“You’re alive,” he said.
“I am.” Lyriana nodded. “It’s quite the story.”
Jax stepped up alongside Lyriana, blocking her with one protective arm. “So you’re the fancy-pants Lord of the border?” he asked. “What are you doing out here alone in the woods?”
“I’d heard reports of a suspicious party entering my lands, so I rode out with a group of scouts to investigate. The rest are combing the woods down by the river.” Galen Reza’s eyes flitted to Jax, to Zell. “Your Majesty, are these people…your captors?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. “These are my friends. They…they…” Her voice choked up. “They saved my life. They protected me from Lord Kent. They’re the only reason I’m here.”
“Then it seems the Kingdom owes them a great debt,” Galen said. “Don’t worry. They’re safe with me.” His eyes flitted to Zell, who was still clenching his blade. “Even you, Zitochi-Who-I-Almost-Beat.”
“In your wildest dreams,” Zell said, but he sheathed his blade.
Safe. Galen had said we’d be safe. I heard the word, but I couldn’t believe it. I willed my legs to move, but they held, rooted in place. Was this actually happening? Was our ordeal over? Could we possibly, actually be safe?
“Oh wow,” Miles said, his voice a thousand miles away. Jax let out a sharp exhale. This felt impossible. My knees were trembling. My head was spinning.
Galen looked us all over, nodding to himself. “I recognize you all. From the Whisper. The Zitochi, the stable hand, Lady Hampstedt’s boy…” He turned to me. “And you. Lord Kent’s bastard.”
I bowed my head. “My Lord.”
His eyes narrowed even further. “Your father is responsible for this?”
I felt a terrible weight press down on me. “He was,” I said. “He is.”
Galen’s mouth twisted into a hard frown, and his thin eyebrows formed a sharp V. “Then it was all a lie, wasn’t it? The poster, the bounty—all of it. He was trying to cover up his crime. He killed the Archmagus, not the Zitochi.”
“He did,” Jax said, sparing me from having to answer.
“Son of a bitch,” Galen whispered. “Titans’ breath. That lunatic wants a second Great War.”
“But we’ll stop him,” Lyriana said. “Won’t we?”
Galen didn’t answer. “We have to go,” he said. “Now. I have a carriage a mile from here. Let’s hurry there and get you out of sight, away from Kent’s eyes.”
“Kent’s eyes?” I asked.
“His advance scouts,” Galen said, then clicked his tongue. “Oh. I see. You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
He looked past us, down the road, and I hated to admit it, but he actually looked worried. “Lord Kent rides east, to meet the mages himself. He’s two days away, at most. And he brings with him a host of soldiers ten thousand strong.”
A cold dread set over me like a familiar cloak. No, we weren’t safe.
We weren’t safe at all.
I’D ONLY BEEN IN A carriage once before, years ago, when my father and I had visited Bridgetown and Lord Collinwood had given us a tour of his ample vineyards. That carriage had probably been nicer than Lord Reza’s, but I didn’t care. At that moment, the padded, cushioned seat was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt. When I first slumped down onto it, my aching thighs had practically melted with relief. I didn’t even care that the ride was bumpy or that the whole thing smelled like leather and smoke. I was on a pillow, a real pillow, and I wanted to cry. Who knew you could miss pillows that much?
The carriage was packed tight. Me, Zell, and Jax sat on one bench, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, with Lyriana, Miles, and Galen opposite us. There was something incredibly awkward about sitting this close to Zell, especially given the total lack of resolution we’d had from our moment in the woods. But I forced those thoughts aside.
Lyriana and Galen did most of the talking. She told him our whole story in possibly too much detail, from how we’d snuck out of the castle to our close call in Bridgetown. Galen listened intently, his grave expression breaking only for an occasional profane mutter under his breath. I tried to remember everything I knew about him. I knew that his family had been some hoity-toity Lightspire nobles who’d been granted the Lands of the Pass as a reward for their actions in the Great War. These Lands weren’t particularly vast, but they included the Nest, one of the oldest castles in the Province, and Pioneer’s Pass, the narrow valley through the Frostkiss Mountains. The other Lords of the West had distrusted the Rezas as outsiders, and had been sure the new young Lord would be in over his head.
