The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  In a moment, she and Urtzi were surrounded by dozens of men and women with swords.

  Osana held up her hands. “The princess will be very disappointed when she sees how you have treated us.”

  From behind, one of the soldiers sliced straight through the leather straps of her scabbard with the tip of his sword. King Sendoa’s famed weapon fell to the ground behind her in a clanging heap, and was whisked away.

  “I think not,” the leader said. “The princess was murdered by Pyrenee.”

  “No,” Urtzi insisted, frustration raising the volume of his voice, his eyebrows wild. “We were there! She was not.”

  The soldier arched a brow. “You were there?”

  “No,” Osana answered, but Urtzi was already shouting, “Yes!” over her as four heavily armed men moved in to tie his hands. Two more went after Osana. Their horses were led away.

  “Yes?” the man asked Urtzi, side-eyeing Osana as she scanned the ground.

  “Yes. Unhand me and I will tell you all about it. The kidnapping, the wedding, Renard, Taillefer, Luca, all of it.”

  The leader spoke soberly. “No, you will tell us anyway. King Ferdinand and Queen Mother Geneva will want to know what happened to the princess. And whom to blame for her death.”

  “Who in the dragon’s piss are those people?” Urtzi glanced to Osana for help, but the girl’s olive skin had blanched, eyes gone glassy and distant. He began to struggle, his voice growing louder. “We last saw Amarande alive! If she’s dead, we had nothing to do with it. You are not hearing me.”

  “We have heard you loud and clear. And for that, you are now under our care as prisoners of the Kingdom of Ardenia.”

  “No! You don’t understand,” Urtzi insisted, as eight soldiers surrounded him, tying his hands. They divested him of his weapons and prodded him through the just-lifted gate. “Osana! Tell them! What’s wrong with you?”

  Osana walked ahead, not fighting. Not saying anything at all.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE pirate and the thief were ushered not to the throne room, nor to the red hall, where supper was just being set. No, they were taken down five flights of stairs, straight to the dungeons that lined the bowels of the Itspi, deeper than the level of Ardenia’s famed diamond mines, and locked into matching cells.

  Osana sank straight to the straw-packed dirt, curling into a ball, forehead pressed to her knees. In the cell across from hers, Urtzi examined the steel bars, set so narrowly that he couldn’t even snake his arm through past the wrist. “Told you they wouldn’t smile and lead us to the princess. I hope they’re wrong about her being dead.”

  Osana didn’t answer. This confused Urtzi, as she’d always been very talkative, but it was no secret that women tended to confuse him no matter what. Always the follower, he decided he might try to take the lead here, and leave Osana to whatever journey of the mind she was making.

  From what he could see by craning his neck at the edges of his cell, they were the dungeon’s only inhabitants. He listened, and could hear nothing other than the flicker and pop of torches set in sconces along the dimly lit corridor, and the scratching of rats scuttling along the walls.

  “Perhaps the fact that we’re alone is a good thing. Maybe this is just an in-and-out detention. They’ll ask us some questions, we’ll tell them what we know, and they’ll send us on our way.” Urtzi figured this was a pretty optimistic view—perhaps all that time with Luca had rubbed off on him as much as Ula had rubbed off on Osana.

  Still, Osana said nothing.

  He blinked at her. “Or they’ll just kill everyone.”

  No reaction.

  “And they’ll serve us up for dinner. Heads on a plate, swimming in olive gravy, pine needles sticking out our noses.”

  Nothing.

  “Osana. Hellooooo, Osana. What’s gotten into you? If we’re going to get out of here, we’re going to have to work together.”

  “We’re not getting out of here.”

  Her voice was so small, he almost wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “What—why?”

  If she answered, he didn’t hear it, because the doors at the end of the hall burst open. In strode a small, dark-haired woman dressed in a rich garnet gown. She walked with a terrifying amount of purpose—her shoulders thrust back and her chin so high, as if she could part the Divide with each ensuing step. Though she wore no crown, Urtzi knew immediately this must be the Queen Mother the guard had mentioned. She was so stunning that Urtzi did not immediately realize that a man—no, a tall boy—trailed in her wake.

