Anabella nodded.
“And that one,” she said, wiping her brow on her sleeve as she pointed to the other door. “Tha’s where Lord Warwick has me keeping his especial friend, as ye say. There’s a chair, and an extra cot, though I been meaning to take it down to the hall, for we need them somethin’ desperate.”
“I shouldn’t have called them special,” Wyat said. “I... only meant...”
“I know what ye meant. Whoever all these men are, find their way to us, they’re just charges. I’ve no care of the name they wore ’fore comin’ here, and neither do the others,” Missy said with a light nod. “Go on, with your business for Lord Warwick. I’ve my own down in the hall, as ye might’ve kenned.”
Wyat nodded. He looked toward the door. “You have our gratitude, Missy. It is evident your time is not without value.”
“Hm,” she replied.
Wyat entered. Anabella’s heart was suddenly no longer in her control, skipping out of control with erratic beats. She’d known this moment lay ahead, but had not given it the proper thought, and now the moment was upon her. Darrick was inside. Her Darrick. And now, she would see him, but she’d given no care to washing her face, or bothering to do something, anything, with her hair. She would not be the girl he left in the Wintergarden, rosy-cheeked and so in love with him that it might have been tinged with madness.
“Mama?” Stefan asked.
“Sorry. My mind traveled elsewhere for a spell.”
Wyat appeared in the doorway with a confused look. “There must be some confusion. This is not the man we expected to see.”
“There was two men, until a month or so ago. Or was it longer? I donnae ken the passing of time as you might,” Missy replied with a thoughtful look.
“Two men?” Wyat stepped closer to her. “What did the other man look like?”
“I dinnae? Dark hair, tall. Striking, that one. He didnae coalesce long. Steward Law took to ’im, they went out for runs, if ye ken. Out to Drummond’s Cock. Who runs if they donnae have to?”
Wyat reached for her arm. “Where did he go?”
Missy’s pleasantness faded. She ripped her arm away. “I donnae know, ’cause ’tis not my business what Lord Warwick’s especial guests are up to.”
He dropped his hand back to his side, contrite. “Apologies, miss.”
“All I know, he left with Lord Warwick and the others. Steward Rutland and Steward Law.”
Anabella’s heart raced even faster. She would not be facing her husband this day. She’d given her hope to this, and she would pay, as she’d always paid for choosing him. The old lingering belief that she’d never see him again replaced any happiness she’d conjured over the preceding months of limited freedom.
If Darrick wasn’t in that room, who was?
“The other man, then,” Wyat said, voicing her own thoughts. “What do you know about him?”
“I’m not supposed to know nothin’,” Missy replied, defensive. “I only know they came in together, both men. Some say from the Wastelands, but ’tis none of my business.”
“That man. Is he resting?”
Missy shrugged. She started for the stairs. “Lord Warwick and the other, Lord Strong, neither liked what I had to say.”
“Which was?”
“I donnae think that one’ll wake again. He’s just too stubborn to let the Guardians do their work.”
Missy excused herself and shuffled back down the stairs.
“That’s Ryan Strong,” Wyat mused when Missy was gone. “The scout said it was Steward Strong’s own son they sent in to rescue...” He trailed off. Even alone, they didn’t dare speak his name.
“Then he must have grown close to him,” Anabella said. She watched the door. Beyond was the closest she might ever feel to her husband again. If he did wake, perhaps Stefan would like to speak to a man who knew his father. Perhaps better, even, than Wyat, for desperation birthed friendships that could not be sundered by time or distance.
Wyat leaned against the stone wall, sinking into a crouch. His sigh was muffled in his hands, splayed against his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“This was our last hope, Anabella. I am lost for what to do next. Where to take you. D—your husband, he could be anywhere. Anywhere at all.”
Anabella released Stefan’s hands and knelt before Wyat. She peeled his hands from his face, and when she spoke, she didn’t know where the hopefulness of her words came from, only that it was real. “No, Wyat. This is where we belong. This is where he would want us to be, tending to the man who gave him his freedom. And, as for me, for Stefan, it’s where we want to be, too. Wherever he’s gone, whatever his reasons for following Lord Warwick, this is where he’ll return. I know it.”
Wyat looked up, bleary-eyed. “Then we’ll need to ask Missy for more of those cots she can’t spare.”
* * *
Ravenna traced her finger along the thin line the moonlight cast into their small cell. Beside her, Esmerelda tried to sleep. It was no use. Ravenna had tried, too, but there was nothing there but her fear and regret.
Her magic didn’t work here. The sorcerer, Oldwin, had done something to her, or to the cell. Her raven form was useless. She could not fly away, as she’d planned, to find help. She could do nothing. She was effectively neutered.
Esmerelda draped an arm across her waist. “It will be okay, Ravenna. We’ll find our way out.”
Ravenna almost laughed. She was supposed to be the strong one. She’d determined to protect Esmerelda, and it was Esmerelda who’d broken the paralysis lingering between them. “I won’t let them harm your child, Esmerelda. I swear to you.”
Esmerelda squeezed her hand on the curve in Ravenna’s waist. “I don’t think we should be making promises to one another. Not in this place.”
