by Barb Hendee
“And where exactly would I get strands of Damek’s hair?” he asked, sounding more bold now, more in control. Then he, too, glanced at the cauldron. “I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted him to suffer from our family’s breaking off the betrothal. I wanted everyone to know that he was so undeserving, so filth-ridden that even a lesser family wouldn’t let a daughter marry him.”
Amelie pointed to the red-blond hair. “But you’d kill Rochelle?”
“I’m saving Rochelle! After all you saw, you still don’t understand? Even if I stopped this marriage, Mother will only arrange another. I’m sure of it now. Over the past days, I’ve become more and more sure. I have to save Rochelle. I can’t allow her to suffer in the bed of a man like Damek.” He took a step closer. “I’m sorry, Amelie, but I have to save her.”
He was mad. She’d not seen it before reading his past, and it was possible he hadn’t even been attempting to hide his madness . . . but that it only came out in certain moments.
Gripping her dagger, she allowed fear into her voice. “Please, Heath. Let me go and I won’t tell anyone.”
The tightness in his body eased, and he shook his head. “I am sorry. But you should not have come down here.” He saw her life or her death as his decision.
She launched straight at him.
* * *
Céline strode toward Saorise with a javelin gripped in her hand. Saorise stood before the cauldron lost in a trance with her eyes closed. Her lips were moving, and she raised her left hand over the cauldron.
“Prosterno . . . eroado . . . Anton.”
At the last moment, Céline saw what Saorise held in that hand: three stands of brown hair. Anton’s hair. She must have pulled them when she touched the side of his face.
Saorise let them go, and they began to fall.
With no chance to catch them, Céline kicked out from where she stood, knocking the cauldron and the iron hook into the hearth. The three strands fell harmlessly into the flames and burned instantly.
Saorise opened her eyes.
Gripping the top of the javelin with both hands, Céline swung it, catching Saorise across the face with the shaft.
At the impact, Saorise fell backward, hitting the floor and dropping the dagger. Still conscious, she grabbed the side of her face and looked up wildly. Céline shifted the spear so that she held it point down.
“It was you!” she accused. “You murdered Carlotta and Hamish. Why?”
A part of her almost didn’t believe this, even though the evidence was here before her. And what of Maddox? Who killed him?
“No . . . ,” Saorise tried to say, holding the side of her face, which was turning purple beneath her fingers.
“I heard you! You were about to do the same thing to Anton!”
Saorise struggled to sit up. “I did not murder Carlotta or Lord Hamish,” she said more clearly now.
“Then what was this about?” Céline demanded, jerking the butt of the javelin toward the fallen cauldron. “You tell me right now, or I swear I’ll go to the base of those stairs, and I’ll scream until the kitchen maids come running. I’ll send them for Damek, Anton, and Lady Helena, and we’ll see what they have to say when they see what you’ve been doing.”
Saorise closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again. “If I tell you, you’ll have me exposed anyway.”
Céline gripped the javelin tighter. “I won’t, not if you haven’t killed anyone yet. But I need the truth. You were casting a spell on Anton, weren’t you? Something to shut off his breath?”
Saorise looked up her. “Yes,” she said finally. “I don’t know who killed the others, and I don’t know what was used. I simply called upon a spell that would appear close enough to what happened to Carlotta and Lord Hamish that Anton would be seen as a third victim.”
“Why? Why target Anton?”
“Why do you think? You saw him with his father. You saw his father with Damek. I knew Lieven somewhat favored Anton . . . but I had no idea.” Her expression tinged with fear again, the same fear she’d shown upstairs. “Lieven . . . loves Anton, and he can barely bring himself to speak to Damek. I did not know that.”
Realization washed over Céline. “And Damek’s rise to power is your rise to power.”
Saorise said nothing.
Céline’s mind raced for what to do. Exposing the scene down here would only make things worse. While she believed Saorise, there were others who would not. If Damek’s counselor was accused of murdering several members of the bride’s family, a wedding taking place tomorrow afternoon would seem bizarre to the other nobles. Prince Lieven would not want this.
Anton’s role here was to help the marriage take place.
But if Céline didn’t have Saorise held accountable and stopped, Anton would be in danger.
Taking a step closer to the woman on the floor, Céline lowered her voice. “I will not expose you so long as nothing happens to Anton. But if you try this again”—she pointed to the cauldron—“and he dies, I will go to Prince Lieven, and I will tell him everything I saw here. I’ll be punished for not having spoken up earlier, but I don’t care. You’ll be lucky if he only has you hanged. He might sentence you to a traitor’s death and have your entrails cut out.”
Saorise stared up in silence.
Céline half turned away. “More, I will quietly tell several people in my circle, so that I’m not the only one who knows, in case you decide I’m your main threat. If Anton dies under any suspicious means, either I or someone else who knows about your attempt here will go to Prince Lieven, and you will be sentenced to death. One way or another, I’ll make certain of it.” She paused, thinking on what Anton had said to Damek that night when he held his brother against the wall. “Do you believe me? Nod if you believe me.”
