The Beauty of Darkness

by Mary E. Pearson

  The captain paled. An entire platoon dead? But he made no further comment, complying with Rafe’s wish to explain as they rode. He shot a last sideways glance at me but was too polite to ask who I was. He’d surely seen me riding in front of Rafe on his horse and probably assumed something unsavory. I didn’t want to embarrass Rafe or the captain with the truth at this point. We’d all heard what he said about the rage they still nursed toward Morrighan, but as the captain returned to his horse, his soldiers eyed me with curiosity too. With the remnants of my clan dress, and my skin still spattered with blood, I surely looked like a wild barbarian in their eyes. What on earth was their king doing riding with me?

  The glances and stares didn’t escape Rafe. He looked down and shook his head.

  Yes, he had much to explain.

  * * *

  I didn’t get even a passing moment to hold Rafe. To tell him how sorry I was. To convey any kind of sorrow at all. The convoy resumed immediately. Maybe it was just as well for Rafe to have a chance to absorb this news without words from me stirring his emotions further.

  I had met his father once. Briefly. He was an old man walking up the steps of the citadelle, a limp in his gait, and he required assistance. That sight had sent terror pulsing through me. He was old enough to be my father’s father. I had assumed the worst about the age of the prince, though I knew now, it wouldn’t have mattered how old or young the Dalbreck king would have been. My terror was rooted in the reality of this man arriving in Civica to sign marriage agreements. At the sight of him, I saw my choices being crushed, my voice being silenced forever in a foreign kingdom I knew little about. I was property to be bartered like a wagon full of wine, though perhaps less precious and certainly far less enjoyed. Hush, Arabella, what you have to say doesn’t matter.

  I knew this king had to have some redeeming quality for Rafe to love him and for Sven to tear up at the news, but I couldn’t forget that this king also told his son, Take a mistress after the wedding if she doesn’t suit you. Only for Rafe’s sake could I mourn him.

  With thirty soldiers to escort us now, I had suggested I ride my own horse farther behind in our caravan. I knew it would be a more comfortable ride for all concerned if I wasn’t there as Rafe and Sven tried to explain where they had been for the last several months. How angry would Dalbreck be that I was the cause of their prince’s disappearance? I’d already heard the tone with which the captain said Morrighan, as if it were a poison to be spat out.

  The wind picked up, cool and crisp. I missed Rafe’s warmth at my back, the comfort of his arms around me, the nudge of his chin at the side of my head. My hair stank of oil, smoke, and dirt, even the river that had nearly killed us both, and yet he had nuzzled close, as if it smelled of flowers, as if he didn’t care if I was or ever had been a proper princess.

  “Rafe seemed shocked. I take it the king’s poor health was one of his lies too?”

  I hadn’t noticed that Kaden had come up alongside me. He had probably been tallying the lies ever since I left him on the terrace.

  I looked at him, his shoulders slumped. Spent. But the weariness I saw in his eyes came from someplace else, from words that had carved out pieces of his flesh, one calculated day after another. My words. I scrambled for a defense, but there was no more anger in his expression, and that left me hollow. It gave me nothing to push back against. I had no game pieces left to play.

  “I’m sorry, Kaden.”

  His lip lifted in a pained expression, and he shook his head, as if to ward off any more apologies from me. “I’ve had time to think about it,” he said. “There’s no reason I should have expected the truth from you. Not when I was the one to lie and betray you first back in Terravin.”

  It was true. He had lied and betrayed me, but somehow my lie seemed like the greater crime. I had played with his need to be loved. I had listened sympathetically to his deepest, most painful secrets that he had never shared with anyone. He let me into a raw corner of his soul, and I used that to gain his trust.

  I sighed, too weary to parse out guilt like chits in a card game. Did it matter if my pile was bigger or his? “That was a lifetime ago, Kaden. We were both different people then. We both used lies and truth for our own purposes.”

  “What about now?”

  I saw him holding it out to me tentatively, truth, a treaty written on the air between us. Was truth even possible? I wasn’t sure what it was anymore, or if now was the time for it.