Looking at the serious (and, okay, pretty hot) young man in the carriage opposite me, I realized they were half right. Galen was a Heartlander through and through, with his soft skin and elegant features. He looked nothing like the grizzled, bearded men who’d lined the tables in our Great Hall. But he had an intensity about him, a calculating air, like at any given moment there were a half-dozen schemes cranking about in his head.
“Titans’ breath,” he grumbled when Lyriana finished, rubbing the bridge of his nose with one hand. “This is one hell of a mess. I’ve got three companies of the Knights of Lazan riding up from the East. I’ve got Lord Kent and his entire damn army riding down from the West. And then I’ve got an entire camp of Sisters of Kaia begging me to come meet with them….”
“What?” Lyriana perked up. “The Sisterhood of Kaia is here?”
Galen nodded, but that clearly made him far less happy than it made her. “A small group camped out near Pioneer’s Pass. Forty-five of them, including Archmatron Marlena. Some kind of foolhardy pacifist crusade to try to minimize casualties, should a war erupt.”
“Can we meet them?”
“Why would you want to…?” Galen began, and then I could see the exact moment when he figured out the answer to his question. “Ah. Yes. Perhaps. At some point. Once everything’s been settled.”
No disrespect to Lyriana, but meeting up with her Sisters was the least of my priorities. “Sorry, could we back up a bit?” I chimed in, turning to the others in the carriage. “My father’s going to be out here with an army? Why? Wasn’t his plan to lure the mages up to Castle Waverly?”
“Because of us,” Miles said, and we all turned to stare at him. “Think about it. He wanted to lure them to Castle Waverly by sending them on a mission to Zitochi lands to avenge Rolan and Lyriana. That made sense when no one knew the truth. But with us out here, somewhere in the Province, every day the mages ride is a day we could warn them. Your father needs to ambush them as quickly as he can, as soon as they cross into the Province.”
“And he planned to do it in my damned castle,” Galen grumbled, as if this were really the worst part. “He sent me a Whisper a week ago, demanding I arrange a banquet for all the highest-ranking mages, so he could personally offer his condolences. I knew from the start he was up to something, but I just assumed he was playing some kind of long game, maybe seeing if he could sow dissent in the ranks or curry favor with a future Archmagus. I never thought he’d be so brazen as to just kill them.”
“All the highest-ranking mages in one room,” Lyriana muttered. “The perfect place for an ambush.”
“My mother has at least twenty mage-killer bombs. More, maybe, if she’s been able to capture and torture any more mages with that Zitochi ritual. All she’d have to do is plant the remaining mage-killer bombs in the right places in your hall…and boom. The whole command taken out right there. Then Lord Kent attacks in the chaos with his ten thousand men….”
Galen nodded. “Strikes a crippling blow before the war’s even started. I don’t know what angers me more, the plan’s brutality…or its brilliance.”
“Right, but that’s all over now, isn’t it?” Jax asked. “I mean, we’ll ride out first, meet up with the mages, wave Lyriana at them, and then everything’s good?”
“That’s out of the question,” Galen replied. “I might rule the Lands of the Pass, but man
y here would slit my throat in a heartbeat if Kent asked them to. His men watch the roads, the passes, even the smugglers’ paths. If they see that you’re alive and with the mages, they’ll know we know. They’ll retreat back to safety.”
I blinked. I must have missed a step. “Wait, what’s wrong with them retreating? Isn’t that what we want?”
Galen stared at me like I was a drooling idiot. “No. What we want is to strike first and crush your father’s men before they realize what’s happened. If we’re going to win this war decisively, we need to ambush the ambushers.”
Miles looked down uncomfortably, and Zell nodded. I turned to Lyriana for help. “I don’t understand. I thought we were doing this to prevent a war.”
Galen scoffed. “Lord Kent murdered the King’s brother in cold blood. There’s no preventing this war. What matters is making sure the right side wins.”
That sure as hell wasn’t what mattered to me, but I doubt Galen could have cared less. This was all moving fast, too fast. Was that what my role in this really was? The girl who helped Lightspire win? The girl who betrayed the West? In an instant, we’d crossed the point of no return, and I hadn’t even realized we’d been at it.
