“Truly, brother, I’m—”
The crown prince never finished. His goblet fell to the marble tile with a loud clash. Darren caught his brother by the arms just as Wren started to scream for a healer.
“Healer!” Darren’s voice roared out above the crowd. He had cast a defensive sphere in place. “Guards, get my brother a healer NOW!”
The floor broke out into a frenzied herd as servants and nobility alike came rushing to tend to the heir. Mage Marius and several guards formed a circle as a cluster of healers rushed in to help. I stumbled out of the way and almost slipped to give them space. Something was familiar. Something I couldn’t place my finger on, but it had to do with Blayne…
Red seeped out on the marble floor beneath my boots. But it wasn’t blood.
The wine.
His mother. Queen Lillian. And her poisoned wine.
The Caltothians had done it to her…
I started running to the front where I had seen Lord Tyrus last.
And I spotted him. Removing a dagger from the inside of his cloak. Right behind the king who was trying to push through to his son—
“To the ki-”
My hand shot out to cast as I cried—but it was too late. My magic was nothing but a whisper of flame. The potions the healers had given me had slowed its recovery to help speed my physical health.
I was helpless as the Caltothian plunged the weapon into King Lucius’s back.
“FOR CALTOTH!” The man’s blade struck out three times more as Darren’s father stumbled and fell, blood spraying from his lips as he hit the ground with a thud.
I was still running as the room became chaos. Mage Mira was the closest to respond—she was able to cast what my magic could not. A bolt of lightning and Lord Tyrus went down without a fight. Before I had even reached the king, she had already sent two swords piercing his front to back.
Blood was dribbling from the man’s wounds like a fountain, coating the tiles in red. Funny, how a Caltothian’s blood was no different than a king of Jerar.
“Protect the Crown! It’s an attack!” Commander Audric was running forward to see to the king as half the regiment on duty formed a circle around the two princes, the other half to their fallen king.
“Uncle!” Wrendolyn was running toward Duke Cassius in the crowd. She was sobbing and her eyes were crazed.
I fought the crowd, trying to push and shove my way toward the girl. Someone needed to protect her. I wasn’t sure where the three Caltothian guards were.
“Wren!” I screamed her name. “WREN! NO!”
A servant snagged the girl’s arm and another appeared, a quick draw of the blade, and then she was on the floor. A river of scarlet trickling from her neck, blond curls tinged in red.
I was chasing the servant as Duke Cassius and two of his men dropped to the princess’s side. The Pythian ambassador’s bellow shattered my heart. I pulled up short when I cornered the first. It wasn’t a Caltothian in disguise.
It was one of the lower city guards I’d seen during my apprenticeship. A rebel, I realized belatedly as he pulled out his knife. The rebels are working with the Caltothians.
I had to warn the others. “Rebels!” I screamed. “They are here!”
My hand shot underneath the folds of my robe and I blanched. My dagger wasn’t there. I reached for the sheath by my thigh. Empty. My outfit tonight had been for show. I’d spent all day in the infirmary; I didn’t have a single weapon on me.
And my body was still healing. I was weak, sluggish. I had bruises speckling my arms and a bandage to the chest.
And no magic.
I wasn’t the hunter; I was the prey.
The man’s panicked expression turned sly, as he seemed to recognize the same. And then I was thrust aside as Paige’s sword gut him from chest to belly, bowels and blood spilling out. A putrid stink filling the air.
I had to fight every instinct not to vomit.
“We’ve got to get you out of here!” My knight started to pull me away—one hand on my wrist, the other gripping her sword.
“Wren—”
Her voice grew thick. “She’s gone, Ryiah.”
“But the healers—”
“With the princes.” Paige was dragging me across the floor, both eyes flitting back and forth, checking our surroundings for safety.
“Where’s Darren?” Panic clawed at my throat when I didn’t see him or his brother at the front.
“He got his brother out. Marius and some of the King’s Regiment are guarding them in the eastern tower.”
“Ryiah!” Ella rushed forward and stopped just an inch before Paige’s blade impaled her throat. My friend shot her a reproachful look. “Paige, it’s me. I’m here to help you, fool.”
“Sorry.” My guard looked apologetic, but didn’t avert her gaze from the crowd. “I don’t trust anyone right now.”
“Ella.” I grabbed my friend’s arm. “There are rebels, you’ve got to warn Commander Audric—”
“They already know.” My friend pointed to the exits, and there was another scream behind us. Her pupils dilated. “He blocked off the room until they can identify everyone in the attacks. The only ones leaving are foreign dignitaries and the Crown. You aren’t safe here, Ry. Princess Wrendolyn—”
Paige cut Ella off. “She already knows. Help me get her out of here. If they went after the Pythian princess, Ryiah would be the next logical target.”
“But the others!” I protested. “What about—”
“You are more important.” Paige’s reply had an edge. “Ella and I will return when you are safe.”
I had never felt so useless in my life. I let them lead me through the maze of people, all the others begging to be free of the room. Safe. Not only was I without magic, and weak from injury, but I was also a part of the group others risked their lives to save.
I had trained my whole life as a warrior. But in that moment I was the damsel-in-distress.
