Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (33 page)

The guardsman with the torch stepped toward the pyre, raising the flame high. A rippling cheer washed through the gathered crowd. Dante charged in front of him, blocking his path as he screamed, “Mari,
please
!”

“Your mistress requires one final service,” Nessa said. “I don’t want to burn, Mari.”

Mari nodded. She pulled Nessa into her arms.

Dante’s screams, the jeers and shouts of the crowd, the entire world faded to gray as they shared one last kiss. Their lips parted, and they gazed into each other’s eyes.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” Nessa whispered.

Mari held her tight.

And drove her dagger into Nessa’s back.

Nessa went rigid, a strangled gasp escaping her lips…then silence. She slumped in Mari’s arms.

Mari laid her down gently, as if putting her to sleep.

“My liege,” she whispered, her head bowed.

The crowd fell into a shocked silence. Mari rose. She glanced at the bloody dagger in her hand, then at the guardsmen surrounding the pyre.

“How lucky am I,” she murmured, “how blessed above all other women, to know the exact day and hour of my death. How few receive such a gift.”

Dante shook his head, taking a step back. “Mari, don’t. Whatever she said, she was lying to you. Don’t do this.”

“My name is Mari Renault,” she called out. “Knight of the Owl.”

The rapier sang from her scabbard, and she held it high.

“So greet me gladly, men of war! Do you seek glory in death? I’ve come to deliver it. Do you seek absolution for the murder of my love? I shall grant it in blood and in pain. Live or die, when this day is done your names will be sung, and you’ll be lauded as the heroes who slew an evil witch and her black-hearted knight. I am here to make you legends.”

She brought the rapier before her, the steel reflecting the fire in her eyes.

“Kill me and be quick about it,” she said, “for I’ve an appointment to keep.”

She leaped down from the platform with a guttural roar, blades flashing, and carved into the militia’s ranks. They swarmed her, some going down in a crimson spray and others slicing her armor and her flesh, a hundred tiny wounds.

Then a guardsman ran up behind her and drove a sword through her back, impaling her heart.

She was dead before her body hit the cobblestones.

They hoisted her up and threw her onto the pyre. Mari’s lifeless head rested in the curve of Nessa’s pale arm. And then the guardsman tossed the torch onto the piled kindling, and the fire took them both.

*     *     *

The crowd cheered as the flames spread across the kindling and the bodies, sending plumes of gray smoke toward the newly risen sun.

And in the heart of the crowd, her face shadowed beneath the hood of her cloak, Hedy squeezed her hands into fists and trembled in silence. She didn’t dare show her grief. Didn’t dare shed a single tear.

Tears were for later.

She took one last look at the pyre. Nessa’s and Mari’s bodies were dark, distant forms beneath the rising flames.

Three bodies, now. A girl stood in the fire, though Hedy was the only one with the eyes to see her.

Squirrel looked to Hedy and lifted her fingers to her heart. A quiet salute.

Hedy did the same. Then she turned and made her way through the crowd, leaving the pyre behind. Setting out into the world, all alone.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

It took hours for Felix and Renata to cross the burning city. Imperial patrols barricading one street, bloodthirsty partisans rampaging on another, a third avenue swallowed by billowing fire. All of Mirenze fear-maddened and feral. They darted through the shadows, from alley to alley, making their way uptown. By the time they reached the gate of the governor’s mansion, the first rays of dawn were kissing the horizon.

They’d found a dead patrol on the way, the bodies torn limb from limb. Felix helped himself to a fallen soldier’s sword, the weapon short and light with a bronzed blade. Renata did the same. They strode through the gate side by side.

No one stood in their way. Lodovico’s mercenaries were either all spreading chaos in the streets, or they’d seen which way the wind was blowing and fled the city while they still could. Felix and Renata stood at the mansion’s front door and tried the handle. Locked. His ears perked, Felix heard shouting from the other side and footsteps rushing closer.

“
Leave
it, Simon,” Lodovico shouted as he opened the door. “We have to go
now
.”

He turned, saw the visitors on his stoop, and froze.

“Signore Marchetti,” Felix said, “I apologize for not writing ahead. Unexpected guests can be so inconvenient.”

