“I’m grateful for your Healing, Your Excellency,” he managed then, stalling for time to gather his wits.
“It was a near thing. A miracle Signore di Nostri reached me when he did.”
For a regret-filled moment, Franco wished di Nostri might’ve left him in the cave to face his end beneath the stars of Cephrael’s Hand—t’would’ve been a kinder one than he was likely to receive from Illume Belliel’s interrogators. A sick feeling came to his stomach, and he risked another glance at the stone-faced truthreader. The Paladin Knights—wielders all—weren’t chosen for their compassion.
Alshiba asked, “Have you no recollection of the night?”
His eyes darted to her. “A vague one…Your Excellency.”
She took hold of a chair and drew it to his bedside where she might sit and view him eye to eye. She smoothed her white gown beneath her as she sat and settled her aqua gaze upon him. “Let me tell you what I’ve learned.”
Franco stared at her in silence while his heart pounded a thunderous alarm.
“While I was Healing you, Signore di Nostri told a horrifying tale.” She eyed him inquisitively as she said this. He knew her to be a shrewd judge of character, and though born to the first, she was as adept at reading the truth in a man’s gaze as any Adept of the fourth. Never mind the actual truthreader across the room.
“It’s unfortunately easy to believe that Demetrio Consuevé took you captive to achieve his own ends.” Alshiba pressed her lips in a tight line and shifted her gaze, narrowed in anger, out the windows, as if piercing the distance to spear Consuevé even then. “I continue to receive troubling reports of him and expect Niko—now that he has been given the power to act—to take the man in hand without recourse, especially after this petty act of vengeance.”
“Vengeance,” Franco choked out in surprise.
She looked back to him. “What would you call it, Franco? Immanuel di Nostri—who I have no cause to suspect—claimed before my truthreader that Demetrio accused you of alliance with the Fifth Vestal and had you forcibly read. Vigilantism is as unwelcome in this age as the foul murders of our kind still taking place around the realm, the evidence of which you yourself have witnessed.”
Franco grimaced at this reminder. What they’d found at Mark Laven’s remote Malchiarri estate would forever haunt his dreams…a floor two inches thick with blood…
“Demetrio acted without sanction,” Alshiba continued, “without trial or impartial adjudication from a panel of peers. Can there be any question of his vengeful intent?”
“…No, Your Excellency,” Franco somewhat gasped. Could he be interpreting her correctly?
“And when, under coercion, the truthreader failed to elicit the forced confession Demetrio sought from you, he placed you and di Nostri—in all innocence—to find your deaths in a sea cavern. But not before putting six inches of steel into your gut to mitigate his aggravation.” She eyed him steadily. “Is that how you remember it?”
Franco sat in stunned silence. Could it be possible? Could she be intimating his… innocence? Franco dropped his gaze back to his wine and murmured nervously as he took a sip, “More or less.”
“As ever, Franco Rohre, you hide from me behind a curtain of humility.”
Franco’s eyes flew back to her. “No, Your Excellency, I—”
“Di Nostri told my truthreader how you saved him from sure death, how you miraculously found a portal out of the cavern, how you barely managed to return yourselves here, to Niko’s home from which you’d been so brutally abducted, before collapsing into unconsciousness.”
Franco forced down the wine caught in his throat, for her words chilled him. Immanuel di Nostri had risked dangerous half-truths before the Alorin Seat’s truthreader? Why? Moreover, how had he gotten away with it? This knowledge unsettled Franco, for he knew that di Nostri harbored his own secrets which had yet to be accounted for.
He lifted his gaze back to find her watching him quietly, intently. “I…don’t know what to say, Your Excellency.” For all he’d made it this far, he feared at any moment she would ask him the truth that Demetrio had failed to uncover, the truth of his allegiance to Björn van Gelderan.
Alshiba gazed steadily at him for a long time, long enough to make Franco immensely uncomfortable. It was all he could do to keep from squirming beneath her astute inspection. Then she lifted a finger to her truthreader. The man pushed away from the wall and approached, bent his ear to her.