With cold eyes, Saorise nodded.
* * *
Amelie caught Heath off guard as she rushed, and she hoped to launch straight into him and drive her dagger between his ribs.
Somehow he pivoted at the last second, and she stumbled past him, whirling and slashing down to keep him from grabbing hold of her. As he dodged to avoid her slash, she ran past him and around the back of the desk for cover.
He spun to face her.
She considered herself skilled with a dagger, but she could see from the way he moved and the way he held his blade, and from all the memories she’d seen of him in training, that she would not best him in a knife fight.
“Heath, wait,” she said, lowering her blade and both her hands behind the desk so he couldn’t see them.
He hesitated. She set the dagger on the desk chair and silently pulled the poisoned stiletto.
“Stop running,” he said. “Stop fighting me, and I promise to make it quick.”
She said nothing and remained where she stood. Slowly, he began moving again, and he came around the side of the desk.
“I promise,” he repeated.
She slashed, slicing across his bare chest.
He gasped and leaped backward, his face shifting to a mask of rage. Amelie dashed from the desk toward the door at the back of the guardroom. She heard him coming after, but somehow she made it and ran through, pulling the door closed behind her and holding the handle.
“Amelie!” he shouted from the other side, and she felt the door jerk in her hands. She held on with all her strength.
He roared something inaudible and jerked again from his side . . . but it was easier for Amelie to hold on this time. The third time, she barely had to hold on at all.
“Amelie?”
Now he sounded as if he was well away from the door, and after a moment, she cracked it, peering out. He was in the center of the guardroom, weaving on his feet, and he seemed to be struggling to breathe.
When he fell to his knees, she stepped out, still gripping the stiletto. Heath fought to take in air an
d failed. He collapsed backward onto the floor. Whatever poison Jaromir had used on the stiletto, it was fast.
As she walked toward Heath, he seemed so young, like the boy playing a make-believe hero with his sisters.
He looked up at her in astonishment, and then he stopped breathing.
* * *
In the great hall, after a somewhat lengthy discussion of harvests and taxes, Anton excused himself from the conversation with his father when he realized he couldn’t see either Céline or Amelie.
The hall was crowded, and he began to search. He didn’t see Céline sitting at the tables as she’d told him. Or had she told him she was going to the tables? Perhaps she’d meant to take her rest upstairs in her room. But that didn’t seem likely, not now that they were so pressed by his father’s decision to move the wedding up to tomorrow.
Still . . . she might have gone upstairs for something.
Turning, he was about to head for the east archway when he saw her coming through it, into the hall. She looked around and then came to him.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
She smiled. “Yes, I only needed to step out for a short while.” She scanned the hall. “Where’s Amelie?”
“I don’t know. The last time I saw her, she was still sitting with Heath, but that was some time ago. I’ve been caught up talking with my father.”
Céline’s expression grew concerned as she continued her scan. “I don’t see Heath, either.”
“Could they have gone for a walk in the courtyard?”
As he finished speaking, Amelie came through the east archway, but he could see something was wrong. Her hair was coming down from its pins, and her gown was disheveled. The hem was torn.
He made his way to her, and she met him with bleak eyes. “You’d better come,” she said quietly. “Get Damek, Lady Helena, and Rochelle, but don’t bring anyone else. Have Céline go up to Lizbeth’s room and stay with her there.”
* * *
Not long after, Anton found himself below the castle in the old prison of Kimovesk. He’d not been down here since he was a boy.
Now he looked down at Heath’s half-naked, dead body, and he listened as Amelie’s voice went on and on, telling the story of what she’d seen in Heath’s past.
Lady Helena stood stricken.
Damek examined the contents of the cauldron.
Rochelle was on the floor, kneeling beside her brother, gripping his dead arm. No one tried to stop her.
When the five of them first entered the guardroom, both Rochelle and Helena had called Amelie a liar.
But then Amelie began to speak.
She was no storyteller, not like Céline, but in a way that made these situations better. Amelie did not embellish or add color or alter her voice. She began a tale when Heath was fifteen years old. As she described a few of the games he’d played in the attic or in the forest with Rochelle and Lizbeth, Anton could see Rochelle’s accusing expression begin to change.
By the time Amelie had reached Maddox attempting sword lessons, Lady Helena had gone pale.
Both women knew Amelie spoke the truth. She knew details, private details that no one could know without having seen them herself in Heath’s past.
Still, the story went on, and Damek turned from the cauldron when she told of Heath going to Jace for a spell that would kill from a distance and look like murder. Amelie finished with the death of Maddox, and then she pointed down to the strands of red-gold hair still on the floor.
“He was going to kill Rochelle tonight. He thought he was saving her.”
Rochelle put her face in her hands.
No one argued with Amelie or accused her of anything now.
Anton could see everyone believed her, but her eyes were still bleak. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been through this night, first having seen the warped nature of Heath’s past, and then being forced to kill him herself.
