Exile (15 page)

No, it wouldn’t be. Not with Uncle Henry there, and the Vantauge family legacy.

“But something changed?” Robert asked.

“The king started to ask about your training.”

He stopped scraping to look at her. “Mine?”

Her face muscles were tight. “The thought of you in that web of deceit made up your father’s mind. And we left.”

No wonder his father had been so angry when Robert had decided to return to the palace.

His mother wrenched the skillet from her son’s hands and began scraping it herself. “Your father is afraid the princess will drag you back into that same web, Robert. She is her father’s child. She was raised to expect things, and while she may be embarking on this expedition with the best of intentions, there’s more than enough evidence of danger.”

“And you think I should leave her to face it alone?”

“She’s a
princess,
Robert.”

How many times was he going to have this conversation? “Aurelia needs my help.”

“She could find someone else, and I know it’s not easy to accept, but eventually, she will.” Mrs. Vantauge wiped the skillet with a rag, then dropped the pan on the table.

Robert stared at the black iron circle. Could Aurelia make other friends? He didn’t doubt it. Could she find another guide? Perhaps. Could she one day develop a relationship with another man that was stronger than the one she had with him?
Yes.
But curse it if he was going to step back and let it happen!

“If you really believe in this cause, Robert, your father and I can understand. If you need to travel and go on this expedition for your country, then go. We won’t stop you. But don’t do it for this girl. Don’t convince yourself she needs you more than any other person she could hire off the trail. Your father just wants what’s best for you. He doesn’t want to receive a letter someday saying that you’ve been executed in the street.”

The image was vibrant. Red. Like the blood pooling beneath Chris’s chest. But Robert saw another vision as well—that of the murderous flames devouring the princess’s tent.

Her life meant more to him than his own.

The cabin door swung open, shattering the harsh vision, and in its place entered Aurelia. Laughing. And smelling like the barn. Her eyes were glowing, her hair loose. In her hand, she carried a metal pail. Hefting the container, she showed Robert the inches of foaming white milk. “I think I squirted as much on my smock as I did in the pail,” she said.

Then Mr. Vantauge emerged behind her. Gone were the stiff, hard eyes and the rigid bearing. His warm chuckle rippled through the cabin, and he clapped his hand on Aurelia’s shoulder. “Well, that’s a start. You should have seen my shirt the first time I tried it.” He grinned up at his wife and son. “I’m telling you both, she’ll make a frontier girl before the week is out.”

Chapter Fourteen

HARVEST

IT WAS THE MOST GLORIOUS WEEK OF AURELIA’S life. After that first morning, she was treated not as a title but as herself, a young woman who wished to learn all she could about the golden, ruthless landscape around her.

And she was taught to gather wheat. Six days she spent in the fields, beside Mary Vantauge, pitching and tossing the golden stalks severed by the scythes. Talking, laughing, asking questions. And feeling truly useful. Though no one appeared to trust her with a blade.

Ironically, the knife Robert had thrown her in the Asyan remained tucked in the waistband of her skirt, the hard sheath pressing into her stomach every time Aurelia bent to lower the pitchfork. But she refused to remove the weapon, finding comfort in its discomfort.

Like the bittersweet pain of her time with Robert’s parents. With Mr. Vantauge, who never mocked her questions but taught her how to gather eggs and feed the chickens, to hitch the workhorses to the wagon and drive it through the fields, and to heave the wheat in a giant net up to the barn loft.

And with Mrs. Vantauge—Mary, she had asked Aurelia to call her after that first disastrous breakfast—who thought to explain the tiny everyday things without being asked, suggested rest before Aurelia ever had to beg for it, and dispensed kindness throughout the long hard hours of work. It was Mary, Aurelia learned, who was the source of her son’s deepest strengths: his warmth, his patience, and his compassion.

How Robert could bear to leave this place, Aurelia could not fathom. His parents were all she had ever wished for in her own. And still more. They spoke to Robert as if his viewpoint mattered. His time, his effort, his work. And even though he had told her he preferred the horse-training aspects to the farming, it was clear he had played an integral part in the building and running of the entire homestead.

She should not have been surprised.

It had been evident to her, for some time, that Robert was no longer a boy, but a man.

A fact that did not preclude him from capturing her at the well the morning after the cutting was finished. His right arm circled her waist. “Close your eyes.”

“Robert, what—”

“Trust me,” he said, lowering his voice.

Did solemn vows include being captured before breakfast? But the feel of his touch, absent since her arrival here, was hard to refuse. She followed his wishes.