Franco closed his eyes. This was it then. This was the end.
He heard Alshiba murmur something, and then…
Franco’s eyes flew open. The Knight was inexplicably walking out of the room. When Franco looked back to Alshiba, her gaze was aimed so forcefully and unerringly upon him that he recoiled back into the pillows.
The truthreader left, shutting the doors.
“Franco.” Alshiba’s gaze held him fast. “I will not ask who you serve.”
Her tone elicited a responsive pang of guilt deep in Franco’s chest. He couldn’t look away—her eyes speared him body and soul.
“But I would know this: who truthbound you?”
Unbelieving, Franco’s eyes darted to the door, toward the truthreader who’d just left, and back to her. “You’re not going to have me questioned?”
Her expression in response to this stabbed into his heart, so full of fury, so filled with bitter regret. “To what end? Another truthreader shedding our race’s last blood upon the stones? Oh, yes,” she added at his slack-jawed look, “di Nostri told us about that.”
Abruptly she stood and walked away from him, and Franco saw in her stance, in the tense set of her shoulders and the clenching of her jaw, that she was holding herself carefully in check. Somehow he didn’t think the frustration she battled had anything to do with him.
After a moment, she turned him a look over her shoulder. “I was hoping you would willingly tell me.” She gave him a fleeting smile, rife with bitterness. “If I know my oath brother, he always leaves a window for a man’s honor to make an appearance.”
Franco swallowed. He got the distinct impression that when she’d said her oath-brother, she wasn’t speaking of Raine D’Lacourte but of Björn. Yet astonishingly, it was Raine who’d truthbound him.
He couldn’t believe the relief he felt. To be able to confess even one truth seemed a blessing beyond measure. “Your Excellency…t’was Raine D’Lacourte who laid the truthbinding.”
She spun with a hand pressed against the hollow of her ribcage. “After Rethynnea?”
“Yes.”
She practically threw herself upon his mercy then, rushing back to his bedside and grabbing his hand. “Raine lives? He’s safe?” Her other hand clenched his shoulder tightly. “Franco, you must tell me what became of him.”
The urgency in her voice, in her pleading gaze, made Franco’s breath catch in his throat. “I…” He felt his obligation to her weighing heavily, for he owed her his life now. What could he tell her? “Raine is safe. He…works still to right the Balance.”
She didn’t like this answer, he could tell. She withdrew slightly, though one hand remained upon his wrist. “Why hasn’t he contacted me?”
Franco grimaced. “I feel sure he’ll reach out to you as soon as circumstances allow.”
Her gaze hardened, and he saw her jaw set as if to level her considerable will against him. Her hand upon his wrist suddenly felt an iron band shackling him to the truth. “He’s with Björn, isn’t he? In T’khendar?”
Alshiba’s gaze skewered him, dual shafts extending right through his body into the pillows, the headboard, and the wall beyond. He doubted he could’ve lied even if he’d found the courage. “Yes.”
“Willingly?”
Franco closed his eyes. “Yes.”
She hissed an oath and tore away from him.
Franco opened his eyes to watch the force of her anger propel her across the room. Reaching the windows, she lifted a hand to the glass, and Franco saw that it trembled.
She gazed outside for a long time then…silent, tense. Threads of anger floated in the air around her, fine tentacles charged with power. He mustn’t forget she’d gained her first row of Sormitáge rings—a wielder in full—long before she assumed the Alorin Seat.
For all the power she likely commanded, she cared not to hide her mind, or apparently her feelings, for a twisted expression of pain marred her features. It was well known that Björn had been her lover while he’d sat the Alorin Seat. His betrayal of her personally far surpassed merely appearing to switch allegiances.
“My lady…” Franco murmured wretchedly. Two words, yet they were his apology and confession in one.
She gazed out the window with her distress so naked and apparent to him…it was excruciating to witness.