For some reason, Anton’s mind went back to the story Céline had told to the small crowd at the inn. He thought of all the different forms of jealousy and the tragedies that might follow as a result. Céline had been right in what she’d said that night. Between siblings, jealousy was the most dangerous emotion of all, more than hate, more than fear.
Damek walked over and looked down at the body. Then he raised his eyes to Anton. “So it’s over?”
Anton was numb. “Yes. You go and tell Father.”
Chapter Sixteen
The following morning, after a nearly sleepless night, Céline crawled out of bed quietly. Amelie was still asleep.
Helga raised her head from her palette on the floor, but Céline put a finger to her lips. There was a silk dressing gown with a cord hanging in the wardrobe. She’d not had a reason to use it yet, but it seemed the most expedient garment, so she pulled it on over her shift and tied it. Then she hefted her box of medical supplies
Without speaking, Helga got up, came to the door, and opened it.
Céline left the room, went up to the third floor of the tower, and found the door to Lady Helena’s room.
After setting down her box, she knocked.
Almost immediately, the door opened and Lizbeth stood on the other side.
“Oh, Lizbeth,” Céline whispered. “I came to check on your mother.”
The previous night, Céline had ended up giving Lady Helena another spoonful of poppy syrup to help her sleep.
Lizbeth stepped back. “She’s still asleep, but you can check on her.”
For having lost a much-loved brother, the girl appeared remarkably well possessed, but perhaps she was still in shock.
Céline checked Lady Helena’s breathing, but decided not to wake her. Instead, she turned to Lizbeth, wondering how to broach a difficult offer. “Lizbeth . . . if you ever find yourself in need of help, you know you can come to Anton, don’t you? You only need to send word or come to Sèone yourself.”
Lizbeth sat on the edge of the bed. “Thank you. That is good of you to say.” She sounded so adult. “But I think Mother will need me now. Last night, before you came to give her the poppy syrup, she tried speaking to Rochelle. She asked Rochelle if the two of us might come to live here at Kimovesk.” Lizbeth winced. “I hated that idea, but I didn’t expect Rochelle to be so cold. She told Mother no, and then said that Mother would be expected to leave for Quillette the day after the wedding. It was awful. I think she blames Mother for Heath, but I also think Mother doesn’t want to go home now that it will be just her and me.”
Céline had no idea what to say. In such a short time, this family had lost three members to death, and now they were losing a fourth member to marriage. They had lost a valued captain who’d lived with them for the past three years. Indeed, Helena and Lizbeth would be alone in a large manor.
“I’ll take care of her,” Lizbeth said, touching her mother’s hand.
“You were always the best of them,” Céline said, “of your brother and sisters. I hope you know that.”
Lizbeth’s face was so serious. “Does Rochelle still have to marry Damek? I mean . . . if she said no, after all that’s happened, could she still go home with us?”
“I think that’s out of our hands,” Céline answered, but the question made her wonder. She stood and touched Lizbeth’s shoulder. “I’ll come back in a little while.”
Slipping from the room, she stood in the passage for a few moments, and then she walked to Rochelle’s door and knocked.
“Come in.”
When she opened the door, she found Rochelle sitting at the dressing table, brushing out her hair.
Their eyes met in the mirror, and Rochelle turned. “Yes?” she asked.
Céline went in. She had no idea what to say, but in spite of their purpose in coming here, in spite of their duty to help seal this marriage, she couldn’t remain silent.
�
��After all that’s happened,” she said, “if you wish to escape this wedding today, no one would blame you for calling it off. You could cite distress over the death of your brother, and you could leave with Lady Helena and Lizbeth, and then later, you could quietly end things. Your mother would not object.”
Rochelle assessed her carefully. “Miss Céline, please let me make two things clear. First, I am marrying Prince Damek this afternoon, and nothing is going to stop me. Second, I loved my brother. I am fond of Lizbeth, but Heath was the only thing in this world that I loved. I’m going to be grand princess of Droevinka, and I would have kept him at my side and given him power.” Her eyes narrowed. “No matter what your sister says, he would never have done me any harm, and she killed him. I will never forget that. Never.” She turned back to the mirror. “Now leave my room.”
With nothing else to say, Céline left.
* * *
Later that morning, after a brief talk with his father, Anton went up to the sisters’ room and knocked on the door.
Helga opened it.
Anton was relieved to see both Amelie and Céline inside. Both of them wore simple wool dresses and had not yet begun to prepare themselves for the wedding.
He hung in the doorway as all three women watched him curiously.
“What is it?” Helga asked, and then she belatedly added, “My lord.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve just spoken with my father, and he told me that as a reward for our success here, we’ll be allowed to skip the ceremony, and we can leave as soon as we’re packed. Father says he’ll act as Damek’s witness, and I’m excused if I wish to be.”
“What?” Amelie asked. “Won’t that seem . . . odd? Your brother is getting married this afternoon. How will it look if we won’t stay even a few hours to attend?”
“I think Damek and I are long past false displays of brotherly support.”
“What do you want to do?” Céline asked.