The Beauty of Darkness (40 page)

“What are you implying, brother?” he sneered.

“Do I really need to say it?”

“I was ill for a week, mostly delirious. The court physician can confirm it. When I came to, Father said I'd been sick with a fever.”

“You were with him when you fell ill?”

“Yes. I'd had dinner with him and a few cabinet members at his apartments the night before I was to ride out, but as I was leaving, I got dizzy and fell. Father's servants helped me to bed. I don't remember much after that. What difference does it make? No one knew what Walther and the others were headed into!”

“Sure, someone knew. And that someone didn't want his only remaining son going into a massacre that he had planned. I'm guessing the son was happy to play along.”

He drew his sword. “You're talking treason.”

His eyes were wide and crazed, his voice desperate, and it occurred to me that he might actually be telling the truth. Pauline had said he was grieved by the platoon's death. If his grief wasn't real, why else would he come here to mourn every day? I studied him, wondering about some other kind of motivation, but I saw only anguish in his eyes, not deceit.

“Put it away, Andrés. I'd rather not kill you.”

He lowered his sword. “Who are you?” he asked, as if he sensed I was not just his little discarded brother anymore.

“No one you want to know,” I told him. “Who else was there the night you fell ill?”

He thought for a moment, then said that, besides his father, he had also dined with the Chancellor, the Watch Captain, and the court physician.

 

CHAPTE
R
FIFTY-
N
I
N
E

My parents shared a marriage chamber, but there was a private suite next to the physician's office for royal family members when they were ill or in need of care. It was the chamber where my mother had given birth to us all. If my father was truly ill, and maybe even if it was a ruse, that was where he would be.

I walked into the outer chamber, my hair tucked into a cap, and my face bowed into a stack of towels piled high in my arms. A flask dangled from my hand. I shuffled forward with indifference, while my feet burned to run. Even my father, no matter how angry with me, would still be raw with Walther's loss. A glimmer of doubt was all it would take for him to rescind his order. I'd make him listen if I had to hold a blade to his throat and take him hostage.

“I'm here to sponge the king with a tincture ordered by the physician,” I said in a thick Gastineux brogue, sounding like my aunt Bernette when she was angry. The sleepy nurse sitting in a chair by the door perked up.

“But no one—”

“I know, I know,” I grumbled. I swallowed and forced my words out in an annoyed drawl. “No one ever tells us anything until the last minute. Here I was about ready to go home. Maybe I can talk you into doing this? If I were to—”

“No,” she said, thinking the better of it. “I've been stuck here for hours. I could use the break.” She glanced at the guard standing by the open door to the inner chamber. “Need his help?”

“Pfft. Ain't doing much more than his brow. Don't need help for that.”

She stood with relief and was out the door before I could say anything else.

The inner chamber was dim. As I passed the guard, I asked him to close the door behind me since my arms were full. “Protocol,” I chided when he hesitated.

The door gently shut behind me, and I faced the large bed on the opposite wall. I almost didn't see my father in it. He was small and sunken, like he was being eaten up whole by pillows and blankets. His eye sockets were shadowed, and the skin thin over his cheekbones. He was someone I didn't know. I set the towels and flask on a table and stepped closer. He didn't stir.

He's dying.

They are killing him.

My pulse raced. The citadelle had already whispered this truth to me. I'd thought it meant everyone but him, not the man who had always been bluster and power—all that I had ever known.

“Father?”

Nothing.

I dropped to his side and took his hand in mine. It was limp and warm. What was wrong with him? I desperately wanted to see him loud and angry in all the ways that Walther had described him, the way he had always been, but not like this.

“Regheena?”

I startled at his weak voice. His eyes remained closed.

“No, Father. Mother is busy elsewhere. It's Arabella. You must try to listen to me. It's important that you order Bryn and Regan home immediately. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

He frowned. His eyes slivered open. “Arabella? You're late. And it's your wedding day. How will I explain it?”

My throat pinched. A misty fog filled his gaze. “I'm here now, Father.” I lifted his hand to my cheek. “All will be well. I promise.”

