Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (2 page)

“This…” he stammered. “This was your plan all along?”

Laughing softly, Trystay shook his head. “Oh, Aelfric, I couldn’t have planned this well if I’d tried. It’s all sort of fallen into play, hasn’t it? Now, what do you say? Do we have an accord, or are you really going to force my hand?”

“If I don’t agree?”

“I’m prepared to send word to Hofft, asking for reinforcement so we might take Leithe by force, but I’d rather not. I am already in the castle, the king under my guard. It would be bad for your people, don’t you think? I’d rather we work together,” he smiled, adding, “for the sake of your kingdom and its people.”

“I should never have offered her hand to you,” Aelfric spat, turning his head downward to stare at the table in front of him. “It was my mistake, inviting you here in the first place, thinking we could have peace.”

“Is what I’m offering you not peace?”

Scoffing, the king shook his head again and brought his eyes back up to meet with Trystay’s. “Were I a younger man…”

“But you’re not, are you?” He grinned. “You’re an old man, a spent warrior who can barely lift his sword arm above his head, much less charge into battle. Perhaps it would be better to kill you now and be done with it. You’re practically useless.”

“My men will never follow you, and the people will never acknowledge you if I do not give you my daughter.”

“I don’t need the acceptance of the dead,” he shrugged. “As I said, I’d rather not take Leithe by force, but I will if you push me to it.”

“You are your father’s son.” Aelfric lowered his head in withering defeat.

“I am my own man,” Trystay assured him. “So, what will it be? Will you work with me, or against me?”

“That is hardly a choice.”

“Perhaps not, but it
is
a choice. You should be grateful I’ve given you that much, considering the embarrassment you’ve caused me, the slight on my good name as you sought to marry me to a bastard mongrel that wasn’t even yours to give.”

He contemplated, lips moving over silent utterances as he cursed and shook his head. “I will do what you ask,” he gave in, “on one condition.”

“You’re hardly in a position to be demanding I yield to conditions, but I’ll take the bait. What is it you want?”

“I want two more days to mourn my wife, time enough to see her laid to rest in my family tomb.”

“The customary mourning period is three days,” Trystay pointed out. “Too much time has already been wasted. Your daughter is out there somewhere, victim of her mother’s cruel plot. She’s probably terrified, hoping against hope her father has the wits to send someone after her.”

Guiltily, Aelfric lowered his head and bit down on both lips with his teeth so he looked like a specter deep in thought. “Knowing she’s been laid to rest, I can focus more clearly on finding Mirien.”

“Two more days,” Trystay went on, “could be enough time for the slave you say was working with your queen to disappear with the girl entirely. Unless…” He pondered thoughtfully a moment, then turned distrusting stare back to Aelfric. “Unless you don’t want her to be found. Unless you were in on their plot from the start…”

“You think I wanted any of this?” the king railed, raising his voice in an attempt to startle Trystay, but the young prince was no stranger to angry kings and their senseless tirades. His own father was quite prone to throwing himself around, trying to intimidate anyone who dared challenge him—most especially his only son. And such an attempt might have worked had it come from his father, but Aelfric wasn’t even half the man King Derewend was. Maybe once, long ago, a man like Aelfric was frightening to behold in mid-tirade, but he was a man defeated. A man who’d lost everything he held dear faster than he could reach out his hand to try and hold it all in place.

“Are you deliberately trying to provoke me, Aelfric? Trying to see just how far I’m willing to go, because I can assure you that you will not like the outcome if that is the case. My sorceress…”

“No,” the king’s eyes widened as he glanced over Trystay’s shoulders at the lithe Ninvarii woman standing near the door. He shook his head, stammering, “Of c-course not. I… I want my daughter found,” he insisted. “I want her brought back and in my care where she belongs, and I want the head of the slave who took her.”

“Then call your priests and say goodbye to your queen before the sun rises on the morrow. At first light, we march men west into the Edgelands to find and retrieve that treacherous wretch you tried to force upon me. In the meanwhile, I will dispatch a search party to find your daughter before she disappears entirely.”