  “What is it you want, Kaden? I’m not sure why you’re even here.”

  His blond hair whipped in the wind. He squinted into the distance, but no words were forthcoming. I saw the struggle, his search for the false calm he always painted on his face. It was beyond his grasp now.

  “You’re the one who just proposed truth,” I reminded him.

  An anguished smile pulled at his mouth. “All those years … I didn’t want to see the Komizar for what he was. He saved me from a monster, and I became just as driven as he was. I was ready to make an entire kingdom pay for the sins of my father—a man I haven’t seen in over a decade. I’ve spent half of my life waiting for the day he would die. I blocked out the kindnesses of every person in Morrighan that I ever met, saying it didn’t matter. It was the cost of war. My war. Nothing else mattered.”

  “If you hated him so much, Kaden, why didn’t you just kill your father? Long ago. You’re an assassin. For you it would have been an easy enough matter.”

  He cleared his throat, and his hand tightened on the reins. “Because it wasn’t enough. Every time I imagined my knife slitting his throat, it didn’t give me what I needed. Death was too quick. The longer I planned for the day, the more I wanted. I wanted him to suffer. Know. I wanted him to watch everything he had denied me slip from his fingers one piece at a time. I wanted him to die in a hundred different ways, slowly, agonizingly, day by day, the way I had when I begged on street corners, terrified that I wouldn’t bring in enough to satisfy the animals he sold me to. I wanted him to feel as sharp a lash as the one he took to me.”

  “You said it was beggars who beat you.”

  “They did, but only after he laid the first marks, and those were the deepest ones.”

  I flinched at the cruelty he had suffered, but the horror of how long he had planned and hungered for vengeance left a sickening lump in my throat. I swallowed. “And you still want this?”

  He nodded without hesitation. “Yes, I still wish him dead, but now there’s something else that I want even more.” He turned to face me, worried lines fanning out from his eyes. “I don’t want any more innocents to die. The Komizar will spare no one, not Pauline, Berdi, or Gwyneth—no one. I don’t want them to die, Lia.… and I don’t want you to die.” He looked at me as if he could see death’s pallor on my face already.

  My stomach rolled. I thought of the last words Venda had spoken to me, the missing verses someone had torn from the book, Jezelia, whose life will be sacrificed. I hadn’t shared that verse with anyone. Some things I had to keep tucked and secret for now. Truth was still far off for me.

  “It’s a whole kingdom in jeopardy, Kaden. Not just the few you know.”

  “Two kingdoms. There are the innocents in Venda too.”

  My eyes stung, thinking about Aster and those who were slaughtered in the square. Yes, two kingdoms in jeopardy. Anger bubbled inside me at the scheming of the Komizar and the Council.

  “The clans deserve more than what they’ve been dealt,” I said, “but a terrible threat grows in Venda, one that has to be stopped. I don’t know how to make it all work, but I’ll try.”

  “Then you’ll need help. I have nothing to go back to, Lia, not as long as the Council is in power. And I’m just as hated in my birth home of Morrighan. I can’t even go back to the Vagabond camps anymore. If I’m with you—”

  “Kaden—”

  “Don’t make more of it than it is, Lia. We want the same thing. I’m offering you my help. Nothing more.”

  And there was
the truth that Kaden was trying to believe. Nothing more. But what I saw in his eyes was more. There was still so much need in him. It would be a difficult path for me to navigate. I didn’t want to mislead or hurt him again. Still, he was offering me something I couldn’t turn down. Help. And a Vendan assassin in my employ was something of unquestionable value. How I would love to see the cabinet’s reaction to that—especially the Chancellor and Scholar. We want the same thing.

  “Then tell me what you know about the Komizar’s plans. Who else in the Morrighese cabinet was he conspiring with besides the Chancellor and Royal Scholar?”

  He shook his head. “The only one I know of is the Chancellor. The Komizar kept those details to himself—to share his key contacts would give away too much power. He only told me about the Chancellor because I had to deliver a letter to his manor once. I was thirteen and the only Vendan who could speak Morrighese without an accent. I looked like any other messenger boy to the maid who answered the door.”