Ravenna turned and faced her. “You don’t sound scared.”
“You expect me to cry myself to sleep, a defenseless pup?”
Ravenna sighed. “I do not think you are defenseless, or a pup. You’re stronger than me. I’m terrified.”
Esmerelda’s breath formed curls in the air of the chilled cell. “I am as well, except... Jesse would say I am stubborn, but if he could see me now, it is from him I learned to find calm in chaos. He wouldn’t be panicked, if he found himself where we are now. He would not surrender to the fear.”
“There’s something special about Jesse. Something not even he knows, I don’t think,” Ravenna said. “It’s more than his Medvedev blood.”
Esmerelda nodded against the small pillow. “Aye. I suspect he knows it, too, and would like to forget it.”
Ravenna smiled in the darkness. “That does sound like him.”
“You care for him, don’t you?”
Ravenna considered her answer. She wanted there to be nothing but honesty between them. Esmerelda was now her sister, to the end. “Not in the way you do.”
Esmerelda dropped her eyes. “Right.”
“It tears you apart inside. I can see it.”
“It diverts me.” Esmerelda caressed her belly. “It tries to keep me from what I must do.”
“Must do? Or want to do?”
“Words,” Esmerelda said with a sigh. “They mean nothing. What we do is all that matters. Ryan is the end of my path. The two of us and our child.”
“And this is what you want?”
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”
“I thought I knew what I wanted,” Ravenna said. “I left my home, my people, everything I had ever known, to be with Drystan. And then I left him, too.”
“He was captured,” Esmerelda comforted. “Taken to a place you could never find on your own. You had no choice but to leave him until you could find a way.”
A surge of warmth coursed through Ravenna, despite the strong chill from the sea air. She’d never had anyone she could talk to like this. “I could have tried harder. If I’d wanted to.” She sighed. “The tracker I told you about. The one I gave Dryst
an. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“I sensed him leave his prison. Days past. He’s free now. How or why I cannot say, but he’s done it, all without my help. Without me. I’d like to think... well...”
Esmerelda propped her hands under her head, watching her. “Does it help to say these things aloud?”
“Maybe.”
“Then say them.”
“I don’t think I ever loved Drystan the way he loved me,” Ravenna replied, and it was as if, for a moment in time, she was weightless, drifting. “I wanted to. I have never wanted anything more in my life than for my love to be true and pure, and for it to be all I could ever need for the rest of my days.”
“What you describe, this love that is blind to your own needs, is exactly the cage all women are expected to contentedly climb into when they are given to their husband.”
“Is it still a cage when it is your choice?”
“Just because you were not forced does not mean it was a choice.” Esmerelda pressed her forehead to Ravenna’s. “You chose love because you thought only a man could deliver you of your freedom. Just as you did with Jesse. A means to an end.”
Ravenna’s inward gasp startled them both. She’d never considered it in these terms, but they felt closer to her truth than anything she’d reconciled in her mind before. “Where did this wisdom come from, Esmerelda?”
Esmerelda laughed. “Do you mean, where does the daughter of a lord, who was only bred for one purpose, find such enlightenment?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“When the cage door opens, the mind follows,” Esmerelda said after a heavy pause. “Even here, I am more free than I was in Warwicktown, and if I die here, then I still would not have chosen different.”
“Then you are further along in your enlightenment than I am. For all I can think of is the Langenacht Oldwin promised me.”
“He’s taunting you, Ravenna. He wants to break you, because this gives him power over you. The king would never allow his bride to be sullied this way. If you were to become pregnant from such a vile act, the paternity would forever be in question, and so would the succession.”
“If he even intends for me to wed Eoghan.”
Esmerelda balked. “Why else would you be here?”
Ravenna rolled onto her back. “Wondering about this is what keeps me awake, no matter how tired I am.”
Esmerelda reached over and laced their hands together. “There won’t be a Langenacht. There won’t be a wedding. We’ll be gone before either can happen.”
Ravenna chuckled at the raw confidence in Esmerelda’s words. “How?”
Esmerelda closed her eyes. “I haven’t figured that out. But I know if we believe it, we will find a way.”
41
The Demands of Darkness
Brandyn awoke to the violent sensation of drowning. His nostrils burned as he thrashed in desperation to expel the assault, arms flailing as he kicked his feet to push to the surface, going nowhere. His lungs were on fire, but the water pooled mainly around an obstruction in his mouth. It was large enough that he couldn’t close his jaw, and it tasted of filth and old cloth, and a lifetime of cleaning floors.
“I can stop,” a cool, soothing voice called out. Brandyn didn’t recognize it. Maybe if he didn’t open his eyes, he could pretend he was still asleep in his tent, that he didn’t feel the rope cutting into his flesh as it bound him to the chair, or smell the dank air of what seemed to be a cellar.
“Stop,” Brandyn begged, though the word was indistinguishable from a grunt with the mass of rotting fabric wedged in his mouth, drenched in foul water.
A hand ripped the rag from his mouth. Brandyn heaved out a breath, then sucked one in. He didn’t know which he needed more, to be rid of what was in him or to pull in precious air.
“Tell me how many are coming.”
