The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  Amarande could not picture any of this. “And he just let her go? Why? People accused him of her murder … she was already doing terrible things to maintain and grow her power. And yet he walked away? Let her cut him? I just … why did it take him so long to mount a war? He had Luca; he knew her identity; he had his army, you…”

  Koldo sighed, heavily. “It’s hard to believe now, but this road started when Geneva acted to save your father’s life.”

  Amarande pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You have to be kidding me.”

  “Your mother has done many terrible things in her life, but your father lived and so did you because of a brave choice she made.”

  “And just when I was beginning to wish she were dead.”

  Koldo placed a hand on Amarande’s cheek. “The story is this. King Domingu had long had designs to make all of the Sand and Sky his. He’d tried many times, in various ways.” The princess lifted her head. “This is part of the reason your father decided to build such an army. The goal was to protect the continent in general, but behind closed doors it was to protect it from Domingu.”

  This did not surprise the princess. It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone on the continent old enough to name their kingdoms.

  “And so the old king found a way—using his extensive web of family connections.” Koldo took a deep breath. She was never one for lengthy speeches, in any capacity. “The plan was to install a family member in each castle. And, when everyone was in place, commit coordinated regicide in every palace but the Aragonesti. Every king, queen, child—gone. No one left standing except Domingu and his family.”

  “Wait. My mother—?”

  “Yes. She was assigned to kill your father.”

  Amarande’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “And he still married her?”

  “He did not know until the wedding night. He thought choosing a bride from Basilica would provide cover for Ardenia from Domingu’s clear greed. He was wrong—and lucky Geneva still felt guilt and shame at sixteen. She told him the whole plan—who had been assigned to what castle, the timeline, the endgame.”

  This plan was indeed pure Domingu—more diplomatic than stabbing your brother in the back, but no less diabolical. “Inés, too?”

  Koldo nodded. “Yes. She is a very distant cousin, and was part of the plot, too. Your father was sure she went through with it years later when King Louis-David fell ill and lingered in poor health for so long. She always had the means, and a decade after the plan was foiled she went through with it anyway.”

  Inés’s words in the bath chamber in the hours before the wedding hammered through Amarande’s brain. So many opportunities to push a new regime into motion with one forgettable, yet fatal, interaction. Inés had been speaking of her father’s death, but perhaps that thought had driven everything she’d done for nearly twenty years.

  Amarande’s mind pulled back to her father’s actions. “What does that have to do with the Torrent?”

  Koldo nodded. “When his efforts to warn the other monarchs did not work, and no one warmed to the idea of starting a war with Basilica, King Sendoa determined a more radical approach: revolution.”

  “But … why Torrence? Why not Basilica itself? Cut off at the head?”

  “The Kingdom of Torrence had been suffering of late, drought and tariffs destroying the economy. The people were not pleased, and the king was distracted by his new wife and a baby on the way. In a word, it was weak. Something that could be made an example without much effort.”

  “Sendoa set up the revolution.” They both looked up to find Ula. The pirate was empty-handed save for her dagger. No Taillefer then. “The resistance told us that your king started it. Supported the leader, and then let him reign. It is true, then?”

  Koldo nodded. “Yes. He sent me to find the right leader to support, someone who could make all the right noises, instigate enough instability to create a template for all rebels in each kingdom, to both freeze Domingu’s plan and also develop enough natural fissures that it would be impossible for one ruler to take hold. I found him a man named Jericho Talmage.”

  Amarande squeezed her eyes closed. “The first Warlord.”

  “There have been four if you count the one who is ash,” Ula said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder to the pit.

  “Yes. But several things went wrong.” Koldo’s voice was strong but low. “Talmage was only supposed to create opposition; instead, he built a coup. He was never supposed to kill the royal family, burn the castle, install his own government. We gave him power and he went too far. This is what I mean about not following Sendoa’s plans.”

