Her participation in the battle had been incidental, an error of timing. She had intended to return before the battle started, but the Zeiihbu ruler she had wanted to overthrow had a different strategy in mind. He forced the battle early and she fought in it. She supposed she could have heeded the head of the royal army’s command to hide, but she had not felt right about it. They fought for her vision, and so should she.
When she returned from the battle, Ellida’s face had looked more lined, her hair whiter than it had when Adelina left. Of course, it had not helped that the majority of the royal army who had flanked Adelina when she rode out had not returned with her. Their deaths also tugged at her heart. At night, she remembered them and mourned for them. But during the day, she remained as passive as her role as Queen required. As passive as she also felt she needed to be around her newly appointed Guardian.
She entered the cellblock housing the vilest of the prisoners and her stomach pitched when the stench of body odor, rot, and feces greeted her. She clenched her jaw to prevent her supper from abandoning her and pushed forward. The cell she wanted was last on the block. She needed to see him. She needed to lay eyes on the man who ruled the tribe known as the Raiders.
The Raiders had existed longer than Adelina had been alive. They roamed the country in the north, robbing villages, burning what they left behind, and taking women at their will. The villagers who resisted were murdered, their throats slit without hesitation. As far as Adelina could tell, the Raiders had no home and no origin. And though they had been a bane for her parents, the Zeiihbu War had kept everyone’s focus off them. They thought themselves untouchable. But now Adelina had brought peace to Zeiihbu, and she refused to stop there. Her focus had been set on ending the Raiders’ plundering. Three months ago, the royal army had killed the head of the tribe, and today, they had captured his son.
She had been riding when she received word the prisoner had arrived at the Pit. In her excitement, she had rushed her horse to the castle and bounded down the stairs to the dungeon, her feet barely touching the stone as she ran. She did not bother to change her clothes. Though mud had now dried on her riding slacks, and her jacket held a thin coat of dust, she did not care. A prisoner of the Pit deserved no decorum. She also ignored her vow not to set foot in the dungeons. Today would be a one-time exception. Today she had to see the face of the last enemy against her plan for peace.
No sunlight reached the inhabitants in this part of the Pit. They were too far underground. The only light came from a few torches standing like sentries against the dark. Instead of adding warmth, their flames added eerie shadows to the chill clinging to the walls. She felt no less horror in this place than she had the first time she had set foot in it. But that was the point—to remind the prisoners of the gravity of their crimes, of the sorrow they had caused. This environment served that purpose.
She located the last cell, squared her shoulders, and prepared for the verbal battle she wanted. Although the Raider had not been here long, only hours, she expected to see misery on his face, remorse in his voice. She expected him to beg for his life, and she intended to capitalize on that to put a stop to the rest of his tribe. She did not expect to hear him singing.
She froze in her tracks outside visual range of the cell. She had heard many noises down here the last time she had visited. She had expected those, and steeled her heart in preparation for them. Wailing, crying, moaning—those were the standard sounds in this place. But not singing, and certainly not a joyful song about love. She listened, recognizing the song from her childhood.
Her mother used to sing it to her. The lyrics told the tale of the great love that had flourished between the first King and Queen of these lands, of the peace their love had brought and of how their love had lived with them into old age when they died in each other’s arms. Her mother had been a soprano. Her beautiful voice had drifted on the air as delicate as a leaf on the autumn breeze, captivating her audience. The voice Adelina heard now held the same command, as did the stringed instrument accompanying it. It brought Adelina back to her childhood, and it drew a smile across her face. She waited, and listened, though she knew she should not. This man did not deserve her devout attention, but she could not help the reaction. His voice chased away the cold of this dreadful place, warming her, and she held on to the feeling as long as she could.
When the song ended, she felt disappointment, but discarded it. She was Queen now, and had no time for such foolishness. Nor did she have the luxury of allowing a prisoner to sway her resolve, even if he did have a wonderful voice.
She approached the bars, surprised to find him waiting close behind them. His eyes studied her. They were crystal blue, clear, with no hint of the evil she had expected. He had the olive complexion of a Zeiihbu native. His dark hair was not dirty and unkempt, as she had imagined for a roaming man. Instead, he kept it clean and tidy. It ran long to his shoulders, but it seemed freshly trimmed. Even his clothes appeared neat. The only scruff on him came in the form of stubble along his jaw. It looked nice, she thought, and frowned to cover the sudden attraction. It had no place here. A murderer, no matter how charming, could not be considered handsome.
He smiled at her, a gesture both natural and genuine, and bowed. Her frown deepened to a scowl and she did not bother to nod in return. “My Queen,” he said, rising slowly as he continued to study her. “Have you no courtesy for one of your own people?”
“I do not consider Raiders to be my people any more than I consider animals in the forest to be mine.”
“You consider us animals?” he asked and approached the bars. “That’s a shame. I had hoped you might help us achieve peace in the same way you helped the Zeiihbu. Word of your bravery and wisdom has even reached us in our travels.”