  Osana was on her feet, snapped out of her trance, face pressed to the bars.

  “I didn’t know who you really were,” she insisted. Never blinking. Never glancing away. Her jaw was as firm as her gaze, but all the color had drained from her face. “I swear. I didn’t know. Not until they said Ferdinand’s name at the gate. And even then I wasn’t sure until you walked in this room.”

  The regal lady pursed her lips.

  “Here you will address him as King Ferdinand. And me as the Queen Mother. Do you understand, Osana?” The girl nodded solemnly, her blue eyes drifting over the woman’s shoulder to the hulking form of the king. The boy’s clear green eyes hadn’t strayed from her face since he’d entered the room, something like sadness glistening in them, in contrast to his mother’s obvious fury. “You did not know we’d gone because you had already left us.”

  “Osana,” Urtzi ventured, joining the conversation from his cell. “I get the sense you know them.”

  The Queen Mother’s lips quirked. “And I get the sense you didn’t tell your new friends exactly who you are.”

  “Who…?”

  “Osana is a watcher.” This from the king, who suddenly looked like he hadn’t slept in a millennium. “For the Warlord. Or was. Until she escaped with my sister.”

  Urtzi swallowed, this new information buzzing in his ears. He tried to read Osana’s face, to figure out whose side she was on now, but she looked away.

  “Girl, you are lucky you have information we need,” the Queen Mother announced. And the king’s interest, for what it was worth. “Our soldiers tell us you arrived at the gate looking for Princess Amarande. Why did you believe she was here?”

  Osana glanced at the king, but his mother was not having it. “Do not look to him. Answer the question.”

  Her throat working, Osana swallowed. Quick as a snake, the Queen Mother’s right hand shot out, snagging Osana’s fingers and yanking her forward until she had the girl’s arm jammed between the bars at a painful angle.

  Osana cried out, and the king took a step toward them, reaching out as if he could stop it. But then he abruptly retreated, his eyes pinned on a dagger that appeared in his mother’s left hand. The woman twisted the arm further, revealing the blue veins at Osana’s wrist.

  The Queen Mother pressed the tip of the dagger to the constellation of veins until it drew blood, all the while pinning Osana with her gaze. Waiting.

  The girl squeezed her eyes shut, tears snaking out the corners. Then, quickly and clearly, she gave away the entire plan. “Amarande was supposed to come here, shore up Ardenia’s defenses against Pyrenee’s retaliation for Renard’s death, and then await a message and meet us.”

  “Us?” The blade pressed deeper, the blood snaking rivulets around the steel tip. “Say his name, girl.”

  “Us—Luca, the Otsakumea. The resistance.”

  The Queen Mother smiled. “You will take us to the Otsakumea. You and this pirate. And we will put an end to that ridiculous resistance once and for all.”

  “Wait. Mother, we’re expecting war any day,” the king argued at her back, an urgency in his features that he did not betray in his voice. “Send a message. Have a team of watchers go. It cannot be us. And we certainly can’t send any of Ardenia’s soldiers to do the Warlord’s bidding.”

  “I don’t see why not. We tell them we believe the resistance is tied to King Sendoa’s death. Simple.”

  “I believe I�
��ve made it clear how I feel about lies, Mother.” Here, he took a step forward, and placed a hand softly on her back, his eyes on the dagger still pressed to Osana’s pulse. “That battle can wait, the one for Ardenia cannot. One battle at a time. Send the message; await news from Basilica and Pyrenee. Please.”

  The Queen Mother’s jaw worked and she swallowed once before seeming to relent, her shoulders softening. The king’s stiff posture relaxed a touch, too. And then the woman was removing her blade from Osana’s wrist—but not without one final dig.

  Osana yelped, and Ferdinand flinched.

  The nick was deep, just missing the vein but drawing a fresh crop of thick droplets of red blood. The Queen Mother coolly released Osana’s arm. “When you don’t return with the princess the wolf cub will panic. We will simply wait until Luca comes running himself. Amarande ran after him; there is no indication he will not do the same in return.”