“Lord Kent is an incredibly cunning man,” Miles cautioned, as if he were talking about some total stranger and not, you know, my father. “You shouldn’t underestimate him.”
Lord Reza smiled, and his smile was cold and terrifying. “He shouldn’t underestimate me.”
“Right. Yeah. This all sounds great. Win the war, rah, rah,” Jax said. “But what about us? Where are we in all this?”
“Hidden away safely, of course. You are the living proof of Kent’s treason. I can’t let you come into harm’s way.” The carriage stopped sharply. Galen laughed, just a little. “And here we are. Couldn’t have asked for better timing. Welcome to the Nest.”
He sat up and threw open the doors, letting bright sunlight flood in. We all stepped out, hands over our eyes. A cold gust of wind chilled me. The dirt underfoot crackled with frost. We must have been riding uphill, because we were much higher up than we’d been when we’d gotten in the carriage. A dense, untamed forest sprawled out behind us, trees just barely parting for a dirt road. In front of us sprawled a vast and imposing castle, with towering walls of ancient brick and an enormous redwood gate lined with iron beams. Barred windows loomed above the stony parapets, and dozens of watchtowers jutted up like spearheads from the walls.
From a distance, it could have been Castle Waverly’s twin. But where Castle Waverly was built on a woody hilltop near the coast, this castle appeared to have been built on the edge of the world itself. Behind the castle was no land or sea but just the open sky, and the sound of the howling wind was almost too loud to talk over. Squinting against the sun, I could barely make sense of where we were: on a high, rocky peak, near the start of the Frostkiss Mountains. The castle was built on the edge of a cliff, with a massive drop to certain and incredibly unpleasant death beyond it. I’d always known the Nest overlooked Pioneer’s Pass, but I’d never realized how literally.
Oh. The Nest. I got it now.
“Okay, yeah, this place looks pretty safe,” Jax said. Miles bounced, giddy, and Zell wouldn’t meet my gaze. I needed to get him alone, to figure out what the hell our deal was…but this wasn’t the time. It was never the time.
“Thank you, Lord Reza,” Lyriana said. “Your kindness will be remembered and rewarded.”
“The only reward I need is Kent’s head on a pike.” He glanced at me, and I realized his words were a test, a little prick to see how sharply I’d react. I put on my most stoic face, which probably looked like I had to sneeze.
The heavy gates swung open, and a few men hurried out. Most were armored and armed, castle guard, but one was tall and prim, with a neat beard, a perfectly fitted tunic, and a sour look on his face. A steward if I’d ever seen one. “My Lord?” he asked.
“We have guests, Arramian,” Galen said. “Guests of great import. See that the Northeast Wing is cleared out for them, and made hospitable. I want clothes, food, sheets—all of it. Keep it discreet: just Headmaiden Alana, Jezzaline, Kenna. No one else is to go in or out. And get fifteen guardsmen, five on each door. I want no mistakes.”
“Of course,” the steward said, nodding. “And for you?”
“Prepare the rookeries. I need to dispatch a Whisper to the mages at once.”
The steward nodded again. “As you wish.”
Galen turned back to us. To Lyriana, really. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty. Within an hour, the mages will know full well the threat that awaits them.”
“Does my cousin lead them?” Lyriana asked. “Ellarion?”
He nodded. “Indeed. With two days, we’ll have more than enough time to prepare a counterambush. This will all be over soon, and you…and your friends…will be on your way to Lightspire.”
“What do we do until then?” I asked.
Galen smiled, and this time, with genuine warmth. “You’ve had a hell of a journey,” he said. “Why don’t you go and settle in?”
I settled in.
Oh, holy shit, did I ever settle in.
The Northeast Wing turned out to be a tall, circular tower, packed dense with guest rooms, dining chambers, and luxurious foyers. And you’d better believe the first thing I did was take a bath. At the bottom of the tower was a cavernous bath chamber with a large stone pool, waist-deep and filled with crisp, clear water. It was shockingly, amazingly warm; Galen had had the base lined with special bricks from the Artificers Guild in Lightspire, thick red rocks that trapped the fire of mages and stayed hot for months on end. I floated in that pool for a good hour. I’d never realized just how much of a pleasure there was in getting clean, in scrubbing weeks of travel and grit and pain off myself, out of my hair, out from under my fingernails. Even weirder, I couldn’t recognize my own body anymore. It wasn’t just the bruises and the stitches. It was the muscle. My thighs were firm from all the hard riding. My arms had biceps, real biceps, like you’d see on those farmer women who came by Castle Waverly to hawk their goods. And my stomach, which had always been a little soft, had become hard and firm, with, for real, abs. It was a stranger’s body.
