been in danger before. They’d had close calls and near misses many times over the years. This time had been different. Miri knew why, in a place locked deep within her heart. She’d only been avoiding it and denying the truth.
It was the festival of moons. It was her sister’s name day. She would be turning the age that an heir could take command of her own guard, and she could be free to choose a husband, should she wish, to begin her duties of a second-in-command. It was Lettie.
Miri’s fingers curled into a ball against her chest. She felt the pain as if she’d been stabbed, as if summoning the name had drawn a dagger from thin air and plunged it through her heart, or as if a sorcerer had stolen her blood.
Miri tucked her chin and rolled to her back, unable to breathe. Lettie would be celebrating her twentieth name day in a dungeon or a cell—or however they held her. Miri could not be brought to imagine the things her sister’s captors had done. She could not know because the kings who had exploited every weakness in the queen’s defenses had taken great pains to avoid information getting out about how the queen’s heir was held. As king, Nicholas had gone as far as to lock his servants in the keep to prevent a single secret from escaping. And at the festival of moons, Leticia Alexander, tall and thin, stunning in her beauty even as a child, would turn from princess to active member of her royal line, and the kings who had slaughtered their mother would be forced to kill her too—to remove her from succession and quell any last supporters who still held to the old ways.
“They’ll do it at the festival,” Miri whispered to the air above her bed. “They’ll drag her into the square dressed in Lion silks. They’ll draw her braid behind her shoulder and wrap her wrists in leather and chains.”
She felt the stillness of Cass and that he did not seem to even draw breath. She wished she’d never spoken, but she couldn’t seem to stop. The kings were only holding Lettie hostage to use as leverage against the sorcerers who were tied to queen’s blood. Once she rose into her full power as heir, Lettie would have to be removed from their game.
“They’ll kill the others first to make her watch as her people—our people—are tortured for their crimes. For being loyal to a true heir. For being loyal to the throne.” Miri swallowed against the lump in her throat, unable to keep the images at bay. She could imagine the unhealed lash marks, the torn fabric, and the open wounds, festering from too long being untreated and from the filth of a prison cell. She could hear their screams and the rage in her sister’s tone. Leticia was a Lion, regardless of her caramel hair and sharp features. But ferocity would not save her against the seven kings—not against sorcery and deceit. “They’ll wait for her and leave her until the festival’s dawn. As the sun rises on the square, when the revelers are slow with drink and no longer care, they’ll drive a spike into her neck. They will let her bleed out and let her life drain slowly onto the marble steps that honor the queens before.” Miri closed her eyes. “Did you know that? Did you realize that by that day’s dawn, Lettie will be queen?”
She would no longer be a princess or an heir.
Their mother had been murdered. Lettie was next.
Chapter 6
Miri’s words had finally ceased, and she’d fallen asleep with the sound of Cass’s sharp intake of breath echoing through her mind. Cass had known her family. He had been raised as a bloodsworn, highest of the queensguard, taken in as a boy, and situated nearer to her family than anyone else. Henry, head of that guard, would have felt like a father to Cass, and the Lion Queen was the most vital part of his life.
Duty, honor, and reverence—Cass would have been taught that his life was forfeit for that queen and for any of them. Her mother’s word was law. The queensguard motto swam in Miri’s memory: Ever faithful.
It was true, even now. The Lion Queen was dead, one daughter was in chains, and the other was in hiding, and the queensguard still stood by their oath. She would remember that and remember that Cass had lost too.
Miri and Cass had been trained in the art of cunning and war, but it had not prepared them for the torment of grief, trauma, and true loss. Lettie had been trained to be queen, her skills more specific to negotiation and strategy, but she had not had Nan to watch over her since their mother’s death. She did not have the guard. Lettie would have no one.
Miri opened her eyes to the narrow room at the Silverton inn. A faint orange glow was just beginning to tint the glass. She would not leave her sister to die at the hands of those kings or be strung out on the Stormskeep square. She might not have had the power to reach Lettie while she was trapped inside the secure walls of the castle keep with the sorcerers’ bindings in place for the past several years, but the moment they brought her out, Miri would set her sister free, even if it caused the death of them both and even if those deaths had to be by her own hand.
She turned to find Cass leaned against the wall on the floor beside her, his knee drawn up and knife in hand. He was spinning the blade between his fingers, mindlessly shifting the pattern in which it spun. His fingers stilled at Miri’s attention, and Cass slid the dagger into a sheath near his boot.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” she said, minding the level of her voice. If they’d heard the others below the night before, surely their own conversation would carry. “You can wake me anytime. I’m not a queen.”
His expression was flat, but a reply waited beneath.
“Say it,” she told him. “I’ll not have you biting your tongue to spare my feelings.”
He shook his head. Miri lifted to an elbow, giving him a level stare. Cass sighed.
“What are you playing at, Miri? You know we’ll never get past the guards. You know we can’t just waltz into the nearest castle and—” He made a vague gesture Miri supposed meant kill a king then shrugged a shoulder. “We should return to Smithsport. You should get on that ship and sail to somewhere safe.”
Any grace he’d earned by his pained breath the night before was forgotten. Miri leaned close. “My sister is captive to those murderous bastard kings. If you think, for one moment, I prize my safety over hers—” Her words cut off at his look, because Miri knew all too well the sacrifice Cass was willing to make. He’d only wanted to save her and make her see that the path she was taking would be the death of them all. “I release you from your duty,” she said.
Cass’s brow lowered dangerously.
“If you don’t want to help me, then go. It’s better to find out here and be done with it. I’m more than willing to do this alone.”
He shifted so near that his breath brushed her skin. His words were a quiet vow. “I do not answer to you, Princess. My duty is to the queen. Her word is my law.”
The way he’d said “princess” felt like a slap—or worse, like he’d been calling her Bean, like she was nothing and she had no control of what he would do.