After a long silence, during which Trystay couldn’t tell if the man was thinking or simply staring down at his hands in his lap in hopes that some solution would magically manifest itself, Aelfric finally offered a meek nod. “Fine.”

“As you are drawing up orders for your men, you will also draw a clear decree summarizing Lorelei’s crimes. She is to be returned to Rivenn, unharmed, so she can face charges of treason against her king.”

“Yes,” Aelfric agreed. “Of course.”

“Are we in agreement on all matters presented?”

“Yes,” the king sighed, still refusing to lift his defeated head. “We have an agreement.”

“Excellent.” Trystay clapped his hands together in a triumphant gesture, the dry sound ringing through the quiet room. “I will dispatch the search party at once and bring your daughter back to you, Your Majesty, and when she is returned you will make formal announcement that we are to be wed.”

“As you wish.”

There was a lightness to Trystay’s step as he spun around and marched from the room, his guard and his stoic, Ninvarii sorceress falling in behind him and closing King Aelfric inside like a prisoner. They did not need to bar the door, his grief alone was enough to prohibit him from doing something foolish, and Trystay knew it.

Power.

It was a delicious thing, he thought, and for the first time in his life he knew his father would be proud of him for taking that which he wanted by manipulation, rather than force.

Soon he would hold enough power to rival his own father, not that lording over his father was part of his plan, but who knew, perhaps one day that was exactly what he’d do. The only way to prove oneself a man was to be the last one standing, even if the corpse he towered over was the corpse of his father.

In the meanwhile, it pleased him a great deal to imagine his father would praise his ingenuity and effort as well, saving a situation gone horribly wrong before it spun out of his hands entirely. He bettered the terms of their original agreement in ways they never imagined when he sent his son forth to Leithe.

Deallora followed him into his chambers, closing the doors behind her to provide them privacy from his men on the other side.

“Plotting vengeance against the U’lfer is not wise, Highness. My goddess…”

“Your goddess has done nothing for me, Dea.”

“She does all for you, Highness. She has shown me your path to greatness, and if you go after the U’lfer, if you pursue Lorelei…”

“You’re still jealous of her.” Trystay narrowed suspicious and taunting gaze over his sorceress, his lover, searching for the barest hint of animosity in her features.

“I am not jealous of her,” she insisted, though he sensed annoyance in her tone at the suggestion. “What is she to me? A threat? I already have you, Highness.”

Trystay surged forward so quickly the wrapping of his fingers around her throat caught the sorceress off-guard, but when he squeezed she made every effort not to show pain or surprise.

“You don’t have me,” he hissed. Three steps forward and he threw her back into the door with a rattling thud. He surged inward until the tip of his nose touched hers. Her proud, golden eyes did not widen, her body did not flinch, but remained stiff and indifferent to his abuse. “I have you. I own you, and don’t you ever forget it.”

He watched as her nostrils flared, her full, coral-traced lips twitching beneath her nose until the edges rose into defiant grin. “Ninvariin owns me.” She tilted her head, a thoughtful inspection as her cold eyes darted across his face. “I am on loan from Her, and don’t you ever forget it.”

And then she kissed him, the prince moaning softly in his throat as she shoved him backward through the room until he felt the mattress edge the backs of his knees. Taking a step away from him, Deallora brought up her hand in a fluid gesture, a surge of pale blue light dancing across the tips of her fingers before it passed between them with a playful force that sprawled him onto his back in the bed behind him.

She lingered at the edge of the bed, magic’s pale essence still flickering across the palm of her hand. “You must heed Her wisdom, Highness.” Lifting one knee onto the bed, she passed the other across the tops of his thighs and lowered herself onto his lap. “Everything is changing. There are events in the offing you cannot even begin to understand.”