“Especially when they’re here to kill you,” Renata added.

Lodovico stumbled backward, head shaking in mute denial. Then he turned and broke into a blind run. Renata and Felix swept through the door, into the stately foyer where a long and winding stairway curled up to a second-floor balcony. Lodovico scrambled up the steps, falling halfway and pushing himself up on his hands, desperate to get away.

Felix’s attention snapped to the other side of the room. Simon sauntered from a darkened doorway, dressed to the nines and smiling, one charred hand lightly holding the hilt of a dueling blade. Renata’s hand tightened on Felix’s arm as she stared at Simon, horrified.

“Look who came,” Simon crowed. “I knew! I knew you would! And this must be your delectable lady. You have taste, Felix. I approve.”

“Go after Lodovico,” Felix said to Renata. “I’ve got this.”

Renata gave a firm nod and raced up the stairs. Felix and Simon circled one another, making long arcs across the polished hardwood floor.

“Do you feel it?” Simon asked. “That crackling in the air? That’s destiny calling, Felix. Your entire life—every moment, every decision you’ve ever made—has served to bring you right here, right now. A sacrificial offering to the god of murder. You were born for this moment.”

“A god?” Felix shook his head. “No. You’re a low-rent thug who’s too cowardly for a real fight and too stupid to know when to die.”

“C-careful,” Simon told him, a catch in his voice. “You…you shouldn’t disrespect me.”

Felix’s jaw clenched. A gust of hot wind washed through the open door at his back, heat from the spreading city fires, leaving the tang of smoke in his throat. Memories hit him like a fist. Not the explosion at the Ducal Arch—he’d relived that so many times it could barely spark a nightmare now. Older memories. His father’s face. His sister-in-law’s smile. The night before his wedding, when he stood on the terrace of Rossini Hall with his brother, sharing a quiet moment in the rain.

Faces and voices that existed only in his memories now, for as long as he could keep them alive. And someday, even they might fade. Leaving him with nothing but the hollow hole Simon had torn in his heart.

“I spent a long time wondering what I’d say to you,” Felix said. “What would I say when I finally tracked you down, with a weapon in my hand? What can you possibly say to the man who murdered your family?”

Simon spread his hands. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

“Nothing.”

Felix brought up his sword. One foot sliding an inch to the left, his knees bent and his shoulders squared.

“This isn’t destiny, Simon. This isn’t some grand opera, some mythic battle for the ages. This isn’t even revenge. Because
you aren’t worth it
. I only have room for so many memories, and I won’t replace my family with images of your face. I won’t let the day they died overshadow the days they lived. I won’t give you that power over me. So I’m going to kill you now. And then I will never, for the rest of my life, speak your name again. Because you are
nothing
to me.”

Simon’s face twisted in outrage. He opened his mouth and started to say something. Felix didn’t give him the chance. He raced in and brought his blade swooping down. Simon raised his dueling sword and their blades met with a clang that sent Simon staggering, struggling to ward Felix off as he unleashed blow after furious blow. Simon ducked low, whirling, the tip of his sword slashing through linen and scoring a scarlet line across Felix’s stomach. Felix stumbled back, teeth clenched against the pain. Then he slid one foot behind him, catching his balance, and lunged.

He battered aside Simon’s blade and threw a vicious punch, feeling teeth shatter against his knuckles. Simon reeled, spitting blood as Felix rushed him. He hit Simon with his forearm and shoved him back, slamming him up against the wall.

The edge of his blade pressed against the charred flesh of Simon’s throat. The two men froze like that, eye to eye, close enough to feel each other’s labored breath.

“You see, Felix?” Simon told him. “We are—”

Felix slashed Simon’s throat from ear to ear. He fell to his knees, gurgling, wide-eyed as he clutched at his neck and a wash of hot blood cascaded over his fingers.

“No last words,” Felix said, then turned his back. He climbed the sweeping stairs, going after Renata, leaving Simon to die alone and forgotten.

*     *     *

Renata hunted Lodovico through the opulent rooms of the governor’s manse. She could hear distant screams from every open window and smell acrid smoke as her city burned. She stalked from doorway to doorway, her sword before her with both hands tight around the hilt, her eyes hard as flint.

