by Boyce, S. M.
Evelyn sat in her chair, lips parted in what could only be surprise. Kara understood that—the queen had just been outvoted in her own home.
Frine turned to Kara. “For what it’s worth, you’re ready for this life. I never thought I would see the day when you could handle yourself, but I was wrong. You’ve become a powerful ally, one I fear we do not deserve.”
Kara nodded in thanks, but the compliment didn’t mean anything. There had been a time when she ached for him to say she was good enough, when hearing that would have made her proud, but she already knew she could handle this life. She was and would always be the Vagabond. She had sacrificed nearly everything to get here. What others thought of her no longer mattered.
Frine continued. “I’m afraid for my kingdom and for my people. This war needs to end, and I believe you can help us. I vote we allow Kara back into our council and give her full authority as our equal.”
Gavin nodded, his voice soft when he spoke. “We need your help.”
Braeden grinned. “I’m in.”
Kara turned to Evelyn in time to see the queen’s expression slide from disgust to disbelief. Just as quickly, her face hardened into something unreadable. She grimaced and shook her head.
“I suppose I have no choice,” Evelyn said softly.
Gavin stood. “I need a break.”
“Agreed,” Frine added.
Braeden stood as well. “Why don’t we reconvene after dinner?”
Gavin gestured in what Kara assumed was some sort of agreement before heading for the door. The Ayavelian soldiers parted enough to let the king through, and Frine followed close behind. Braeden stood and stretched.
“May I speak with you alone, Vagabond?” Evelyn asked.
Kara glanced at Braeden, who raised an eyebrow as if you say are you sure?
She nodded.
“Very well,” he said.
He headed to the door but paused before he reached the crowd of guards. He glanced over his shoulder at Evelyn and nodded toward them. Evelyn groaned. She waved at the soldiers, who bowed in unison and trotted out ahead of Braeden. The prince walked into the hall and, with one final glance to Kara, shut the doors behind him.
Silence settled once more onto the meeting room. Evelyn drummed her nails against the table, the incessant tap, tap, clack enough to fray Kara’s composure. A minute ticked by without conversation, followed by another and another. Kara bit her tongue, unwilling to break the silence. Whatever Evelyn wanted, she would have to make the first move.
“I don’t understand what brought you back,” Evelyn finally said.
“I think I’ve made that fairly clear.”
“Hardly. Why are you really here? Revenge for being used as bait? Revenge for the half-wit muse who tried to rescue you? What is it?”
Anger burned in Kara’s gut. Tension pulled on her wrist guard, and a body-wide itch smoldered on the top layer of her skin. But with a deep breath, she reeled in her disgust. As much as Kara wanted to break the queen’s nose for that insult, she knew better. This was a trap. Evelyn wanted to bait her into a frenzy and make her do something stupid. So she forced a smile instead.
“I want to finish what the first Vagabond set out to do,” she said.
“And that’s why this muse is helping, too? They don’t care about us.”
“They care more than you’d think.”
“A muse killed my aunt, and you know it. We shouldn’t trust them.”
“You have no proof of that. It’s an assumption that could cost you the war.”
“It may be something we can never prove. I know who is trustworthy and who isn’t.”
“I’m not so sure you do,” Kara admitted.
With every second that passed, Evelyn seemed more and more like her treacherous aunt. Dread pooled in Kara’s stomach at the similarities, namely the blind hatred for drenowith. Aislynn was only better at hiding her disgust.
Evelyn shook her head and set one hand on her cheek. Still as a stone and apparently lost in thought, she stared at the floor. Kara kept quiet, letting the young queen simmer on the options. Perhaps that was all she really needed to see reason—a quiet room and someone to listen.
“A choice between the lesser of two evils is not a real choice,” Evelyn eventually said under her breath.
Kara’s intuition flared—if trusting a muse was one choice, what was the other? Alarm spread through her body. The hair on her neck stood on end, and beads of sweat pooled in her palms.
“The muses aren’t evil,” Kara said.
