Next Don Arturo lifted his palm expectantly, his expression smug. “Your signet ring.”
Rafe clenched his jaw and gave him a hard, scouring look as he submitted to this humiliation. He removed the ring, the symbol of his rank, and placed it in the prime minister’s outstretched hand.
Don Arturo gave the guards a crisp nod. “Unchain him.”
“Give me my sword.”
They had taken it from him when they had clapped him in irons. Don Arturo regarded him warily as one of the guards gave him back his weapon.
Rafe’s right hand closed around its jeweled hilt. Sword in hand, his eyes alight with majestic wrath, he stalked across the senate floor, feeling no pain from their beatings, nor fatigue. Filled only with a terrible, shining rage of love, he charged up the steps to the exit, officials and dignitaries flinging themselves out of his path.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Dani urged her white mare around the towering black citadel in a path that hugged its mossy wall.
The mare was nervous, reflecting Dani’s still-shaken state after the first grisly death. One of the guards had been caught in a rusty bear trap which Orlando had concealed under the forest bed of decaying leaves and twigs. Closing on him like a shark’s mouth, it had all but torn the man in half. There was no telling how many more such devices lay in wait in the woods surrounding, or what other surprises Orlando had in store for any who would dare trespass on his moldering lair.
Scanning the fort’s wall and calling for the little prince as loudly as she dared, Dani was reconsidering the wisdom of taking on this rescue, especially in her delicate condition. She didn’t feel delicate, but then, she wasn’t feeling particulary brave since that guard’s death, either.
After a hard ride of about twenty miles, Elan had led her and the handful of Royal Guardsmen down the shadowy lane at the turn to the ancient di Cambio fortress. They had given a wide berth to the deadly spiked pit, concealed by a gentle rise in the undulating green landscape, and had passed it safely. Surrounding her, the men had been grim-faced and silent, watchful. Then they had ventured into the bosky woods, fanning out as they closed in on the medieval stronghold where Rafael had said he believed his little brother had been hidden.
Suddenly Dani thought she heard a high-pitched voice shouting thinly, “I’m heeeeere! Help!”
“Prince Leo! Your Highness!” she called again, more loudly this time.
She listened for all she was worth.
The wind was still. Not even a bird sang in the trees.
“Help!”
The voice seemed to be coming from underneath the ground. She rode back and forth in the area where she’d heard it.
“Keep yelling, Your Highness! I’ll find you!”
“Here! I’m here!”
She leaped off her horse and followed the sound of the boy’s cries to the rock-strewn base of the wall, some twelve feet away. She yelled for Elan as she dropped quickly to her knees and began pulling the smaller stones away.
Elan came running through the underbrush toward her. “What is it?”
“I think he’s in some kind of underground chamber here! Perhaps an annex to the old dungeon!”
“Help!”
“Leo! It’s Elan! We’re going to get you out of there!” he cried into the chink in the wall which she had begun to uncover. He scrambled to help her.
“Elan! Get me out!” yelled the boy-prince from the bowels of the earth.
“Are you hurt, Your Highness?” Dani shouted.
“No!”
With a few more stones removed, they could see him through a hole about seven inches in diameter. The little prince stood below, gazing up at them from the darkness.
Dani turned to Elan with a grimace. “We can’t possibly fit him through this opening. We’ve got to go inside and try to make our way down there.”
Elan nodded. “Right. I’ll go in with you, but let’s have the men keep trying to pull these stones away, just in case we can’t find another way to get him out.”
“Right.” Elan explained to the child what they were going to do while Dani called the remaining guardsmen over and set them to the task of trying to pry the fallen stones loose from the castle wall.
“Your Highness, don’t stand underneath here where they’re working! One of the stones might fall in!” Dani called to him.
“Yes, ma’am.” Leo stepped back obediently.
Elan smiled askance at her as they marched toward the yawning entrance of the tumbledown castle. “You’re going to make a splendid, if formidable mother, if I may say so, Your Highness.”
Her jaw dropped. “How did you know?”
He chuckled. “It’s written all over your face. Felicitations on the blessed event.”
Pleased but blushing heatedly, she gave him a harmless scowl, then they ran, knowing that Rafael’s fate depended on how quickly they could bring his little brother back to Belfort to reveal the truth about the bishop’s death.
The gloom was deep except where the white rays slanted in over the broken walls. The inside of the crumbling citadel was sketched in charcoal shadows and dusty light. All planes and angles, halved pillars lay in the once-rich great room, whose only fine draperies now were the thick cobwebs that billowed silkily in the draft. A staircase led nowhere, ending in midair.
Elan and she crept across the great room, seeking a way down into the depths of the earth beneath the stronghold, where Leo had been spirited away. The musty darkness thickened as they forged on into the recesses of the old castle.
“What caused the break in the royal house that sent the di Cambio line away from Ascencion, anyway?” Dani whispered in the churchlike stillness.
“According to legend, two brothers fell in love with the same woman,” the viscount replied, bravely leading the way.
Dani shivered.