His hands urged her to the left, sliding around her as he circled in front, then took both her palms and guided her forward. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

Fall? What term would he use for the tumbling in her stomach? The long wild grasses snagged at her feet, and she tried to focus on her steps, but her mind caught on the calluses of his palms, the strength of his grip, and the knowledge that her skin had missed his. She tripped, losing her equilibrium. And felt his chest against her own, his hands on her shoulders.

“Are you all right?”

Mm-hmm.

Again he took her hands, pulling her forward.

“Robert—” She had no idea what she was going to say.

But a rustling in the grass told her they were no longer alone.

He circled behind her, his hands rising to her closed eyelids, and turned her slowly toward the sound. “Did you think I’d forget?” his breath whispered in her ear.

“Forget what?”

“Aurelia, you’re eighteen.” He laughed, his parents’ voices joining in from nearby.

Her birthday.
She was the one who had forgotten.

“I’d like to give you a gift,” he said, “but you have to promise not to refuse.”

“Why would I refuse?”

“Promise.”

Her mind scrambled, trying to heed the warning pulsing through her veins. But she fell victim to her curiosity. “Yes.” She opened her eyes.

His fingers slid from her face....

To reveal the cocked ears of the chestnut filly. The red and brown mane sprang up wildly behind those ears, and the matching tail arched above the glowing bronze back. The soft pale muzzle stretched eagerly in Aurelia’s direction, the filly’s reach held in check by Mr. Vantauge.

Falcon.
Bridled, saddled, and determined.

Aurelia felt her heart break. Robert
couldn’t
give her this beautiful, strong-willed horse. Her own mare had already paid the ultimate price.

The filly strained forward, no doubt anticipating one of the treats Aurelia always brought when she and Robert came out to visit the horses. She felt him slip something into her hand before subtly retreating.

Mr. Vantauge released the bridle.

And Falcon broke forward, her muzzle diving down and nibbling until Aurelia opened her fingers, exposing the oats just placed there. The filly stole the food. Then, instead of backing away, stepped close.

No,
Aurelia thought. But the questing nose was so insistent, sniffing her chin, her cheeks, her hair.
Don’t let yourself fall in love with her.
The black eyes were so wide. The red-brown neck so soft. She let her face fall against the filly’s shoulder and lost her heart.

Then she whirled, flung her arms around Robert’s neck, and kissed him.

Fast.

In fact, Aurelia had already mounted Falcon before she realized what she had done. And in front of his parents.

The tears in her eyes obscured the others’ reactions. Her hand rose, but she forced it down. “Thank you.”

Surely they would realize there was nothing intentioned in the kiss. Nothing ...

Except for the way she felt about him.

She buried her face in the horse’s mane, and within moments, she and Falcon were flying over the grasses of the frontier.

He wanted to go after her. But both his parents were standing there. Watching. He could feel their eyes drilling into him, and he knew they were thinking he would misinterpret the kiss, let himself believe it meant more than gratitude.

The contact had been so swift. So brief. How could he imagine it meant anything?

But she had never kissed him before.

Once, months ago, he had kissed her. Frightening her. And she had run away.

Now she had run again, but this time he had not caused her fear. Something else had. Like her own feelings.

If the kiss had meant nothing, would she have fled?

He was a fool.

His father’s hand clapped down on his shoulder, a light in the older man’s eyes.

Robert knew the breeze chasing Aurelia had caused that light. With a wind, the threshing could commence. And he would have to resign himself to a long day of beating grain with a flail. Beside her. Within inches of her. And without a moment alone with her.

Sure enough, as Robert had anticipated, she insisted on helping with the threshing. And after her delayed birthday breakfast, he, his father, and Aurelia all scaled the barn ladder to confront the massive pile of wheat under the eaves. Golden stalks, long spiky heads, and, somewhere in the midst of those pointed beards, the precious kernels of grain.

Mr. Vantauge began pitching the wheat.

And Aurelia, hefting a pitchfork, moved to help rake the long golden stalks into a smaller pile at the room’s center.

Robert shoved open the large sliding door on one end of the loft, crossed the room, and tugged open the other door so that not only the light but the breeze could fly through the entire space. Then he turned to watch her, trying to take in how the same young woman who had appeared before him several months ago, draped in violet silk and a diamond tiara, could now be here, hundreds of miles north, in battered boots and borrowed clothes, her hair bound in his mother’s blue scarf, and her hands wielding a pitchfork as though she had been born to it.