I liked it.
Then I got dressed. In clothes! Real, actual clothes, designed for a girl, and one who was almost my size. Sure, the dress wasn’t really my style, a little too frilly on the shoulders and a dark blue I wouldn’t normally wear, but who cared? I was just so happy not to be in the same torn, stained breeches that I would’ve taken a potato sack.
We ate dinner together in the wing’s biggest dining room, at a long wooden table, with an actual tablecloth and silverware and everything! The food, though. The food. I’d never eaten Lightspire cuisine, and it turns out, I’d been missing out my whole life. The servants brought heaping trays of a spicy, seasoned chicken stew and roasted potatoes in a creamy broth, and the thickest, juiciest beef I’d ever seen, topping it off with a sweet cream cake that dissolved on my tongue. It was, far and away, the best thing I’d ever eaten, and I wasn’t just saying that because I’d been eating lanky rabbit and mushrooms for weeks. We all sat together around the table, and even though Miles warned us that we’d get sick, we all stuffed ourselves until our stomachs hurt. Miles included.
I was nodding off halfway through the meal and barely even standing by the time I got to the bedroom. I collapsed into the bed, with its fur blanket and goose-feather pillows, and was somehow asleep before I even closed my eyes.
I woke up just as night was falling, because my sleep schedule had become fully nocturnal. Jax was hanging out in my doorway wearing his new clothes, which were more formal and fancy than anything I’d ever seen him in: a gray tunic with gold trim on the shoulders, in the Heartlander style with the two rows of vertical buttons down the chest. He looked adorable.
“Tilla!” he whispered, his face lit up by the dim glow of a Sunstone. “Wake up! You gotta get out here!”
“Why? Am I go
ing to miss the masquerade ball?” I pulled myself out of bed and stumbled toward him, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. “What’s going on?”
“Just follow me.” Jax led me away from the bedchambers, through the dining hall, and down the winding staircase to the bottom of the tower. A pair of heavy doors blocked our way to the Great Hall. I could make out the shadows of Galen’s guardsmen on the other side. I started to ask what we were doing, but Jax raised a finger to shush me, and then turned his hand around to point at my feet.
“What am I looking at?” I whispered, and then I saw it. Not my feet. Below them. A wide, hexagonal stone tile. “No way.”
Jax just grinned, knelt down, and slowly and carefully lifted it up. Dust wafted out, stale and dry, and even in the dim light, I could see what lay beneath it: a tight, dark tunnel. I couldn’t believe it, but I guess it made sense. The same architects had built both castles. Why wouldn’t they have built the same secret passages as well?
I looked to Jax, and now I was grinning. “Do the others know?” I whispered.
“Follow me,” he replied, and hopped down.
Before I could even consider whether this was a good idea, I was sliding down the hole onto a hard dirt floor. We were in some tunnels, all right—tight, unpleasant corridors lined with spiderwebs, dust, and broken tiles. And yet, amazingly, I felt like I was home.
Jax led wordlessly, and I followed, after sliding the tile above us back into place. Even by the wavering light of the Sunstone, I could tell these tunnels were a little different from the ones back in Castle Waverly. The ones there had been built into the natural caves below the castle, so they were wider, more earthy, with way more jagged roots and scary drops. These ones were clearly man-made, dug by some grizzled ancient Westerners in the days of the Old Kings. They were narrower, lined with bricks, with far fewer dead ends, and actual stone ladders built into walls so you could climb out. While the tunnels in Castle Waverly were a tangled labyrinth, these seemed to closely match the layout of the Nest itself; the narrow passageway under the Northeast Wing gave way to a wide, cavernous space that must have lain right under the Great Hall. A half-dozen smaller tunnels branched out from it, presumably leading to various parts of the castle.
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