  “What did the letter say?”

  “It was sealed. I didn’t read it, but I think it was a request for more scholars. A few months later, several arrived at the Sanctum.”

  More and more, I had been pondering just how many had conspired with the Komizar besides the Chancellor and the Scholar. I’d been thinking about my brother’s death and was sure it wasn’t a chance encounter. What was a whole Vendan battalion doing so far from the border in the first place? They weren’t marching on an outpost or kingdom, and as soon as my brother’s company was dead, they turned around and went home. They were lying in wait, perhaps uncertain when the encounter would occur, but somehow they knew my brother’s company was coming. Had word been sent ahead by someone in Morrighan? The slaughter was planned. Even when I met with the chievdar in the valley, he never expressed surprise at running into the platoon of men. Could the treachery in Morrighan have reached even into the ranks of the military?

  A sudden hard gallop clipped the air. A soldier circled his horse around to my side. “Madam?” The word was stiff on his tongue as if he wasn’t quite sure what to call me. He strained to keep the innuendo out of his tone. It was obvious that Rafe hadn’t told the captain everything yet.

  “Yes?”

  “The king wishes for you to come ride at his side. We’re almost there.”

  The king. This new reality rattled beneath my ribs. The coming days were going to be difficult for Rafe. Besides dealing with his grief, he’d be under as much scrutiny as I would be. This could change everything. Our plans. My plans. There was no way around it.

  I glanced back at Kaden. “We’ll talk more later.”

  He nodded, and I followed the soldier to the front of the caravan.

  * * *

  I looked at Rafe but couldn’t imagine him sitting on a throne. I could only see him on the back of a horse, a soldier, his hair sun-kissed and windblown, fire in his eyes, intimidation in his gaze, and a sword in his hand. That was the Rafe I knew. But he was more than that now. He was the ruler of a powerful kingdom, and no longer the heir apparent. His lids were heavy, as if all his lost days of sleep were finally overtaking him. No man, not even one as strong as Rafe, could go forever on handfuls of rest.

  The captain rode on the other side of him, conferring with a soldier. I didn’t know how Rafe had explained his long absence. I was certain most details of Terravin had been left out. What did a captain care about a tavern maid serving a farmer?

  Rafe turned, knowing I was looking at him, and smiled. “Hot baths for both of us first thing.”

  Was it wrong for me to wish it could be a single hot bath for us both? A few blessed hours where we could forget that the rest of the world existed? After everything we’d been through, weren’t we entitled to that much? I was tired of waiting for tomorrows, hopes, and maybes.

  “There she is!” I heard Orrin call from somewhere ahead of us.

  I looked and saw a structure rising on a gentle knoll in the distance. Two soldiers galloped ahead of our party to announce us. This was an outpost?

  “That’s Marabella?” I said to Rafe.

  “Not what you were expecting?”

  Not at all. I expected a sea of tents. Perhaps some wooden barricades. Maybe a fortification of sod. This was the Cam Lanteux, after all, and no permanent structures were allowed here. It wasn’t just an understanding—it was part of a very old treaty.

  Instead what I saw was a sprawling stone structure with gleaming white walls, lithe and graceful, spreading out like beautiful swan wings from a tall gate tower. As we got closer, I saw wagons and tents huddled in groups outside those walls. A city in its own right.

  “What is all that?” I asked.

  Rafe explained that the outside perimeter of the outpost served as a safe haven and stopping point for traders on their way to other kingdoms. Vagabonds also took refuge close to its walls, especially in winter, when the northern climes were too harsh. Here they could set out plots and grow winter vegetables. And there were those who came to ply their trade with the soldiers too, offering food, trinkets, and diversions of various kinds. It was an ever-changing city as merchants came and went.

  The sun was still high, and the rising expanse of stone wall shone bright against the dark earth, reminding me of something magical from a child’s story. The gate opened and people flooded through it—not all of them soldiers. More crowded the tower walls above, eager to get a look. The news had arrived, and likely none of them could quite believe it. The lost prince was found. Curious merchants from the nearby wagons walked closer to the gates to see what the fuss was all about. A line of soldiers kept them back so the road was clear for us to enter.