His father was saying something, but Robert blocked out the words. He knew the job.

Lifting the flail, he brought the tapered end swinging down onto the wheat, beating the grain from the husk, expelling his emotions. All he wanted was a minute alone with her. Though what he would say, he could not decide. His mind kept taunting him, about all the days—and nights—he had spent with her on his way here. Saying nothing. Or rather, saying everything except what he felt.

But something had changed. The moment he had relinquished his father’s sword, the guilt that had clung to Robert’s chest had retracted its fangs, and the pool of blood that had haunted his nightmares for months no longer held sway.

Instead, every night this week when he had closed his eyes, he saw
her.
A hundred images of her: stepping out from the trees in the Asyan to defend him; confronting her father, her stepfather, and the Lion; dancing in common clothes while somehow outshining everyone at the fort.

And now another image. The blue fabric around her head coming loose, slipping forward. She reached to push it back, but the entire scarf unraveled, falling in a blue ripple to the floor. Exposing her hair to the sunlight.

The flail in Robert’s grip stilled, useless. All he could do was stare.

“Can you manage that, son?” His father was saying something.

“What?”

Mr. Vantauge sighed. “Show her how to clean the grain while I go help your mother.”

His father was leaving! Giving Robert the chance he had craved all morning.

And then Mr. Vantauge was gone, not even waiting for his son’s response.

Aurelia waited, the blue scarf forgotten, her dark eyes on Robert.

He opened his mouth.

And still had no idea what to say. All this time, and the words refused to come. He could have flailed himself.

Instead he dropped the tool, bent down, filled his arms with the separated wheat, and tossed the pieces into the air. The grain plummeted, and the chaff floated east, drifting in the breeze, the lightest pieces swirling between him and Aurelia in a dancing veil.

She bent down, filling her own arms, then flung them upward, shutting her eyes. Gold shimmered over her, attaching to her brown skin, tiny specks glittering from her cheeks, her throat, her eyelids.

And it occurred to Robert that the feeling storming in his veins had nothing to do with speech. He stepped through the wheat, toward her.

Her eyes flew open—her arms still over her head—and she stumbled back as if giving him space.

He didn’t want space. Instead, his hands ended her flight, and he lowered his mouth to her lips. Not questioning. Telling. Telling her his feelings the only way he knew how.

He could sense her entire body shiver.

Her arms hovered over his, her hands trembling. And then her fingers threaded through his hair, pulling him closer, and her lips spoke back. Warm. Saying in no uncertain terms that they also had no desire for talk.

Chapter Fifteen

HUNTED

THAT NIGHT HE TASTED BLOOD, DRIPPING ON HIS face, one... drop ... at a time, from the rafters of the barn. Robert didn’t scream. The blood had drowned him before. Instead he rolled to a crouch, the floorboards creaking beneath him, the unthreshed wheat stabbing his back.

An eerie red light flooded the loft. Compelled, he looked up to confront the boy with the sword in his torso. His cousin, Chris. Absent his lackadaisical manner, the jesting irony. Blood oozed from the wound, spreading in a wide crimson stain upon the silk shirt.

Robert backed away. He had been here before. And won. But now he had no weapon.

The muscles in Chris’s arms strained, and inch by reluctant inch, the blade slid from the cavity beneath his rib cage. Metal tore free, and blood poured, drenching shirt, breeches, and stockings.

Then, with a trembling, halting movement, the blade pointed.

At the closed loft door.

Chris’s lips moved, forming one familiar, hideous word.
Fire!

And then the door peeled open, revealing the screams.

Robert ran, but not fast enough, the ladder battering his shins, the door fighting his weight, the grass clutching at his ankles. Red flames swarmed the cabin, scaling every log and crevice, sweeping out the front window, and covering the door in an upward inferno.

He plunged into the blaze. The smoke had no smell, but it assaulted his eyes, flaming cinders stinging his pupils. And he followed the screams.

To his mother, afire by the table. He reached for her arms, and her skin came off in his hands. His father, a bonfire of flames before Robert could even reach him. His parents’ screams died.

And Aurelia? Robert yelled for her. The flames attacked his voice, leaping over his limbs and face and down his throat.

He swallowed them. And they went out.

Blackness tumbled, leaving a hollow, barren pit. Cold. A wind blew through the gutted interior of the cabin. From the west window.

And close outside the window, a gray figure.
Her.
Motionless.

He said her name, then reached to touch her shoulder.

And it crumbled into charred ash.