  Amarande’s breath caught—of all her father’s tenets, there was none that fit this. All the pithy quotes of striking first, and preparing, and not underestimating your opponent did not matter at all if those who stood with you had their own agenda.

  Ula made to move. “Perhaps we should retire from the open for this discussion? They’ve got an officers’ tent set up; I am supposed to take you there and work on your arm. Luca will meet us.”

  CHAPTER 54

  NEARLY seventeen years of planning and the first major battle in the effort to restore the Kingdom of Torrence was over within a handful of hours. A combination of events had gone in favor of the rebels.

  The element of surprise.

  The Warlord’s very public death.

  And the fact that so many of her followers did not want to be with her at all. They knew exactly why they had been called in by the newly installed Warlord: their bodies a buffer between her and whatever the resistance had planned. They knew the rebels had their champion. They knew an attack was coming. And they knew their role: shields.

  Well before midnight, Luca stood among his men, Tala by his side. The fire pit had not been fed in hours, and yet it still burned, lighting up the trampled remains of the encampment. Healers were out, doing what they could, and a second wave of resistance members combed through the tents now, providing food and water to anyone in need. They were all one now. At daylight, they would see just what that looked like.

  “Those who ran will not be hunted,” Luca announced, as loudly as possible. His voice had started to go, water and rest needed. Beltza the black wolf nuzzled his side. “We will not begin this campaign with fear.”

  In a perfect world, this would be the only true battle on the journey to reinstate the Kingdom of Torrence. The rest of the fight coming with words—changing minds, sharing plans, gaining support.

  Luca knew he could not control what others would do. Just that moment someone might be watching the stars with the seeds of prolonged resistance on their mind. But if he had his druthers, this would be the only blood shed.

  “To your assignments, and your rest. Good night, my friends. Hitz ematen dizut.”

  The men responded in kind, and Luca turned away, Tala by his side, Beltza leading the way toward the camp tent the resistance had procured and guarded for Luca. Amarande waited for him there, and he’d been informed she’d tried to push past the guards at least once—they were there to protect her as much as keep her from joining the fray, injured and unarmed.

  “My Otsakumea, by morning, we must tell the entire group of the Warlord’s deception,” Tala said with a long sigh. This man was not one to enjoy his victory with so much to be done. The information they’d learned about the faux transfer of power had rattled him, to be sure. “Those who toiled in the shadow of the Warlord for so long deserve to know that the snake has not been cut off at the head.”

  Luca touched the man’s shoulder. The battle was catching up with him now—he could no longer hide his limp, his stitches were stiff and inflamed, and everything from his skin to the hair atop his head ached. “Yes, and by morning we will have a plan. For Geneva, for Inés and her army. For all of it. Rest, Tala. You need it and deserve it. Your plan worked better than we could have imagined.”

  The old man ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. At his side, the black wolf sat b
ack on her haunches. Waiting.

  “How can I rest when my mind churns with the start of a new plan? Our people are tired; they may not be ready yet to face down the Itspi. It worries me so that we must do this again. And at the home that raised you—I know you care for Ardenia. It will be—”

  “It will be fine.” Luca squeezed the man’s shoulder and then removed his hand. “I know you do not trust Ardenia and this new information does not help. But I need you to trust my princess—”

  “My Otsakumea, I feel badly about your princess. I must apologize.”

  “Tell her tomorrow, Tala. After we’re successful.” Spent, the leader nodded, relenting. Luca smiled. “She will find a way for us. I will find a way for us.”

  CHAPTER 55

  THE princess, the Otsakumea, the general, and the pirate convened in the officers’ tent set up on the outskirts of the encampment. Eight pro-Otxoa soldiers manned the exterior perimeter. Inside, the world as they knew it lay in pieces atop blankets and flickering under candle lamps.

  The fingerprints of dead kings littered it all.

  Domingu’s greedy attempt at mass regicide leading to a false revolution that became a real one.

  A prince, orphaned by said revolution, being hidden in plain sight in Sendoa’s kingdom, the best he could do for the family he helped murder.