  It seemed that if there was one thing I was destined for, it was to make underwhelming and filthy first impressions, whether it was the first time I stepped into Berdi’s tavern, my entrance into Sanctum Hall—or today, meeting Rafe’s countrymen for the first time.

  I felt the stickiness of my neck anew, the grit behind my earlobes, the grime smearing my face, and wished I at least had a basin to wash up in. I smoothed back my hair, but my fingers only became tangled in knots.

  “Lia,” Rafe said, reaching out and returning my hand to my side, “we’re home. We’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  He licked his thumb and rubbed it across my chin, as if that made a difference, then smiled. “There. Perfect. Just the way you are.”

  “You smudged my dirt,” I said, feigning irritation.

  His eyes sparked with reassurance. I nodded. Yes. We were safe—and together. That was all that mattered.

  Other than the rumble of hooves, it was silent as we approached. It was as if every breath was held, all unbelieving, certain that the soldier had made an error in his message, but then murmurs of recognition rose, and someone high on the tower wall yelled, “Bastards! It is you!”

  Rafe smiled and Sven waved. I was startled at first, then realized that it was a greeting and not a jeer—soldier to soldier, not soldier to king. Jeb, Orrin, and Tavish returned calls from other comrades. I was surprised to see that there were women among the crowd. Finely dressed women. Their mouths hung half-open and their gazes rested on me—not their new king. Once we were through the gates, soldiers waiting to lead our horses away took our reins, and Rafe helped me down. My injured leg was stiff and with my first step, I stumbled. Rafe caught me, keeping his arm around my waist. His attentions didn’t go unnoticed, and there was a lull in the greetings. Certainly the soldiers who rode ahead with a hurried message of the prince’s return hadn’t included details of a girl in the convoy.

  A tall, trim man made his way through the crowd, and everyone quickly moved aside for him. His stride was deliberate, and his bare scalp gleamed in the sun. One of his shoulders held the distinction of a wide gold braid. He stopped in front of Rafe and shook his head, his chin dimpling like an orange, and then just as the captain had when we were out on the plain, he dropped to one knee and said loudly so everyone would hear, “Your Majesty King J
axon Tyrus Rafferty of Dalbreck. Greet your sovereign.”

  There was a collective hush. A few immediately dropped to their knee as well, more officers echoing King Jaxon, but the majority of soldiers hesitated, shocked by the news. It had been a secret—the old king was dead. Slowly the realization took root, and the crowd rippled to their knees.

  Rafe acknowledged them with a simple nod, but it was obvious to me that, beyond anything, he wished he could forgo these formalities. While he honored tradition and protocol more than I did, right now he was only a very tired young man in need of rest, soap, and a decent meal.

  The officer stood and studied Rafe for a moment, then reached out and gave him a vigorous embrace, not caring that Rafe’s filthy clothes were soiling his fresh tunic and crisp shirt.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” he said softly. “I loved your parents.” He let go and held him at arm’s length. “But blessed devils, soldier, your timing stinks. Where the hell have you been?”

  Rafe briefly closed his eyes, his weariness returned. He was king and didn’t have to explain anything, but he was a soldier first, loyal to his fellow soldiers. “The captain can answer some of your questions. First we need—”

  “Of course,” the man said, realizing his error, and turned to a soldier at his side. “Our king and his officers need baths and fresh clothes. And quarters prepared! And—” His eyes fell on me, perhaps noting for the first time that I was a female. “And…” He fumbled uncertainly.

  “Colonel Bodeen,” Rafe interjected, “this was the cause of my absence.” He looked at the crowd, addressing not just the colonel, but them as well. “A worthy absence,” he added with a hint of sternness. He lifted his hand toward me. “May I present Princess Arabella, the First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.”

  Every eye turned to me. I felt as naked as a peeled grape. There was stifled laughter from a few young soldiers, but then they realized Rafe was serious. Their smiles vanished. Captain Azia gawked at me, his face flushing with color, perhaps recalling every vulgar word he’d said about Morrighan.