  The Queen Mother turned her attention then to Urtzi. He immediately withdrew his hands from the bars—this woman would take a finger without warning. It was strange, facing him, she did look so much like Amarande in size and stature it was disconcerting. “Do you have reason to believe differently, pirate? You were there for the wedding at the Bellringe, no?”

  “Yes, I was at the wedding; no, I don’t believe differently.”

  The Queen Mother examined every inch of his face, then nodded, satisfied. “Good.” She stowed her dagger and turned on her heel, calling to the king, who had stepped to Osana’s cell and was wrapping her wounded wrist with a clean white handkerchief. “Dinner with the Royal Council, my king. Now.”

  Ferdinand made to follow his mother, already stomping toward the exit, but Osana caught his fingers with her good hand. The king paused and flipped her grip so that he was holding her hand just as much as she was clutching his.

  “Is Amarande truly dead?” she whispered.

  “My king, we are late,” his mother prodded, not deigning to look back. “She won’t bleed out if she ties the knot herself.”

  The king did not answer, instead he simply shook his head a minuscule amount, squeezed Osana’s fingers, and walked away.

  CHAPTER 29

  AMARANDE awoke where the stars could not see.

  She blinked into the humid darkness, startled at the realization that death was more temperate than she’d thought it would be. It was not an assortment of chills leading to rigid stiffness, but incandescent heat. On her skin, in her chest, her muscles. Her head throbbed with it, a heartbeat behind the new, searing reality of what it was like to open her eyes.

  Perhaps the stars could not see her because she was one with them, wrapped in so much light it appeared onyx dark.

  She blinked again and a single light appeared. It hovered in the distance, this ball of illumination. Perhaps a neighboring star. Someone else recently gone from this world.

  “Father? Is that you?”

  Her voice was dry, the metallic tang of blood at the back of her throat. She tried and failed to swallow it away.

  The glow came closer. And closer. Until she could nearly reach out and touch it. Her eyes were drawn to the light, clinging to it like fireflies circling a torch. A spirit, perhaps, the blaze within, as all the starborn priests evangelized.

  But then the light had a voice.

  “You have the hardest head I’ve ever seen, Princess.”

  Not her father.

  Taillefer.

  Amarande’s mind churned into motion—of course he would be the nearest star. He’d died within a breath of her own death. Even the afterlife of the Sand and Sky was brutal.

  I should be with Luca. I should be next to Luca in the eternal sky.

  But then Taillefer’s pale face, marred with grit and a smear of blood, loomed into her vision, along with the white light of flame. His blue eyes caught the firelight, as vivid as they were alive.

  “No surprise given your stubbornness, but a blow like that would’ve killed most men. Yet here you are, blinking as if your brain is still intact. I have yet to see it slide out of your nose, but I still was not convinced you’d open your eyes again.”

  Amarande ran a hand over the back of her head, where she’d smacked it on the floor in her cell at the Itspi only days ago. The knot there had subsided under the heaviness of her hair, but now there was a new, bigger bump right above it—the size of the goose eggs Maialen so celebrated upon their arrival to the Itspi kitchens.

  A gloved hand appeared in the dead shadow between herself and Taillefer’s face. The light shifted. His already-tattered guard’s tunic was even more shredded than before. He had cut strips of it to bandage up the wounds he had suffered at the jaws of the black wolf.

  Amarande accepted his hand and sat up. The blood in her head swept forward in a rush, her eyes automatically squeezed shut as an aching tide hit her temples. Her stomach lurched and she retched—whatever water was left in her system dribbled out of her mouth, narrowly missing her trousers and boots. She dropped Taillefer’s hand and rolled onto her hands and knees, clutching the soft earth until the nausea passed and nothing remained in her system.

  Amarande wiped her face on her sleeve and sat back on her haunches. “How long was I out?”