All of a sudden, there was a cracking, breaking creak, and suddenly the floor gave out beneath them. With reflexes honed by her outlaw adventures, Dani leaped back just in time, but Elan lost his footing, flailing wildly. He scrabbled for purchase, then dropped, disappearing with a whoosh straight down through the trapdoor.
Dani screamed as Elan yelled, falling.
She flung herself down on her hands and knees at the edge of the rectangular hole. “Elan! Elan! Answer me!”
A few seconds later, she heard him stirring with a groggy groan. “I’m all right!” he called up to her. “I may have broken my ankle.” She heard him add a curse under his breath. “Still, I didn’t land on metal spikes, so I consider myself lucky,” he added ruefully. “I think it best if you go back outside and rejoin the guards, Your Highness.”
“No, I can’t leave that child down there. Besides, I don’t think his cell is much farther.” Dani hesitated, just able to make him out in the dimness. He appeared to have fallen to a holding cell about fifteen feet below. “I’ll be right back for you after I’ve gotten Leo out.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t be going anywhere soon,” he answered wryly. “Please be careful. Rafe will wring my neck if you’re hurt.”
“I will. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Swallowing hard, Dani gathered her courage and forged on alone, inching across the next gaping chamber she came to. At the other end of it, a large board had been propped over what appeared to be a small doorway.
She went to it, removed the board, and peered inside. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw a ladder. Steeling herself, she climbed down it.
To her surprise, it stayed intact until she stepped down onto the floor below. Turning around, she found herself in some kind of dungeon. Four doorways led away from the middle chamber. Dry-mouthed with fright, she looked from one to the other, crossing her arm over her abdomen in an instinctively protective gesture, as though to shield the growing life in her womb from the dank smell of evil that permeated the musty air.
“Leo! Where are you?”
When the child answered her call, she followed
the sound of his voice as best she could, and after a few false starts, finally found him. Incredibly, the key to the gridiron door barring the dungeon’s large single cell was hanging on a rusty peg driven into the rock nearby. Finally, she thought as she reached for it, one thing had gone her way.
She quickly unlocked the door and went to the child. She told him who she was and gave him a hug. Leo was a sturdy little ten year old with big brown eyes, rosy cheeks, and soft dark curls. Taking his hand, Dani led him toward the door. They ran out of the cell and wound their way back through the mazelike structure to the torture chamber where the ladder waited, their sole route to freedom.
But just when Dani knew they were in the clear, running through the awful chamber of death, she felt a draft gust through the room, looked up, and saw the board lift away.
She barely had time to gasp as Orlando dropped to the floor before her, agile and huge as a graceful black panther. They stared at each other. Dani’s eyes were wide, her heartbeat frantic. She stepped in front of the little prince, putting him behind her.
Orlando’s bright green eyes seemed to glow vividly, catlike, in the dark.
He took a step toward her. She reached for her rapier. He seized her by the throat and held her up on her toes.
“No, my lady,” he said gently. “Put your hands up.”
Choking for air, she obeyed. He removed her weapon from her side, then set her down again.
“You know what I’m going to do to you, don’t you?” he whispered.
She clenched her jaw and held his stare in defiance.
He smiled slightly, his eyes aglow. “Back to the cell. Both of you.”
Dani held her ground staunchly, hiding her terror. “Let the boy go. He is just a child. For the love of God, Orlando, he is your brother.”
“It’s too late—thanks to you, Lady Daniela. It’s all over now. That fool Don Arturo has begun to realize. You threw the future away. You see the three of us here? This is how it could have been. Leo on the throne. I ruling Ascencion through him. You in my bed.”
She winced in disgust and turned her face away.
“But you had to go and ruin everything. And now I’m going to make you pay for it.” He pushed her, sending her stumbling in the direction from which she’d just come.
“Hey!” the little prince yelled, stepping toward the man who towered over him.
Orlando raised his hand to strike him, but Dani quickly gathered the child against her, hushing his angry retort.
Glowering at her, Orlando slowly lowered his hand.
“Come, Leo,” she murmured, her arm draped around his shoulders as they headed back toward the cell. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. Orlando walked behind them, so he did not see Dani glance up at the ceiling, where she had left the Royal Guardsmen struggling to remove the stones.
“Go sit down,” Orlando ordered the boy as he fixed his stare on Dani and slowly drew off his black leather gloves. “You might want to turn your back while I punish your auntie, Leo. This isn’t going to be pretty.”
Leo looked from her to Orlando in terror.
Dani was dizzy with fear. There was no escape. She could only pray that the guards were still near enough to hear.
With that thought her only hope, she lifted her ashen face to the feeble beam of sunlight that had found its way in through the rock, drew a deep breath, and let a out long, high-pitched scream to rack the very woods beyond: “Help!”
Her scream faded to the low, bubbling sound of Orlando’s laughter.
Shaking with icy fear, Dani lowered her chin and gazed at him. When he took a step toward her, she backed away.
“Don’t do this, Orlando. I—I know things about you,” she said, trying to stall him.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he snarled, his eyes glittering.
“I know you’ve suffered terribly,” she forced out, giving him a pleading look. “The man I sent to investigate you told me a lot about your past. He found your old nurse, Nunzia. Do you remember her?” she asked as she swallowed hard and continued backing away.