This woman had suffered more confusion and heartbreak than even Franco could conceive of. Forced to take up her lover’s discarded banner and lead the realm in Björn’s stead, she had done so—yet the nature of Björn’s loss didn’t even allow her to grieve him as a vanquished hero. Instead, she must continue forward through the centuries never knowing why he’d betrayed her.
Quite unexpectedly, Franco’s heart reached out to her, for once stricken more by another’s torment than his own. Had Alshiba in that moment demanded all, he would’ve told her.
Finally, she pressed her forehead against her hand upon the glass and whispered in a wavering voice, “I don’t know how much more of this I can endure.”
Perhaps some of the rapport she’d established with him during his Healing remained between them, for Franco felt he knew her mind. He set down his goblet and got to his feet. He’d expected dizziness and was surprised at the strength he found in his limbs.
Franco went to her then—indeed, her desperation captured him so compellingly that he imagined he would’ve crawled to her if his legs hadn’t held his weight. He took up the hand she clenched so tightly and with the motion of his thumb opened her fingers to reveal her palm. He caressed her hand without presumption.
At his touch, she turned her eyes to him, glassy with unshed tears.
He held her gaze. “What would you have of me?”
The words left his mouth as if without his volition, making him wonder if she’d worked a pattern compelling his troth. But no, he was simply seeing who Alshiba Torinin really was, glimmerings of the woman who’d claimed the First Lord’s heart long ago.
She blinked in surprise, and dual tears streamed down her cheeks. Her brow furrowed as she stared at him, and her voice came breathlessly in response. “What could you possibly say that would make sense of any part of this?”
The suffering in her tone found an echo in Franco’s own soul. He hadn’t expected her to bare her feelings to him with such candid trust—Raine’s truth, he’d expected anything of their meeting but this.
Yet even were these his secrets to tell—even were he free to speak them—he would surely need more time than either of them had to explain it all to her satisfaction. He shook his head apologetically, still holding her hand. “I fear nothing I could say would sound to your ears as anything but folly, only…”
She searched his eyes with her own, which seemed startlingly beautiful in their grief. “Only?”
“Only…” he exhaled a slow breath. She deserved some truth, didn’t she? “The Citadel…the deaths of the Mages, T’khendar…none of these are as they seem, my lady.”
He’d expected her to reject him, to pull away in anger or disbelief, but she gripped his hand tighter instead, latching onto even the small hope he offered. “Then what are they?”
“Lies obscured in shadows…misdirection.”
“For what possible aim?” Her voice betrayed her desperate desire to understand.
Franco swallowed. Am I really about to say this? How few souls knew these truths. “To buy us time, my lady.”
He saw it in her eyes then, the dawning of an understanding. “Time for what?”
Franco held her gaze. “To prepare to fight them.”
“Malorin’athgul,” she breathed, her eyes widening as she reached this conclusion. She withdrew her hand from his and pressed it to her abdomen. Then she stared at him for a long, tense silence. Finally, she exhaled. “I believe you.”
Franco very nearly gaped at her. Even having made the confession with honest intent, he’d never imagined she would actually accept it.
She moved away from him, walking slowly across the room, gathering her composure with every step. “Then…by your estimation, Björn works to Alorin’s aid?” She turned him a look over her shoulder.
“Assuredly, my lady.”
There’s a certain text, the mad voice in Franco’s head sneered drolly. Well…he would have to be insane to have entrusted such truths as he had just confessed to Alshiba Torinin, especially with Niko van Amstel now pinned to her skirts. Yet…he couldn’t help feeling he’d misjudged Alshiba all these years. The First Lord had once loved her deeply, after all.
But he didn’t see fit to tell her these things…
Franco exhaled a measured breath. Wondering at his sudden loyalty towards Alshiba—so unexpected, so startling—he realized the feeling had begun when he saw that an Adept’s life meant more to her than discovering the truth—even though that truth might lead to answers she’d been denied for over three centuries. It was testimony to a surprising integrity and strength of character. He didn’t think—had their roles been reversed and Raine D’Lacourte had stood before him instead—that the outcome would’ve been the same.
For the space of an indrawn breath, Franco wondered why the First Lord had excluded Alshiba from his confidence.