“Travels?” she snorted. “Crimes is more like it.”
“Crimes,” he echoed, and his shoulders slumped forward. “Then you’ve already sentenced me. Why not execute me now? What do you wait for?” He turned from her and walked to the far wall. Bending over, he picked up the instrument he had been playing. A dulcet guitar, she realized. Only this one looked homemade. A soft red gleam shone from the polished wood half-tube serving as its shell. The pearl tabs holding all seven strings in place appeared worn from constant adjustment and play. He turned in time to catch her looking at them and a smile returned to his lips. “Do you like it? I made it.”
“You were playing it a minute ago.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Music is a gift.”
“Your power?” she asked, bringing her eyes back to his.
“No. Just a gift.”
She nodded in agreement before she realized she had done so and covered the mistake with indignation. “How did you get that instrument?”
“I told you,” he responded, his smile unfaltering. “I made it.”
“You know what I meant. The guards should have taken it from you when they brought you here.”
“Threw me in here is more like it,” he said. “But don’t worry. Your guards haven’t forgotten their protocols. They took it, and I took it back.”
“How?”
“That’s my secret to keep. I turned myself in. I would think letting me keep my instrument would be a fitting gesture in return.”
“Even if that were true,” she told him, “prisoners are not allowed personal effects. I’ll ask you to hand it over or I’ll send the guards in to get it.”
“It is true,” he said, but extended the instrument through the bars anyway. She reached out to take it, but her Guardian snatched it from his hands before she could touch it.
“Careful,” he protested. “It took me weeks to make.”
“And likely it took so long because it hides a weapon,” the Guardian said. “I won’t leave her exposed to your murderous plots.”
“I’m no murderer. I came to talk to her.”
“We know what Raiders do.”
He gripped the bars. The heat in his eyes turned dangerous. “And wh
at is it we do?”
“Rob, steal—”
“Only what we need to survive,” he countered.
The Guardian narrowed her eyes and continued. “Murder, rape, burn villages to the ground.”
“Lies,” he snapped. “We take food to eat. We take clothes to survive the winter. We aren’t savages.”
“I don’t lie,” she shot back. “I saw the bodies in the villages below Clear Mountain. I helped heal the men your people stabbed, the women you—”
“May,” Adelina interrupted, conveying her authority without raising her voice. May stopped talking and Adelina tilted her head, curious as she studied the man in front of her. She saw pain on his face. Unmistakable pain that did not fit with the ruthless men May described. Anger also lived in the hard set of his lips and the tightening of his knuckles on the bars. He knew of Clear Mountain, but he also knew something she did not.
Knowledge was the most important tool a Queen could have, she remembered her mother telling her, and opened her mind to learning from this man. She took a step forward and then another, holding his gaze with one of equal intensity. When she stood in front of him, she placed her hands below his on the bars. May gasped in protest, but Adelina ignored the noise. “You say you turned yourself in. You came to speak to me.”
“I did.”
“Then I require honesty. You claim the men who terrorized Clear Mountain were not Raiders, but we know they were. How can they be both?”
“Have you no criminals among your people?” he asked in response. Her eyes left his to stare into the bleak shadows of his cell for only a brief second, but when she met his gaze again, she knew he had not missed the reaction. He nodded. “You have this place, of course, so you must. You don’t like it though.”
“It serves a purpose.”
“Not as swift a purpose as execution,” he replied. “The men who fulfilled their whims on the villages of Clear Mountain were part of my father’s tribe once. I won’t deny that. But they were no more human than you think I am. They broke away and formed a band of their own, performing the acts May mentioned, but they do not represent my people.”
“What happened to them?”
His hand slipped down the bar, coming to rest against hers. He took comfort from the touch, she realized, and knew what he was about to say. “I tracked them down and took care of them.”
“And you said you weren’t a murderer,” May growled from the shadows.
His eyes snapped away from Adelina. Anger returned to them. “It was no less than they deserved. You saw what they did, and so did I. The people from those villages deserved justice.”
“Without a trial?” May countered. “That makes you no better than your so-called criminals.”
“Perhaps that’s true.” He removed his hands from the bars. “But you’re no better than I am. Your trials are a farce if you conduct them with preconceived notions. I’d even wager you’d hang me now if you could.”
“You’re right. I would,” May said with a chilling smile. “Because I don’t believe a word you’ve said, except for the last part. Those people do deserve justice, and the Raiders will pay for what they’ve done.”
“So be it,” he responded and turned from them. “Leave me. There’s no point in talking any longer.”
He was right, Adelina decided. There was no point. She watched the man withdraw to the far side of his cell and vowed to give her new Guardian a firm lecture when they returned to the privacy of the royal quarters. She could have gained more information from this conversation, maybe even found a solution to keep the peace, but May had effectively killed the chance. For today, at least. Adelina would try again tomorrow.