“Regheena. Where is my Regheena?” His eyes drifted closed again.

My Regheena.
My mother's name was tender on his lips. Even my name had been spoken with tenderness, a gentle reprimand, not an angry one.

“Father—” But I knew it was no use. He couldn't issue an order for a drink of water, much less make a demand for Bryn and Regan's safe return. He had already floated back to his unconscious world. I laid his hand on his chest and pressed my fingers to his neck. His pulse was firm and steady. If it wasn't a weak heart that had laid him low, what was it?

I stood and went to the bureau, my fingers carelessly running through the mountain of tinctures, syrups, and balms—all remedies I recognized. My mother had given them to me and my brothers many times. I opened the bottles and sniffed. The scents brought back memories of stuffy heads and fevered brows. I rifled through a box of herbs and liniments and then moved on to the bureau drawers. I didn't even know what I was looking for—an ointment? Liquid? Something that pointed to his true ailment?
They are killing him.
Or maybe they weren't treating a simple illness properly. I looked elsewhere in the room, searching behind a mirror, a pedestal that held a tall vase of flowers, in his bedside table, and even slid my hand beneath the mattress, but turned up nothing.

I went to the door of the adjoining physician's office, pressing my ear to it. When I judged the room to be empty, I gently eased open the door and searched there too, but short of tasting every elixir and waiting to see the effect, I had no way of knowing what may have caused my father's weak and confused state. Maybe it was his heart. Maybe I had broken it just as the rumors said. I returned to his chamber, and my eyes lit on the box of herbs and liniments again. The physician had always disdained the cook's kitchen remedies. When Aunt Bernette made tea from rapsi blossoms for Aunt Cloris's headaches, he would shake his head and smirk. I searched through it again, more carefully this time.

Beneath the other bottles, I found a small vial no bigger than my little finger. It was filled with a golden powder I'd never seen. An herb for the heart the nurse was neglecting to give him? I pulled the cork from the vial, but could detect no herbal scent and began to lift it closer to my nose.
No. Don't.
I held it at arm's length, examining the shimmering gold, then replaced the cork and set it back with the others, shutting the lid.

“Your Highness.”

I spun. The Chancellor stood there in all his glory, his crimson robes flowing, his knuckles glittering, his arrogant tight-lipped smile beaming with triumph. Two guards with drawn swords stood behind him. “How amusing that your note said I should be afraid,” he said, his tone cheerful. “I think, my dear, it is you who should be afraid.”

I glared at him. “Don't be so sure.” I shrugged off my cloak so my weapons were easier to draw and looked past him to the guards. I didn't recognize them. Had he changed the guard who kept the citadelle secure? Still, they wore the Royal Guard insignia. “Lay your weapons down,” I told them. “By all that is holy, do not defend this man. He's a traitor who's sending my brothers into an ambush. Please—”

“Really, Princess,” the Chancellor said, shaking his head, “I thought groveling was beneath you. We all know who the real traitor is. You're a declared enemy of the realm. Your blood runs so cold that you killed your own brother—”

“I did not kill him! I—”

“Seize her,” the Chancellor said, stepping aside.

The guards came at me, but instead of running away, I lunged forward, and in a blurred second, one of my arms had hooked the Chancellor's neck, while the other held a knife to his throat.

“Get back!” I ordered.

The guards paused, swords ready to strike, but they didn't retreat.

“Step back, you fools!” the Chancellor yelled, feeling the sting of my knife pressing into his flesh.

They backed up cautiously, stopping against the opposite wall.

“That's better,” I said, then whispered in the Chancellor's ear, “Now, what were you saying about being afraid?” Though I loved the feel of his racing heart beneath my arm, I heard footsteps pounding down the hallway toward us. More guards had already been alerted, and I probably had only seconds before all my exits would be blocked. I pulled him back with me toward the physician's door, and when it was only a step behind me, I shoved him so he stumbled forward. I slipped inside the room, barring the door behind me. In seconds the guards were ramming against it, and I heard the Chancellor screaming on the other side to break it down.