The sorceress leaned forward, resting her hand on his shoulder as she descended until they were face to face. Even through the leather of his armor, he could feel her magic, the electric tingle of it invoking a series of delightful chills that raised the hairs on his arms, along the back of his neck. The energy trickled down his spine, but he did not shiver. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“Going after the U’lfer will not serve you,” she went on. “In time they will come to you. Lorelei herself will march into this castle and demand you give her back her sister.”

“I wait for no one.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, fingertips squeezing so hard her olive skin would boast tiny, circular bruises later where his fingers pushed into her. “I send Aelfric’s men south to finish a job he should have finished long ago. The U’lfer will burn, Dea. Every last one of them.”

He surged upward, shifting her onto her back in a bold, deft maneuver and then rolling in to perch above her like a predator. Her long, exotic eyes did not waver from his face, the molten gold irises flashing with defiance. “It is a mistake, Your Highness. Let me show you what I’ve seen.”

“The only thing I want you to show me now is a little love.” He dipped his head inward, brushed lips across her chin. “Show your prince a little kindness in a world that’s been so very, very cruel to him.”

When she opened her mouth to speak again, Trystay silenced her with kisses, her protests eventually lost in a mingling of gasps and sighs. By the time he’d finished with her, she protested no more, having remembered her rightful place beneath him.

CHAPTER ONE

It was still dark when she gasped awake. The aches in her body, mingled with the grogginess of her mind, made it hard to remember where she was. On instinct she reached into the space beside her for comfort from her sister. Her fingertips brushed the cold, wooden panels of the wall, and with uncertainty she turned head over shoulder to search the empty room around her.

Lorelei sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes before lifting balled fists to rub it away. She was in the spare bedroom of her brother’s house, she remembered, sleeping alone on the long night before she was meant to embark on a journey the gods planned for her before she’d ever been born.

The weight of it pressed down hard on her shoulders until no amount of stretching her arms and back alleviated its pressures. She supposed she’d have to get used to that feeling.

She turned her legs over the edge of the bed, inching them toward the floor until the smooth boards touched her bare toes. Feeling around with her feet, she found her boots, leaned over to grab them and then brought them into her lap. For a long time she just sat there holding them, not entirely sure if she wanted to put them on or lie down again and try to go back to sleep.

Judging from the exhaustion in her body she hadn’t slept for long, but that could have been the journey finally catching up to her. She only knew she was tired; she wanted to go back to the warm place she’d been only moments before in her dreams, but the memory escaped her no matter how much she grasped at it. She’d been dreaming of her mother and father—her real father, Rognar, but beyond that she couldn’t guess. It was a happy dream, she knew that too, and she wanted desperately to return to that blissful place again.

Outside the door the floorboards creaked, footsteps taking extra precaution for silence but failing miserably, and for a moment she wondered if it was Finn come to tell her he couldn’t sleep without her after all. Maybe there was time enough to invite him back into the room, to find that cramped but comfortable position their bodies worked so desperately to achieve the night before and sleep a few more hours, but when no knock came she realized it probably never would.

He wanted her to come to him.

Wriggling into her boots, she made quietly for the door, opened it and peered down the darkened hallway. Finn was not there, but a low-burning light lingered just beyond the hall in the main room where the family took their meals. There was definitely someone out there, she could hear the body shuffling around, and then it occurred to her perhaps it was Brendolowyn. Her brother mentioned sometimes the mage slept in their home when he wasn’t too preoccupied with his work at the lyceum, but Finn and Lorelei were given his room.

Not that she needed the added confusion of her strange feelings for the mage at the moment, but if they were going to be traveling together she might do something to set them aside. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the hallway and followed the light of that lantern into the spacious main room. Only it wasn’t Finn or Brendolowyn shuffling around the kitchens. It was her brother. He hadn’t heard her coming at first and he startled a little when her weight came down on a particularly noisy floorboard.

Logren spun around, a bottle in one hand, a mug in the other. He gasped to see her standing just a few feet away from him.

“Llorveth’s horns, girl!” he cursed. “You damn near scared the wits out of me.”