  Then, in a second act, a queen stealing the king’s bastard son, abandoning her family, and raising him for her own and becoming the leader of the revolution her abandoned husband started after she refused to kill him.

  And now, after more calculated deaths, they were left with two women on thrones they’d stolen via conquest rather than blood, facing off against each other for the continent.

  Unless they were able to stop it.

  “I do not pretend to understand the whims of royals, but what in the stars is wrong with you people?” Ula asked after a quiet moment, brows tucked together, as she rethreaded a needle to address the princess’s wounds. She’d already cleaned and repaired some of Luca’s stitches, gone ragged in the fighting. “Someone should’ve sunk a dagger in Domingu’s heart twenty years ago and circumvented this mess.”

  “If not Domingu, it would be someone else. In fact, it is someone else,” Amarande answered through clenched teeth.

  Amarande was balled up on the tent rugs, held still by Luca’s embrace. Her prisoner’s tunic was sliced open, half her arm stitched as Ula again sterilized the needle over the flame. The wound from the prison cart cut her open from the bone tip of her shoulder down to the top of her wrist. The upper part was a violent wreck, and they’d agreed to attempt to keep the stitches above the elbow. Amarande swallowed and rushed out the words while she could. “It just took twenty years for the chips to fall and it happens to be two women vying for the end of the patriarchy.”

  Luca dropped a kiss on Amarande’s shoulder and tightened his grip as Ula prepared to dive again into the princess’s arm. “It would be poetic if not for the fact that unless these two powerful women kill each other, they’re coming for us next.”

  He was not wrong.

  Koldo stood and began a measured pace about one side of the tent, her soldier’s mind silently churning.

  “Hold still,” Ula commanded Amarande. “I can’t with this shaking.”

  “I’m not trying to,” she insisted, grabbing a fistful of the rug that had been laid out for them. Ula had offered a stick, but she’d not taken it, wanting the chance to participate in the conversation. “One would think the amount of alcohol in my bloodstream from the disinfecting portion of this would make this easier.”

  “If you’re asking to be knocked out, it’s too late.”

  Luca leaned in farther, his whole body a vise, the strength he’d earned in the Itspi’s stables doing what it could to keep Amarande still. “You are really terrible at being injured, Ama. It doesn’t suit you.”

  His thumb brushed the ragged linen on her injured hand. “What happened here?”

  Luca was trying to distract her. Despite the pain, Amarande forced out the words, “My. Brother.”

  Luca smoothed the gauze back down. “He must be a little like you, then.”

  “A. Little.”

  When the last stitch was finally tied off, Amarande forced her jaws apart. “I am no good at being injured mostly because I am terrible at being still. I cannot be stationary when a woman mad with power is bearing down on Ardenia with a threefold army. I may not be queen, but I must protect my people.”

  Koldo shook her head. “The timing is disastrous. Our regiments at the borders will not make it to Ardenia fast enough to beat the ships. And those border regiments are likely engaged with the soldiers who have been stationed there since the funeral.”

  Stars, yes. War may already have begun. Two-against-one at the crossroads between Ardenia, Basilica, Myrcell. Bile licked at Amarande’s throat.

  Koldo continued to lay out Ardenia’s weaknesses with her usual military precision. “Based on when Inés left, she will likely arrive at the Port of Ardenia before sundown tomorrow, even with all those ships and unfavorable winds.”

  “And if the winds are favorable?” Amarande asked.

  “Dawn. Ships can march all night.”

  A few hours from then.

  Amarande chewed her lip, feeling just a twinge of guilt about what she was about to say next. “If only we had Taillefer as bait.”

  “That is the only way I’d put up with him,” Ula spit, shoving her medical implements a little too hard into her kit. “Looked everywhere for that blasted blond creep. No sign of that psychopathic scoundrel or the man in Pyrenee purple who retrieved him from the prison cart.”