She stepped into a study, where a hearth fire was down to its last glowing embers. Open veranda doors led to a balcony overlooking the city. She frowned. It was a far drop to the ground from here. Had he chanced jumping anyway? She headed for the balcony—

—and spun as Lodovico threw himself at her from behind the door, screaming, a fireplace poker swinging for her head. She batted it aside with her blade and swept her sword down as hard as she could. The blade chopped into Lodovico’s right leg, carving muscle and shattering bone. She wrenched it free as the leg went out from under him and he collapsed to the rug at her feet.

He fumbled for the fallen poker, still fighting. She kicked it away. It went spinning across the study, clunking against the legs of a writing desk.

“The rest of the bombs,” she said, pointing the tip of her sword at him. “Where are they?”

Lodovico rolled onto his back. He clutched at his wounded leg, his face contorted with pain. His breath, hitched and wheezing, came in ragged bursts.

“They were supposed to be a fail-safe,” he gasped. “The Dustmen were only supposed to use them if a neighborhood completely fell to the Imperial advance. I should have…I should have known, after the Alms District. They’re just setting them off for fun.”

Renata jabbed the sword closer to his eyes.

“Where are the rest? Tell me and I can help!”

The floor rocked under her feet, the entire house shuddering. Beyond the balcony doors, a quarter mile away, the morning sky lit up with a fresh gout of flame and the sound of tumbling rocks.

“That was the last one,” Lodovico said.

Renata stared at him, shaking her head. All her fury, her righteous rage, spilled from her body like the last grains of sand in a dead hourglass. Leaving only weariness and disgust behind.

“You destroyed my city,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I am a
patriot
. Everything I’ve done, I did for Mirenze. I spent twenty years crafting my plan. Twenty
years
. I wanted this city to be free.”

“You wanted revenge for your father.”

“I was entitled to it,” Lodovico snapped with tears of pain in his eyes. “My family was wronged. I was wronged. Is a son not entitled to seek justice for his father? And if the men trusted to rule the courts are the very ones who wronged you, what then? I had no choice but to seek other means of redress. I…I am a
good man
. Someday, people will look back and realize what I did. They’ll call me a hero.”

Renata stared at him, stunned.

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Everything I did, I did for Mirenze. I love this city.”

“You…love this city,” Renata echoed.

She took a step back. Then she lunged for him, grabbing his hair by the roots and yanking him toward the open veranda doors. He scrambled on all fours, howling as his wounded leg left a dark trail along the woven rug. At the balcony’s edge, she forced his head up.

They looked out over the city together. The light of the morning sun fell upon smoke and fire, shattered walls and caved-in rooftops. The Imperial shield walls, mopping up the last pockets of resistance, and the corpses of Mirenzei who had stood in defiance. Their home was a wasteland. Renata leaned down, as Lodovico’s eyes took in the aftermath, and shouted in his ear.

“
Look what you did to it!
”

She shoved his head away, leaving him to collapse on the balcony’s edge. His shoulders trembled, his eyes glistening.

“Congratulations,” Renata said, exhausted. “You loved it so much that you murdered it.”

He didn’t have a reply. Nothing but a muffled sob as he pressed his forehead to the floor.

“All your plans, all your grand dreams,” Renata told him, “and all you managed to do was destroy everything you ever touched. That’s what your revenge bought you. And you didn’t even win. You know, it’s funny. I came here fully intending to kill you for what you’ve done.”

Renata looked at the sword in her hand. Then she tossed it to the floor.

“No. I’ve seen enough killing for a lifetime. Done more of it than any woman should have to. And I’m finished.”

She turned and walked away.

Felix came up the stairs and pulled her into a quiet embrace. Her hand lightly touched the bloody swell along his stomach.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s not deep.” He shook his head. “The bombs?”

“We got here too late.”

“I’m sorry.”

Renata took a deep breath, her cheek resting against his chest.

“Lodovico is in the study. Wounded, but still breathing. And I know you have every reason to kill him,” she said. “But will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

She pulled away, still in his arms, and looked up at him.