Robert woke to his own screams. He had told himself the nightmares were gone, relinquished with the sword. A fallacy that had burned away and left a scar.

He choked, rolled from his pallet, and fled out of the loft into the predawn gray.

His father stood just outside the barn, breathing hard, a fallen milk pail twenty feet behind him. Abandoned. No question he had heard his son’s delusional screams.

Not able to face those brown eyes, Robert swerved away toward the empty paddock, a vacant ring of horizontal rails. He propped his elbows against the wood and buried his head in his hands, struggling to corral his cowardice.

“I know what it is to kill a man.” His father’s voice tore through Robert’s chest.

Chris’s body shuddering on the end of my sword.

The silence was long. And hideous. But his father refused to walk away.

Finally the words came from Robert’s own throat. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

“He tried to kill you.”

Yes, and there was no solace in that fact, only fodder for more nightmares.

“Chris was guilty, Robert.”

Guilty? He himself was guilty. Aurelia was guilty. The king. The queen. Melony. “It was not my place to dispense justice.”

He felt his father move up beside the rails.

“Justice is an illusion,” said Mr. Vantauge.

Illusion? Was that what the nightmare had been? Paranoia? But Robert knew the gutted cabin and crumbling ash had signified more than ancient memories. “I should never have come home.” His voice rasped as he dug his fingers into the thick waves of his hair. “I told myself I had to come to return the sword.”

“I gave you the sword, Robert.”

“I can’t ...” The fingers pulled his hair tight. “I can’t use it.”

“Are you sure?”

He thought about Aurelia’s assailant at Fort Jenkins. “I don’t want to use it, ever again.”

“Ah, that’s different.” There was no judgment.

But there should have been. Robert let the rough wood slice into his forehead. He had placed his mother, his father, and the young woman he loved in danger. “The assassins will know to search here. If they find her under your roof ...” He let the words trail off, certain his father was already well aware of the threat.

“Who are they working for, Robert?” The tone was all business. “Is Melony powerful enough to hire the palace guards?”

“I don’t know.” His hands fell.

“Is that because you can’t figure it out, or you’re afraid to ask the question?”

Both.
Robert pushed off the rails and whirled, ramming his back against the wood. “I think a man whose daughter has gone missing should come looking for her, and if he does not, there is something wrong.”

“Then you believe the king might have ordered the most recent attack?”

He linked his fingers behind his head and pulled his elbows tight. “Aurelia loves her father.” He had seen the way her eyes fell whenever the king was mentioned.

“But does
he
love her?”

An image sprang into Robert’s mind, one that had been buried under the harsh memory of his own exile: the king, as he had been that morning in the arena, gray and trembling at the possibility of his eldest daughter’s death. “Maybe.”

Again silence filled the air as the purple reflection of dawn climbed up the cabin in front of him. “But if the king doesn’t know about the recent assassination attempt”—Robert dropped his hands and rapped his knuckles against the wood, voicing the fear that had nagged at the fringes of his mind for months—“then his own men are obeying someone else.”

“Would they obey his youngest daughter?” Mr. Vantauge did not look at his son, instead continuing to stare through the empty paddock.

Could she have that kind of power? Enough not only to hire ten of her father’s own men, but to keep the rest from searching for her sister? Robert pictured the blond fifteen-year-old princess waltzing in her father’s arms. “It seems ludicrous.” Then he visualized his cousin’s death. “But Melony is very persuasive.”

“Never ignore the obvious or the unknown.”

Robert winced. He had committed both errors when he had returned to the palace. “I had no place pretending I was the royal spy,” he said. “You were right.”

His father finally turned toward him, one hand closing on his son’s shoulder. “No,” he said softly, “I wasn’t.”

The absolution was worse than any reprisal. Robert found himself shaking, his utter failure washing over him. “I almost killed her,” he said. Then the words, every flaw, every error he had made on his journey, spilled from his gut. “And after all that,” he finished, “look where she is now.”

The grip on his shoulder tightened, and his father’s other hand flattened against the side of his son’s face, forcing Robert’s eyes to meet his own. “I
am
looking, Robert. She is alive, and you have yourself to thank for that. You didn’t fail.”

“How can you say that?”

But the brown depths were in earnest. “Because you didn’t go back to become the royal spy.” Mr. Vantauge prompted, “Did you?”

“I went back for
her.
”

The grip on his face released. “And you don’t regret that?”

Self-recrimination blew out in the path of defiance. “No!”

The muscles above his father’s mouth crinkled, and the brown eyes began to dance. “I never regretted marrying your mother.”