Evelyn laughed—a bitter, dark laugh that sent a chill down to Kara’s toes.
“I’ll send a note to Blood Ithone asking for him to allow you into the city,” Evelyn said.
With that, the queen stood and headed to the door, their meeting apparently over. But Kara didn’t want her to leave, not now. Evelyn had made a choice, and fear twisted in Kara’s stomach at the thought that the queen chose wrong.
Evelyn reached for the doorknob but paused and looked over her shoulder. “I would offer you a room, but I figure you’ll be staying with Braeden. No use wasting a bedroom if you won’t be there at night.”
Kara bristled. “I would like my own room, thanks.”
“Don’t try to be modest.” The queen smirked and turned the knob. She slipped into the hall and disappeared with just a few taps of her shoes along the stone floor.
Kara stood in the war room, alone and suddenly afraid that something just shifted for the worse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TWO EVILS
Evelyn slammed the door to her bedroom. The walls trembled from the force. Her hands tightened into fists. Anger boiled in her gut, churning until bile burned her cheeks. An ache pulsed in her temple.
She failed. Aunt Aislynn always warned her about how the tides could turn quickly in war and political affairs, but Evelyn never imagined how fast she would lose control of the council. One stupid human girl—worse, an isen—showed a bit of daring, and now Evelyn’s opinion meant nothing. Her family’s years of goodwill toward the other kingdoms was overturned in one hasty decision.
One stupid decision.
Openly trusting a drenowith was as dense as Blood Gavin and Blood Frine could get. The vile muse helping Kara was likely the one who killed Evelyn’s aunt, for Bloods’ sake. Since the dawn of time, the muses had attempted magic that caused natural disasters and plagues, yet no one held them accountable. Not once. The drenowith certainly didn’t care—what eternal creature cared about the fleeting lives of mortals?
This was the Vagabond’s fault, all of it. From the moment the girl stepped into Ourea, the drenowith owned her. They must have known how important she would become, or else they would never have wasted their time saving and protecting her. And now, their effort was paying off.
Evelyn grimaced. She leaned against the wall in an effort to calm herself.
In her defense, she only recently realized the drenowith were burrowing their way into the minds of the Bloods. Even she hadn’t noticed it at first, but it made perfect sense after she figured it out.
The yakona had caused political strife in Ourea for eons, and the drenowith were probably tired of it. Drenowith always hated the yakona—why else would they do something so petty as lead Aunt Aislynn into a Stelian trap she only barely survived? But when the Vagabond reappeared, the tide turned in the muses’ favor. The naïve human girl was easy to control as long as they got to her first. As long as she trusted them. The drenowith had to have known the Vagabond would continue her master’s purpose by trying to unite the yakona, and the prospect of luring all the Bloods into a sense of complacency had to be tempting. Those muses had to have known they could weasel their way into the thrones if they played their cards right.
And they did.
Evelyn ran her fingers through her hair. She escaped such a fate, at least. She wasn’t a pawn. But the other Bloods—she sighed. A pang of guilt shot through her, followed by frustration. Not long ago she raised h
er fears to Bloods Ithone, Frine, and Gavin individually. Every one of them dismissed her. None feared the drenowith. Blood Frine even admired them. Idiot.
The other Bloods were beyond saving. They had done this to themselves.
Perhaps there was no way for the muses to have predicted Braeden and Kara would fall in love, but those conniving creatures no doubt played the romance in their favor as well. They controlled Kara and—through his devotion—Braeden. If the muses weren’t out to destroy the yakona way of life, Evelyn would admire their cunning.
A breeze snuck through an open window and slid through Evelyn’s hair. The wind dried the sweat on her neck. She sighed with relief.
The muses were clever; she could grant them as much. Evelyn only began to understand what was really going on after her aunt’s memorial. When Braeden tried to convince her of Kara’s good intentions, something clicked in Evelyn’s mind.
The muses helped me more than once, he’d said. Maybe if you spent some time with one, you’d realize how wrong you are about them.
She gritted her teeth. Not in a million years. She would never become a tool like him.