Chapter Fifteen
Nine dead. On the final night of the Candidacy the new Council of Magic was brought into its official reign by the blood of a king of Jerar, a young Pythian princess, four high-ranking Crown advisors, two prominent noblemen, and one poisoning attempt on the crown prince—now new king of Jerar—himself.
Never in the history of Jerar had so many important lives been stolen away in the course of an hour.
The five rebels were all found and executed. The three Caltothian servants that had come with their Lord Tyrus? They never made it out. Commander Audric’s men and the newly promoted Mage Mira ensured every single one of the traitors were put to death before the night had ended.
I doubted they had expected to live. In a room filled with so many of the Crown and King’s Regiments? With so many high-ranking mages and the world’s most powerful black robe? Their mission had only been to kill.
The Crown’s progress carried King Lucius’s corpse back to the capital in Devon. Duke Cassius took his niece’s body back to Pythus by ship with the rest of the court from his own country. The Borea Isles followed the same.
We left so hastily I only got the barest glimpse of my parents and Alex and Ella before I left. Derrick was already riding off with the rest of his regiment friends for the keep. I saw Ian and Jacob alongside him, and a part of me wished I were returning too. Derrick hadn’t forgiven me for what happened to our brother, and more than ever I wanted to make amends.
I spent the whole of our five days south quietly mourning Wrendolyn’s loss. Quietly, because the new king had lost a wife, and both he and his brother a father. All in one night. Despite everything they had experienced at the hand of Lucius’s reign, he was their father—and that in itself was its own kind of misery.
The speech Blayne gave at his father’s funeral was a call for war.
“Gone is the benevolence my father gave to our neighbor in the north. For too long I have watched our great country suffer in the guise of peace. No more. King Horrace sent his chief ambassador to slaug
hter my father in cold blood… He took the life of an innocent young beauty, my wife—” Blayne’s voice cracked and through the mage’s amplification casting he swallowed. “—Whose flower had barely begun to bloom—” The young king ran a fist across his eyes. “And several great house lords in the attack. Horrace has been paying off our men to weaken our kingdom and turn them against the Crown...”
Blayne climbed the towering steps of his father’s pyre; they led up to the sky. The red folds of his father’s cloak flapped heavily in the wind.
“Jerar will no longer be victim to Caltothian greed. We will fight back.”
The hoards of low and highborn alike shouted their consent, a roar that shattered the sky, as the new king of Jerar lowered his torch.
Flames erupted in a tempest of red. Against the bright summer sun it seared. Red like blood. Red like rage. Red like revenge.
“I PROMISE YOU THIS.” Blayne’s voice boomed down from above. “JERAR WILL NOT BE A VICTIM. PYTHUS AND THE BOREA ISLES WILL HONOR OUR NEW ALLIANCE, AND WE WILL GO TO WAR. IT IS TIME TO MAKE A STAND.”
The streets of Devon were a rumble of cries. The hammer of footfalls and bellows for change. I screamed right along with them. I screamed until my lungs grew hoarse. I screamed for Wren and for Eve and for Caine and every one of our own. All the lives the enemy had taken. All the senseless violence.
It was so much easier to choose anger over pain, and so I screamed.
I didn’t notice the boy with the garnet eyes walk away.
****
“But where did he go?”
Henry shrugged and I ground my teeth, frustrated. How could the prince’s own personal guard let him out of the city unaccompanied? So soon after the attack?
“Your one job is to guard him!”
The man folded his arms, undaunted. “All apologies, my lady, but when the Black Mage orders you not to follow, you don’t follow.”
“It doesn’t matter what he—”
Paige cut me off with a hand to my wrist. “He doesn’t know, Ryiah, let him be.”
“I know, I just…” I trailed off, my arms falling limp at my sides. “He shouldn’t be out there, Paige.” I wasn’t really worried about Caltothians or rebels. They had never bothered to come after Darren during the attack, even when he was weak. After his display during the Candidacy he would be the last one anyone wanted to face. Not unless they had an army at their backs. “I’m worried.”
Darren had been so busy playing his role as the new Black Mage to his brother he hadn’t let himself feel. He had shut out that storm of emotions and been the man the others expected. The way he had dealt with everything in his life.
But tonight. Tonight, he had cracked. Whatever he had been feeling after his father’s death, it had led him to leave. And now he was gone and he shouldn’t be alone.
Not like this.
I started to sprint toward the stables where the regiment had boarded up our horses for the ceremony.
“Ryiah!” Paige chased after me. “Not you too! You don’t even know where—”
I turned around sharply to stop her, panting. “No. You stay. Just this once, Paige. Let me do this on my own. Please.”
Her brown eyes narrowed to mine. She sighed loudly, muttering a curse when she saw my face. “Fine. Two hours. You have two hours to find him.”
“But—”
“A minute longer and I will send out a search party. Henry and I would have done it regardless. The two of you might be the best mages in the realm, but you aren’t invincible.”
I started forward. “Thank—”
“Time started five seconds ago.” She raised a brow. “I suggest you get going.”