Confusion churned through Robert’s body. Was his father mocking him? But the words had not condemned. They had, in fact, done the opposite.

“I suppose any woman,” his father continued, “who has the guts to travel this far, is worth a trip back to the palace.” Warm light flickered from those eyes as they rose up from Robert’s face.

His father—his
father—
approved of his choice.

And then the light went out. A horse snorted.

Still struggling to take in what he had just been told, Robert turned.

And met the flared nostrils of a compact brown mustang. With a man on its back.
I should not be seen.
Warning ripped through Robert’s chest. But the dark eyes in the sun-blackened face sparked with familiarity.

“Zhensen.” Mr. Vantauge’s voice betrayed no surprise.

“See ya’ve finished with the cuttin’.” The neighbor propped a hand on a muscular thigh.

“I have. And you?”

The man slapped his hat on his knee. “Threshin’s done. Grain’s sacked and taken to town. Must admit it’s a pleasure beatin’ ya at somethin’, Brian.”

Robert began to inch backward.

The dark eyes turned on him. “See yer son didn’t leave ya high and dry after all.”

“He’s done more than his share,” said Mr. Vantauge. “I suspect you had a crew of five men to accomplish what we’ve done with two.”

Zhensen didn’t take the bait. “Truth to tell, Brian”—his eyes remained on Robert—“I’ve heard your son has been up to a bit more than workin’ harvest. Rumor has it he’s been travelin’, and not alone.”

“My son has been right here for the past two months.” Mr. Vantauge lied without flicking an eyelash.

“Mm-hmm, and in Fort Jenkins, Fyonna Township, and Transcontina.”

Robert struggled not to cringe. The rumors were specific then. Not general anymore.

“They say Her Royal Highness is on a mission.” Zhensen picked a tooth with his thumbnail. “Course, ya’ know, folks out here ain’t too keen on anyone tellin’ ’em what to do; but they’re claimin’ she ain’t afraid of an argument. And just might make some decisions as aren’t centered clear over there in Tyralt City. Whad’ya think of that, Brian?”

Mr. Vantauge remained still. “I think that would not be a bad thing, Zhensen.”

“Na.” The man grinned.

He was not here to judge then? Robert opened his mouth.

Suddenly the neighbor’s hand rose, fingers splayed. “And if someone were to ask me about yer son”—the words came fast—“I’d have to say I haven’t spoken with him since nigh last winter. Same as I told the stranger askin’ round town.”

Robert’s heart beat cold within his chest.

“What did this stranger look like?” Mr. Vantauge’s voice was ice.

“Not from ‘round here, that’s certain. Long black coat in the heat a’ summer.”
A bounty hunter?
“Had a buncha men with him, lingerin’ on his tail,” Zhensen continued. “Hired guns, maybe. Didn’t dress like soldiers. Didn’t stand like ’em either, but they were watchin’. Saw everythin’. I’m ’fraid I was in too big a hurry to give ’em good directions.”

“Did the man say who he was?” Mr. Vantauge tightened his left hand around a paddock rail.

“Seemed anxious not to.”

A hunter.
Hired by the palace guard to track us across the frontier.
The logic made sense. For someone determined to kill her.

The wood rattled. “How far behind do you think they are, Zhensen?”

The neighbor smoothed his fingers on his hat. “Three, maybe four days, dependin’ on how fer they got afore they realized I mixed up east with west. I came pretty fast. Left a wagon behind with my brother. Course if they ran into somebody, they might’ve turned round quick. But I don’t reckon too many folks were headin’ down Crossin’ Canyon in the middle a’ harvest.” Zhensen grinned. “You?”

“No.” Mr. Vantauge’s reply was cool.

The grin sobered, and the hat returned to Zhensen’s head. “You be sure and tell your son to stay safe, Brian.”

The kindness of the words pierced Robert’s chest. And his parents? Were they also to stay safe? Tongues of nightmare still burned within his mind. His eyes shot to his father.

The formal royal spy appeared calm.

I have to trust him. He will keep mother protected. And as long as Aurelia and I are gone, he’ll see to it that there is no evidence we were ever here.

As had Zhensen. Robert held out his palm in a gesture of thanks, and the neighbor who had risked his own life for him took it, then urged the sturdy mustang around and cut a path cross-country. That was it then. Mr. Vantauge’s hand closed on his son’s shoulder.

Robert knew the assassins had traversed the Gate. And he and Aurelia were being hunted once again.