  The princess sighed. “We know where he is. Either the guard is delivering him to Inés’s feet or he is going on his own accord to fight for the power he feels she’s stolen from him.”

  Koldo did not lose a hitch in her renewed steps. “If he’s truly disowned, the second son has no power, no matter the tantrum he throws.”

  Amarande shook her head. “One would assume. But with Taillefer assume nothing.” She waved her good arm and stood, feeling better on her feet than she had in hours. “Let us forget him. He is the key to Inés, but we cannot even think of confronting her without first confronting my mother.” Amarande caught eyes with the general. “And Ferdinand.”

  “I will handle Ferdinand,” Koldo insisted, as smoothly as she would take an order. No one dared object. “The princess is right. Ardenia must come first. It will be much easier to defend from the inside.”

  “Yes, except my mother and brother have told the entire Sand and Sky I am dead to pave the way for his coronation—”

  “Princess, to be fair, your brother wanted no part in that. He wished to tell the people the truth, as he told you.” Koldo was not one to interrupt. Here, she did so with unwavering attention, nearly pleading for Amarande to understand her son was not part of the lie.

  Amarande accepted Koldo’s defense of Ferdinand with a nod. “I believe that, but his affection for the truth will not protect me any more than it will protect you, General. If Geneva finds it most convenient that either of us are dead, every blade but Ferdinand’s will be drawn in an attempt to make it so.”

  “She wanted me to return you alive.”

  “She’s my mother; she’s supposed to say that,” Amarande answered, blood hot in her cheeks. “But we all know it is clearly a much larger task to properly hide me away alive than it would be trotting out my body and blaming the madwoman who has come to conquer.” Amarande laced Luca’s fingers within hers. “Not to mention what she would do to Luca once she is finished with me.”

  Koldo rolled her shoulders. “I could return you alone, as ordered. She will not know we are on the same side. We gain entry, seek audience, and then—Princess, I do not mean to disregard your very complicated feelings for her—dispose of the Queen Mother.”

  The heaviness in Koldo’s clinical delivery was the only indication that the general had been mulling dispos
ing of the woman for years. It was the cleanest thing to do, and yet even the idea of it triggered the image of Renard in Amarande’s mind. Decisions like that could not be undone.

  Luca gently kissed the back of Amarande’s entwined hand. “General, with all due respect, I’m not sitting this one out. If Amarande is going to Ardenia, I am going by her side.”

  “Then we fight.” Ula drew in a deep breath. “This woman is not just your mother. She is the Warlord. We have the army we need to topple the castle.”

  Yes. Of course.

  Luca and his people had won the battle, but they had not won the war. Not yet.

  Luca nodded. “I planned to tell the resistance fighters in the morning. They will know, and they will want to confront her.”

  “They need to confront her. You need to confront her, Luca.” Ula jabbed Luca straight in the shoulder. “The Otxoa cannot be restored if the Warlord’s power is still viable in any way.”

  Luca jabbed her right back. “Then we storm the castle.”

  But Koldo wasn’t convinced. The general halted her pacing and turned to them, every inch the woman who had been by the Warrior King’s side for more than half her life.

  “It is incredible what the rebels did last night, Luca. I do not want to diminish that success.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “But?”

  “But they are not professional soldiers. They benefited from long-term planning and the element of surprise. We don’t have either advantage here.”

  “What if we arrive at dark?”

  Koldo shook her head. “Even if we gathered them to march right at this moment, we’d be approaching in complete daylight, as slow as they are. And if we put it off for a nighttime arrival, we might be too late and meet both Geneva and Inés.”

  Right. The general’s experience was invaluable here. She understood not only the timing but also the psychology. Koldo was, as always, the best possible person to have at one’s back.

  Amarande’s attention pooled on the parchment at the center of the tent. Her father, so wise, had to have the answer here. Somewhere. Yet after several minutes, his tenets stayed silent in her brain, exhaustion worming its way into her second wind.