  “The first question I would’ve asked would’ve been ‘Where are we?’ And the answer is in an underground cavern as big as a dining hall and littered with bones. But to answer your question—hours. Several. I’m not sure how many.” Taillefer shoved something into her palm. “Eat this. You need sustenance.”

  She squinted at the oblong object. “Is that … a potato?”

  “Yes. Peel it first—scrape to the inner flesh with your nails. Raw potatoes can make you ill enough to vomit again, but the toxin that causes the problem is mostly found in the skin.”

  That natural arts knowledge of his, on display, giving her spinning head another rush of nausea. “I’m not going to eat it.”

  She tossed it at his face. Taillefer caught it and pressed it back into her palm. “You haven’t eaten in at least a day and you’ve taken a blow to the head. You have to eat.”

  Amarande handed it back. “Use your torch to roast it first. Or lend me the torch and I will do it. I would very much not like to chance another round of vomit.”

  Taillefer blinked. Clearly he’d partaken of raw potato. “I have underestimated your shrewdness.”

  As the prince did as she requested, the princess pushed herself slowly, painfully to her feet. The strength in her legs was missing, limbs wobbly beneath her. That pounding behind her eyes wasn’t dissipating. Her mouth was parched raw. Her injured hand throbbed. Yet all she could think was of the time they had lost.

  Hours. Several.

  Time she couldn’t get back on her way to find Luca. All the information she needed to get to him and the resistance piling in her mind.

  Her mother was in communication with the current Warlord, knew Luca’s name, expected the rebels to strike.

  Then there was the poisoned water at the Cardenas Scar. How many other places were affected? Would Luca and the entire resistance be poisoned as they prepared to fight the Warlord?

  And now there was the accusation of the man at the Warlord’s Inn—that she had last arrived there with a Warlord spy. Could he have meant Osana? If so, the implications of her traveling with Luca could be disastrous. Amarande’s gut didn’t want to believe it, but if blood didn’t matter on the continent of the Sand and Sky, then clearly a few moments on the same side didn’t matter either.

  Amarande’s eyes snagged on the prince’s back.

  As much as the thought of all the time they’d lost made fear and dread collect in the pit of her recently vacated stomach, there was something else disturbing here. She’d spent hours unconscious with Taillefer nearby, conscious, and in full possession of his faculties. Not a good thing under any circumstance.

  Taking inventory, Amarande discovered, as she’d feared, that her boot knife and her sword were missing. “Taillefer, did you—”


  “Relax, Princess. I borrowed your steel to make my bandages. And to spark the fire—there’s barely any wood down here and most of it is too wet to use anyway.” He turned, revealing that he held her dagger in his hand, two potatoes skewered on the blade, half-roasted over his torch, which he’d staked into the loamy earth. He cocked his head near a pile of rotten sticks he’d collected. “Your sword is over there.”

  Moving more quickly than was wise, Amarande limped over to her sword. The Basilican steel felt twice its normal weight in her injured hand, but Amarande gritted her teeth and stowed it away in the scabbard still slung across her back. “I will require my dagger.”

  “You are welcome to do the roasting, then.” He gestured at the pile of small, shriveled potatoes beside him. “My blades did not make the journey into this pit of despair with me.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue, that this was a waste of time, but as she took a step toward him, another wave of nausea crashed over her, enough that she swooned on her feet—her knees softening, boots shuffling heavily across the soft loam beneath her soles as she steadied herself. Her empty stomach lurched and rolled, her vision blurred, and suddenly her heart was beating far too fast.

  Taillefer was correct—she needed sustenance.

  After a few careful steps, the princess sank down next to him, recovering her boot knife and starting the job of roasting the potatoes. He plucked the two he’d done first off the blade with what appeared to be sharp shards of pottery, and loaded the knife with two more before handing it back.

  Amarande sank her teeth into her potato like it was an apple, the steam rising from its skin to her dirty cheeks. It was old and bland, but possibly the most amazing thing she’d ever tasted. The starch hit quickly, and with every bite, she felt renewed.

  After her third tuber, she plucked two more from the pile, put them on the fire, and glanced at the prince. “Where did you find the potatoes?”