He stalked her slowly through the cell hewn in the living rock.
“Nunzia told my friend how King Lazar met your mother two years before he ascended the throne. He was just a young man, traveling the world, and he met your mother at the opera one night, and they had an affair that lasted three days before he sailed on again. I know that your mother was married at the time to a cruel brute of a man, and when she found herself with child, she tried to pass you off as her husband’s son, but the baron, the man you thought was your father, never believed the lie. And I know that he treated you accordingly, punishing you every day of your life for the crime of having been born.”
“Shut up, bitch,” he snarled, his voice demonic. “You never should have gotten in my way.”
“I know he beat you terribly, and I know your mother fed you all the while on secret stories of your real father—a just and kind and handsome king. You became obsessed with him. But you hated him for never coming to save you.”
“You are going to have a very painful death, Daniela.” He lunged at her.
She whirled out of the way.
Just then, male voices sounded from the direction of the chamber where the ladder still rested by the wall. Dani paused, realizing it was a couple of the guards. They must have found their way in, coming in answer to her scream several minutes ago.
Orlando turned at the sound, then shot her a searing glare. “When I get back,” he said, “you’re both dead.”
With that, he stalked out of the cell, pausing only to lock them in.
Above them, one of the large rocks suddenly rolled back, letting in a thin shaft of sunlight.
“Your Highness!” a male voice whispered loudly.
Blinking against the light, Dani looked up and saw the last remaining guardsman. The big, burly man kept working, rocking a stubbornly wedged boulder until the opening was large enough for the child to fit through.
Dani wasted no time. “Leo!” She laid her hand on his small shoulder and stared gravely at him. “I’m going to lift you up. Grasp the guard’s hand and he’ll pull you out. Then you must ride with him to the city and tell Don Arturo exactly what happened at the bishop’s. Can you do that?”
The curly-headed boy looked fearfully toward the door. “Orlando said he would cut me up in pieces if I ever told anyone what he did. I think he meant it.”
“He won’t do that, Leo. We’re going to keep you safe. Rafe will protect you from Orlando, but first you have to go help Rafe. Tell Don Arturo everything, yes?”
He nodded bravely. “Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. Now I’m going to lift you up.”
Planting her feet to brace herself, Daniela gritted her teeth and hoisted the boy onto her shoulders. Carefully Prince Leo stood on her shoulders until he could reach the guardsman’s hands, stretched down to grasp his smaller ones. With a mighty heave, the guard pulled Leo up.
A moment later, the guard peered down at her briefly. He threw down a rope to her. Dani paced in the cell below while he went back to work trying to roll the massive boulder out of the way, but though he put all his great weight against it, as the moments passed, he could not widen the opening enough for her to slip through, skinny as she was.
“Daniela, my love!”
She looked fearfully toward the gridiron door, hearing Orlando’s voice echoing to her.
“I’m coming for you now!”
Lifting her chin, she looked up, ashen, at the panic-stricken guard.
“You can’t let him get Leo. The boy’s testimony is the only thing that can save Rafael. Take him back to Belfort—now. There’s no time. Take him now. I don’t want him to—hear.”
“But—”
“Hurry!” she ordered in anguish. “Pull up the rope so Orlando doesn’t see. And…tell my husband that I love him.”
The guard’s face was utterly grim. “Take my weapon.” He tossed his pistol down
to her. She caught it in midair, her hope soaring as it landed in her hands. Then he threw down his leather pouch of powder and bullets and sent her a grave salute. “God be with you, Principessa,” he said, then he got up and led Leo away.
She prayed they would make it out safely past Orlando’s hideous traps as she loaded the pistol with shaking hands. She had only one shot at Orlando. She did not expect to have time to reload and fire again. What if she missed some vital part? she thought. Orlando could be wounded, but still strong enough to destroy her. If only she had some means of instantly incapacitating him….
Her heart pounded, her mind ticked, and as she cocked the gun, a diabolical idea suddenly came to her.
She stared from the pouch of ammunition to the iron door.
She could make a terrible trap of her own for Orlando. It was wildly risky, but Orlando was almost supernaturally strong. A bullet might not stop him. She had to protect her unborn child…Rafael’s baby…Ascencion’s future king. She had to survive this, though she knew her chances were next to nil.
It’s my only hope.
Stalking toward the iron door, she dropped to one knee and poured out the gunpowder in a circle about one man-sized pace inside the cell. When Orlando unlocked the iron door and came into the cell, he would have to step directly onto the circle of black powder in order to get to her, and when he did, she would fire her single shot not at him, but at the gunpowder. Struck by the bullet, the powder would catch and make a large, dangerous flare. He would be burned, stunned, and blinded long enough for her to run past him out of the cell and lock him inside. Then Rafael or even King Lazar could decide what to do with him.
What if the shot doesn’t make enough of a spark to catch?
It has to.
Sweat ran down her cheek to think that her life depended on a single bullet.
She could hear him marching toward the cell now. She arranged herself in the far corner of the cavelike cell behind a small outcropping of rock. She rested the muzzle of the pistol on the rock and waited, her heart in her throat, prayers streaming, one after the other, through her mind.
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