Brandyn pitched forward. Only the restraints kept him from falling. Now that his mind was not swirling wholly around the attack of water and filth, he became acutely aware of the dull, aching pains in his arms and legs. Memories to pair with these aches began to come back, too, but he pushed them down for later.
A hand gripped his chin, ripping his gaze upward again. Now he did open his eyes and found himself looking at a man he’d never seen before but knew just the same. He knew it was Mortain for the otherworldly sense of the creature. He looked ordinary enough, features like any other nondescript man, but it was the eyes that gave him away.
“It cannot only be the Southerlands, for I could crush them with a wave of my hand. So tell me. Who else. How many. The command order they require before they will attack the city.”
Brandyn spat into the sorcerer’s face.
He was promptly rewarded with the replacement of the rag. He struggled to expel it, but Mortain held it firm over his mouth.
“I won’t ask you forever, Lord Blackwood. I have some patience at my age, but not enough for whatever childish heroics swirl around in your head as you struggle to make sense of this.”
Brandyn thrashed against his bindings. Ember always said anyone who would dare try and best you should feel the pain too. That you should never show you were defeated. If he was here then he’d already been defeated. But he would not stop kicking, stop screaming through his bindings, until Mortain finished the job. He would not go quietly.
“Go on. Get your energies out. That’s a good boy. I can wait.”
Brandyn went still. His eyes burned from the strange air, but he focused on boring holes in Mortain anyway, blinking hard through the unwelcome tears.
Mortain removed the rag. Brandyn wanted, more than anything, a glass of mead or anything to clear the pungent taste from his mouth, but he dared not ask. He wouldn’t be granted anything here, except a slow death.
“Now then. This doesn’t have to be so terrible, Brandyn. I take no pleasure in punishing you. You might not believe that, though it’s true. It is. But you have something that I need, and I will use whatever means to extract it from you. Would it not be much easier to simply give it to me willingly?”
“If you’re such a brilliant sorcerer, why not take it from my mind?”
Mortain’s amused confidence wavered. “You already know the answer, Brandyn. Your Ravenwood blood grants you abilities that provide some challenge to me. You keep your thoughts hidden, where I cannot find them. Not without force.” He dropped himself lower so that their eyes met. “But what you have felt this far is only a taste. I will sever your fingers one by one and feed them to you, as I set a thousand rats upon you to partake in a slow but bountiful feast. And that is only the morning festivities.”
Brandyn tried hard to hide his fear from the creature. He would feed upon it, and when he did, he would take until there was nothing left of him but the memories that once made him.
“You came here to take the Easterlands,” Mortain said. “As they have taken what was yours.”
“I came here to take your life,” Brandyn answered. “But now I see you are nothing like what they said you were. You look like no more than an ordinary man, nothing to be frightened of. It will not be so hard as I imagined in my mind, in the end.”
Mortain laughed. “And how now do you see yourself accomplishing this impossible task?”
Brandyn shook as he forced his mouth into a grin. “It’s as you said. My Ravenwood blood.”
“As weak and diluted as it is?”
“Not so weak as to give you what you want from me.”
Mortain turned away. When he pivoted back, his anger was all Brandyn saw before the fist connected with his face, sending him back to the darkness.
* * *
Ravenna pressed her hands into the fabric of her dress as she walked a pace ahead of the guards. She held her head high and back, knowing full well that any who bore witness would have certain beliefs of her, and she intended to fulfill none of them. But at this hour the halls were empty. They passed only more sleepy guards and the occasional se
rvant.
The walk was longer than she expected. They bypassed the hall to the king’s apartments and continued on long enough for her to wonder if the sorcerer’s remote location was intentional on behalf of a king who must possess at least some insecurities about the powerful magician.
At last the guards flanked a set of double doors. The dark wood was inlaid with swirling patterns familiar to her but not enough to provoke recognition.
The guards opened the doors. One put a heavy hand on her back and shoved her in, and before she could turn to address it, a gust of wind knocked her forward as the doors again closed.
“Oldwin,” Ravenna said. Her hands threatened to shake, but she would not allow it. She’d made a promise, as much to Esmerelda as herself. If she did not have the courage to see it through, then she did not deserve to survive this night.
The sorcerer buttoned the cuffs on his blouse. He’d been sleeping then, and had redressed for her. “You’ve come here to bargain with me.”
“Did you read that in my mind, or is that a guess?”
“You’ve confirmed it now, in any event.”
Ravenna looked around the room. The appointments were generous, but old. Ripe with the musty scent of the forgotten. It settled into everything, all except Oldwin. She sucked in a breath, inhaling both her strength and the room’s strangeness. “I’ve come to tell you that I will submit to your Langenacht willingly, without fight. But I want something from you in return.”
Oldwin grinned. “And you believe you’re somehow in a position to make demands?”
“You accepted my request to come to you. You pulled yourself from sleep to do it. There must be some interest on your part.”
“Don’t underestimate the curiosity of an old man,” Oldwin said. He regarded her with a look that chilled her. “I cannot help wanting to know what it is you ask in return.”
“Esmerelda’s child is unharmed. You will have royal attendants see the child born healthy, and it will be given back to the mother, where it will stay.”
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