She turned to go, stopping when she saw the dulcet guitar clutched between May’s hands. She reached out to take it, meeting resistance from her Guardian. Already angry, she raised her eyes to May’s, ensuring the woman received the message. She would give in on this one thing, or she would suffer for it. Although Adelina could not control who stood as her guard, she could control how she reacted to that person, and how miserable she made the Elders’ lives. As far as she was concerned, May was a breath away from understanding the full impact of Adelina’s will.
May’s throat constricted and her hands released the instrument. Turning back to the Raider, Adelina approached the bars one last time. He remained at the back wall, unwilling to meet her. She did not blame him. She slipped the instrument through the bars and laid it on the cleanest pile of hay she could find. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I am too,” he told her.
Unsure of what else to say, she nodded and stepped back. Then it happened. Her heart heated, and then her body. The closest she had ever felt to this level of warmth had been when she had caught fever as a child. She had been ill for two weeks, with spots covering her skin. It had been uncomfortable, but this felt almost pleasant. Before she had time to figure out what it was, the color shot from her. Yellow rose into the air to slam into the stream of green coming from him. Then, the colors turned to rich crimson, split, and poured back into both of them. When it was over, she felt confused, weak, and betrayed.
“What have you done?” she hissed at him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. His eyes grew wide with his own confusion, but she ignored it. This had to be a trick, a spell or power to convince her the colors had been real. She refused to believe the alternative.
“I swear I didn’t do this,” he insisted when she turned from him.
“Swear to it in court,” she said. “We’ll add it to your list of crimes.”
He cursed. She disappeared into the shadows, but not before his final taunt reached her ears.
“You mean to tell me you’d execute your own husband?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
HE HATED the words as soon as they left his lips. They echoed off the walls, mocking him with the absurdity of his desperation well after Adelina’s footsteps had faded. Within the hour, the guards came to extinguish the torches. He understood that to mean bedtime had come, though sleep seemed laughable in this place. The dungeon brought only discomfort to mind. The little bit of hay lining his cell smelled of sweat, urine, and death. The stone beneath it bled moisture through his clothes, soaking his skin and causing him to shiver with cold. He ground his teeth, controlling the need to chatter, but his muscles would not obey the same command. They shook in the effort to stay warm and convulsed from the pain the unyielding stone brought to them.
More than once his misery drove him to wonder why he remained subjected to this, and why he did not leave. And more than once, he reminded himself he had come to seek help for his people and he still had not received it.
Of course, he had never expected to stay overnight in this sty. He had known convincing the Queen to align with him would be difficult, but he had naively believed he could achieve it in one afternoon.
A scream tore down the hall. He brought his hands to his ears, blocking the sound out, and with it, the urge to run. His people also screamed in their makeshift camp, lost to a plague that had taken many since his father’s death. He needed a talented Healer like the one guarding the Queen to save them. Yet the woman would sooner kill him than help him, he realized, and squeezed his eyes shut.
Things may not have gone according to plan so far, but he could not give up. No matter the cost, he had to convince Adelina’s Guardian to visit the camp. Once she arrived, she would change her mind. How could she not? It would take someone callous to look at the skeletal bodies of the children or see the bloody eyes of those who could not eat, could not sleep, and let them suffer.
It would take someone callous or someone who had seen the destruction the rogue men had wrought. The Healer had witnessed the worst of their crimes and it had poisoned her. He had felt no less angry the first time he had seen what they had done. And since his people had spent the majority of their existence hiding in the woods and mountains, at least until the war had depleted their resources, the woman cou
ld not know these men were deviants. She could only see them as an example of the norm.
His father’s decision to steal from the villagers instead of seeking their assistance did not help matters. He had wanted to remain separate. He had wanted to maintain his pride. In the end, that decision and that same pride had brought his death. And it might also cause the deaths of everyone who had trusted him.
“Are you hungry?” The voice drifted to him as no more than a whisper, but it seemed like a yell in the darkness.
He scrambled to his feet. “Who’s there?”
“It’s only me,” the voice said and this time he recognized her. The Queen. He heard the sound of steel striking flint, saw a spark, and then the torch lit and he could see her. Although earlier she had worn what looked to be riding gear, she had changed into a dress, a simple cotton and lace garment that highlighted her lean body.
“Is it morning?” he asked.
“Not quite, but close,” she responded and turned to face him. Though he had heard stories of her bravery in the war, and heard tales of the cunning plan she had executed to win peace in Zeiihbu, he had never heard anyone mention her beauty. He wished he had. At least then he would have been prepared for the way it had stopped his heart yesterday.
Her dark brown hair looked almost black. It cascaded down her back in silken waves that called for him to run his fingers through it. Her eyes shone copper. With gold flecks. He had noticed it when she stood in front of him. The color in them sparked, ignited, and burned all thought from his brain. Her skin was smooth and milk white, dotted with freckles, and he ached to touch it. He had given into that urge for a moment yesterday when he had needed the contact most. His hand had only brushed hers, but the warmth had started building, and it had not eased until they had been wed.
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