I went to the window and threw open the shutter, but there was no ledge for escape. I looked down to a balcony directly beneath the window—it was a twenty-foot drop onto hard stone, but I couldn't see any other option. I eased myself out, hanging from the window by my fingertips, then let go. I rolled with the fall, but the impact still sent splitting pain up my leg. I fled, limping as I ran, my route now a wild and haphazard one, darting into rooms, hallways, redirecting my steps when I heard the pounding of footsteps in pursuit. I raced down a dark servant's stairway, and then an empty hall, the shouts getting weaker, their search still confined to the upper floors. I was at the back of the citadelle, heading down a long dark passage for the rarely used servant's entrance that Pauline and I had escaped through. I had just slid the latch open when I heard a metallic
chink
, and I spun toward the sound. A strange keening whir filled the air and then a loud
thunk, thunk, thunk.

A hot jolt exploded in my arm. My vision flashed with pain so bright I couldn't focus. When I tried to pull away, my breaths shuddered in my chest. I couldn't move. I looked to my left. Two long iron bolts were embedded high in the door, but a third had pinned my hand to the wood, piercing the center of my palm. Blood dripped to the floor. I heard footsteps and tried frantically to pull the bolt loose, but the least movement sent sickening pain convulsing through me. The footsteps grew louder, closer. I looked up and saw the silhouette of a figure walking leisurely toward me. I recognized the swagger. My knife lay on the floor at my feet. I drew my sword, a pathetic gesture, because I knew I couldn't fight with one hand pinned to the door. His face came into view.

Malich.

A crossbow unlike any I had ever seen dangled from one of his hands. I trembled with pain as he drew closer. Every sound was amplifed, his footsteps, the tip of my sword scraping the floor, my own breath wheezing in my throat.

“So nice to run into you, Princess,” he said. “I understand Kaden is here too. I never should have let him slip away from me that day when we fought on the terrace.”

The smug grin. The one I'd sworn he would pay for.

“I wish I could say it was nice to see you too, Malich.” I lifted my sword as a threat, but even that small movement magnified the painful stab in my hand. I tried to mask my agony.

He easily knocked my sword away with his crossbow, sending it clattering across the room. The jerking twist of my body sent blinding jolts shooting up my arm, and I couldn't restrain a scream. He grabbed my free hand and pressed his body against mine.

“Please,” I said. “My brothers—”

“Just the way I prefer you, Princess, begging and with both of your hands restrained.” His face still bore the lines of my attack, and his eyes glowed with vengeance. He leaned closer, and his free hand circled my throat. “The bolts are courtesy of the Komizar. He's sorry he couldn't be here to deliver them himself. Sadly, you must settle for me.” His hand slid from my throat to my breast. “And after I'm finished with you, I'll carve up your face with marks like the ones you gave me. He doesn't care what you look like when I hand you over.”

His grin widened and that was all I could see, all I could feel, the assured expression that said he owned the world. It was a grin that churned memories to the surface. I saw my brother weeping. I saw the arrow in Greta's throat. I saw a baby's lace cap burning and curling into ash.
That was easy
, he had boasted. Killing her was easy.

His breaths were heavy in my ear as his hand slid lower, fumbling with my belt, jerking at the buttons of my trousers.
Easy.
I felt the crunch of bone as I forced my pinned hand to twist, turn, grab hold of the bolt. Blood rushed down my arm. Groans shuddered up from my throat like animal sounds, thick and wild. I used the pain the way a fire consumes fuel, burning hotter and hotter, and with my hand gripped around the bolt, I forced my arm to shove against it, loosening it. My fingers burned like they'd been set ablaze, the iron bolt becoming rage in my hand, and I pulled, loosening it further, my groans only adding to Malich's satisfaction. His eyes gleamed, looking into mine as if he already knew where he would carve the lines.
Easy.

“No fainting on me now, Princess,” he said as he jerked the last button of my trousers free. His hand slid beneath the leather, down along my hip, his grin widening. “I keep my promises, and I told the Komizar that you would suffer.”