Not long ago—just a few days after her aunt’s memorial—she finally acknowledged the drenowith plot had gone beyond her intervention. To save yakona from drenowith influence, Evelyn had to disband the council. The Bloods had to simply start over, and she was already well on her way.
Disbanding the Bloods would be difficult, and making it look as though the drenowith planned it would be near-impossible. It would take outside help from someone of influence who was not on the council, which left only Blood Carden.
Evelyn suppressed a shudder. A jolt of fear froze her in place, but she pushed it aside. She made the right choice. Though she never wanted to rely on the evil king, he was the lesser of two evils. What Evelyn wanted most was an escape. She wanted to no longer be alone, for Gavin to name a different heir and join her in Ayavel, forever hers. Better yet, she wanted Aislynn to suddenly appear so her aunt would take the reins once more and free Evelyn of the responsibilities of protecting a nation.
But no one was going to save her. Evelyn was the Blood now, and she always would be. She had to do what was best for her people. And she had to do it alone.
Between Blood Carden and the drenowith, the drenowith were the more imminent threat to Ayavel; she could keep Carden out of her home, but the drenowith already had Kara to spy for them. Thanks to Evelyn’s insight and the clarity after her talk with Braeden, Blood Carden was already helping her eliminate the drenowith threat. She spent days on her plan before she contacted him, and now that she’d convinced him to work with her, everything would unfold without the Ayavelian people ever knowing what she’d done. If she was careful, she wouldn’t lose even one Ayavelian soldier to the war.
She sat at her desk and dipped the nearest quill in an inkwell. With a deep breath and a muttered curse, she scratched out yet another letter to Carden, updating him on the basics. The quill tip scraped against the parchment, leaving indents of ink in its wake. Scritch. Scratch. Shuffle.
As Evelyn’s pen traveled along the paper, her mind wandered.
Blood Carden wanted war, and she had already given him his first real taste of it—she’d sent him a map of Kirelm. He would no doubt attack, but Kirelm would survive. When the Bloods caught wind of it, she would plant the seeds of doubt in her fellow royals. She could argue the drenowith had joined Blood Carden once again—as they had when they led her aunt to the Stele’s door—to attack the isolated kingdom after Kara filled the Bloods’ heads with lies about the drenowith’s devotion to peace.
Kara likely wouldn’t survive the attack on Kirelm, so the assault would finally rid Evelyn of the human-raised nuisance. She could easily write the girl’s death off as the drenowith tying up loose ends.
If the Bloods didn’t vote to bar the drenowith from the council after the bloodshed, the fear for their kingdoms would be enough to make each of the Bloods return home. Once the Bloods were finally gone from Ayavel, Evelyn would cut off ties with Blood Carden and refuse to open the lichgates into her kingdom for anyone, thereby retreating from the war and from any chance of retribution from Carden. Ourea would start over in its quest for peace, but it was better than rebuilding from the charred rubble the drenowith would leave behind.
But if this failed—if the Bloods still listened to the drenowith and refused to leave after the attack on Kirelm—she would admit defeat and let Carden end them. If the rulers of nations willingly obeyed creatures as selfish and destructive as the muses, there was no hope for them. Of all the Bloods, Gavin should have seen reason. She wanted to save him, but he just wouldn’t listen. Perhaps if she was careful, she could save him from himself before it was too late.
Evelyn would either free the council of their faith in the drenowith, or she would let Carden destroy them. When the flames dissolved and the world was once more quiet, she would rebuild from whatever was left.
She blinked, her eyes refocusing on the parchment before her. Neat lines of text filled most of the page. A steady pool of ink collected underneath her dripping quill, which hovered near the bottom. She must have lost herself to her thoughts.
The quill clinked against the inkwell as she set the pen aside to read over her letter.
C—
I’ve been watching Braeden’s movements, and he is preparing to take another three-day solo expedition to the Stele tomorrow. Employ the usual decoys for the duration of his stay.