Alshiba laid a hand on the back of an armchair and turned to face him. She gazed for a time at the oath-ring that glimmered on her hand, and then she lifted her eyes to him. “What do you know of the oathrings, Franco?”
He gave a little shrug. “I know you can use them to contact each other, but beyond that…?”
She arched a sardonic brow. “Yes, they’re supposed to facilitate communication between Vestals, but either the power doesn’t extend into Malachai’s realm or Björn has done something to compromise it, for I’ve been unable to reach any of them there.” She shook her head, her lips pinched tightly. “Tell me, Franco…you’ve seen my oath-brothers: Björn—and Dagmar I would assume?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t believe how freely he admitted it to her, albeit not without due pangs of consternation.
“What color are their rings?”
The odd question gave him pause. “Why…” he frowned. “They look exactly as yours, my lady.”
Her gaze bored into him. “Exactly? You’re sure?”
Franco recalled the day before, when he’d faced both Vestals and received his orders. Gods and demons but it seemed an age ago already. He recalled clearly seeing both Vestals’ oathrings gleaming upon their fingers.
He approached Alshiba and took up her hand to gaze into the azure stone. Lifting his eyes back to meet hers, he confessed, “I believe yours is slightly more blue than the First Lord’s—but it is hard to say. It may just be the light.”
She latched onto this with alacrity. Her fingers curled around his hand, preventing its release. “Björn’s is darker? Clouded?” What was it in her tone? Fear? Fury?
“No, my lady.” Franco dropped his gaze. He felt vaguely embarrassed, for he suspected her motive now for this line of questioning. “The First Lord’s ring is nearly diamond-clear.”
Alshiba snatched her hand from his grasp and pressed it across her mouth. Then she turned away. After a moment, he heard her whisper, “It is not the light.”
Her anguished tone pierced his heart. “My lady…”
“T’khendar has wooed three of my Vestals now, it would seem,” she hissed darkly, “a gluttonous mistress.” She turned him a fierce look over her shoulder. “I pray the end justifies the means.”
Franco knew not how to reply to this, so he held his tongue.
She considered him for
a time in silence. Then she gave a forceful exhale. “So…where do we go from here, Franco?”
Franco bowed his head. “I wish I knew, my lady.” He searched vainly for any words to reassure her. “I know this must sound…impossible, but…” he lifted eyes back to her, “we’re on the same side.”
“We. You refer, of course, to yourself and my three Vestals.” The acrimony evident in the small laugh that escaped her made Franco cringe. “Fine. Then you tell me, since we’re all such allies, why did you attend Niko’s fête?”
Franco’s stomach did a little flip at the question. Her probing gaze held him fast once more, and he swallowed, too aware that no binding hid this truth from her inspection. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was testing him now, challenging the fragile trust they’d just established.
He couldn’t quite dismiss the irony in the moment. He’d told Immanuel di Nostri that he couldn’t remember what trust felt like. Now he was entrusting some of his deepest secrets to a woman with the power to become their gravest obstacle…or their greatest ally.
Franco drew in courage with his breath. “The First Lord and the Great Master are both concerned about your appointment of Niko van Amstel to the Vestal seat. They sent me to learn…” Thirteen hells, there was still so much he couldn’t tell her, “…his plans.”
She considered him quietly, her gaze now unreadable. How quickly she could draw in her feelings, keeping them contained behind a remote and impenetrable shield. “And you, Franco? Are you equally concerned by this?”
After a moment wherein every emotion he’d ever felt on the matter rushed forward to speak up and was banished to silence, Franco replied, “Very.”
She nodded, frowned. He followed her gaze as she turned to look across the room to the doors and whatever waited beyond them. “Perhaps we should speak more of these things in the coming days. You will attend me, won’t you? To share what…you can?”
He looked back to her sharply. He still couldn’t quite process the abrupt turn his path had taken, so dramatically afield of his fears. “Then…” He looked at the bedroom doors again. “I’m free to go?”
Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3) Page 33