On an annoying note, the Vagabond has returned and is apparently an isen. She will be visiting Kirelm tomorrow to encourage Blood Ithone to rejoin the council. I believe it is in our mutual best interest if she does not survive her trip.
—E
Evelyn rubbed her face and hesitated, her eyes focused on the blot of ink at the bottom, near her signature. After a few seconds of silence, she folded the letter into a neat square.
To her left, at the far corner of her writing desk, lay an Ayavelian heirloom: a small black chest resting on silver claws. The box had existed for as long as the kingdom of Ayavel. She opened its lid to reveal its dark red silk lining and slipped the note inside.
If she closed the top, the note would travel to its brother box—which Carden now possessed. Someday, Evelyn would have to figure out a way to get it back from him. For now, the man she hated but needed nonetheless would use the precious heirloom to kill his son, assassinate the Vagabond, and disband the very council her aunt had created.
Evelyn sighed and reached for the lid. It snapped shut with a click.
Carden stared into the fire roaring in his study’s hearth, its red flames casting shadows on his charcoal gray skin. He filled the chair, all muscle. His right hand itched, but he didn’t indulge the sensation. He didn’t want to look at the aftermath of his battle with the long-gone Queen of Hillside, but that wouldn’t make the scars disappear. Boils and blisters littered the withered stump of his left hand, and the longest scar ran from his thumb to the crease in his elbow. White bone peered through a tear in the skin on his knuckles.
Disgusted, he leaned back in his chair.
The little black chest on his desk creaked open of its own accord. He glanced at it and hesitated. Evelyn wasn’t due to send him any news until after his battle with Kirelm.
He stood and crossed the room in a few strides. A piece of parchment, folded into the familiar perfect square, lay on the box’s dark red lining. He snatched the paper with his good hand and ripped it open. It took all of a few seconds to read through her letter, and he couldn’t help the sneer that crept across his face afterward.
It seemed as though the young queen’s hatred for drenowith surpassed even her aunt’s. Carden chuckled and sat in his desk chair. He eyed the lit fireplace, eyes slipping out of focus as he debated how her latest news could benefit him.
The door inched open. A perfume of lilac and pine wafted toward him, the familiar scent of his favorite isen.
“You seem chipper,” Deidre
said, the door shutting behind her.
The pale brunette sauntered into the room and slid onto a nearby chair, her tight white shirt showing off the curves Carden wished he’d been able to enjoy by now. She tucked her legs to the side like a queen, her red lips twisting into a smile as he examined her. But she teased him—it was her way. He would have her eventually.
“News came from Evelyn,” he said.
Deidre frowned. “Replacing me already?”
He laughed. “Hardly. She has her uses, but not your charm.”
Deidre’s lips twisted into a smirk. “What does the little twit have to say, then?”
“Braeden’s on his way back here. Have the builders made any progress on the fake guard towers to the east?”
“Of course. They’re nearly done. I assume you’ll be shifting troop movements and guard schedules as well.”
“Among other things.”
She smiled and crossed her legs. A surge of desire flickered through Carden’s thighs. He wasn’t sure how long he was willing to wait for her to come around to him before he took matters into his own, deformed hands. She tried his patience, but he recently discovered an outlet for that frustration. He could always toy with her by mentioning her fellow isen. She hated them for whatever reason. It never failed to rile her.
He laughed. “That Kara girl is an isen now. Seems like something you should have known and warned me about.”
Deidre frowned, the grimace digging lines into the corners of her mouth. “She was turned? When?”
Carden leaned back in his chair, his grin spreading. He wasn’t used to knowing things his isen didn’t.
He shrugged and ignored her question. “The girl will be in Kirelm when I visit. I can’t quite decide if I’ll kill her instantly or imprison her long enough to force Braeden to kill her. I prefer the latter, but I can’t risk her escaping.”
Deidre shifted in her seat. “I suppose you’ll have to play it by ear. What do you have in mind for our little Evelyn?”
Carden laughed. The topic change hadn’t even been subtle, but he would play along for now. “Like I said, Evelyn has her uses.”