I tore out of the stable at a gallop. I took the empty backstreets to the plains just outside the capital; I knew Darren would have done the same.
As soon as I made it out of the city I came to a stop. Every direction the King’s Road took was overflowing. Passersby and caravans on every branch of the path. Everyone who had come to pay respect to their new king, or to peddle their wares during the height of an opportunity. The air was thick with incense and chatter.
I veered off the main trail to the north. It was a different route from the one that wove around the mountain range to Montfort, and I could see recent hoof prints marring the grass headed east. It led to a dead end—the very back of the palace was actually situated over a cliff that ran along for a couple of miles in either direction, but I knew it would be the one he would take.
For thirty minutes I rode in silence. The last rays of the sun cut a somewhat abandoned path across heavy forest foliage. Bright flashes of gold mixed in with green, something beautiful and remote. The air was sweeter here, too.
I could hear the steady trickle of a stream as I drew closer to the clearing. When I finally cut across to the granite edge, I found him standing there, with Wolf at his feet, overlooking the ledge. A stream was snaking down its end; the soft hush of water against rock much further below.
The sky was teeming with stars.
The sound of hoof beats alerted him of my approach.
The non-heir—or perhaps that title didn’t fit anymore—spun around, tottering. It was then I noticed the flask in his hand.
I dismounted, tying up my mare next to his own, and started forward. “Darren—”
He held out a hand to stop me, and I noticed he was shaking, violently. “I don’t want you to see me like this, Ryiah.” He slurred the words as he spoke. “Go home.”
I stopped walking but made no move to turn around. My voice was gentle. “It’s okay to be sad. He was your father.”
The prince threw back his head and laughed. Like it was the funniest thing in the world. But the movement shifted his balance.
Darren started to slip—
My hand shot out without a moment’s thought.
A blast of wind was all that saved Darren from the rocky abyss below. He collapsed onto jagged granite as I struggled to breathe, wind rattling my lungs. A part of me was furious it could have even happened. The other part terrified he might have let it.
And then I ran forward to drag him away from the ledge. There were cuts marring his hands but he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t care at all. As I heaved one arm over my shoulder he was still laughing, madly. “Can you really call a man like him ‘father?’”
I didn’t know how to reply. So I kept silent and just kept moving him toward a boulder he could lean against a couple more feet toward the clearing, away from the drop. He was in no position to stand.
“All these years…” His words were faded. “All this time I hated him. When I… So many times I wondered what it would be like…” His head fell forward as I helped him sit. “I envied you, you know. I saw your parents that day… At the first-year trials… You looked so… happy.”
A part of me crumbled. The little boy saving his brother, wishing for a different life.
“I never loved him… I tried but what—what he did to us...” Pain lanced Darren’s voice. “Blayne was never strong. Not like me… Maybe that was why...”
“Why?”
“The moment Blayne collapsed… I knew. I knew I should have gone to him… I was the Black Mage.” His eyes met mine and suddenly I knew. “It was my job to protect him… But I chose my brother.”
“You didn’t know—”
“I suspected.” Bitterness flowed through his words. “And I didn’t do a thing… Could have had you watch Blayne… But—but I thought maybe it was better… So I didn’t do anything.” His whole body was shuddering. “I didn’t speak a word.”
I leaned against the granite so that my shoulders lined up with his. A slight puff of dirt settled as I shifted in my seat.
“If you were smart…” Darren drew in a sharp breath. “You’d run away and never look back.” He exhaled. “I’m poison, Ryiah.” The last words tore at my lungs. “Just like my father.”
I clutched his bloodied fingers in my own, but he pulled away even as I spoke.
“You are nothing like him!”
“Aren’t I?” His laugh was low. “He wasn’t always a bad man. He was never kind… but he wasn’t always cruel. The servants… They say he changed after my mother died.” Darren met my eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if that was who my father was always destined to be, and my mother just saved him from himself…” Garnet turned to black. “Or his love for her made him become it.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
His voice was so quiet. “I’m afraid of what my love for you will make me.”
“Darren…” Now it was my turn to crack. “I—” I didn’t know what to say. My palms were trembling, and I pressed them against the sand and rocks to hide their tremor.
“Sometimes I wish I was never a prince…” His eyes clouded. “And I wonder what it would be like… if I were just a boy, and you just a girl—without all of this.”
I let my fingers slide to his. “It would have made everything a lot easier.”
For a while there was just silence. The heavy patter of his heart next to mine, the rise and fall of his chest. The quiet in and out of our breath.
Then he shut his eyes. “We should be them, someday.”
“We will.” My grip tightened on his hand. Whatever he thought, he wasn’t poison.
Darren wasn’t darkness, and I wasn’t his light.
The non-heir had proven time and time again he was more than his father’s son. More than an arrogant non-heir who thought only of himself. And now I wanted to show Darren what he looked like to me.
I needed to show him he was fire. My fire. Something filled with light. Something good. Someone just like me but wrapped up so tightly in his own barrier of darkness it could burn. Unless you knew how to unravel him.
And so I kissed him. Tugging his face to mine, I held his face in the palm of my hands and kissed his mouth. Just once. Pressing my lips to his I shut my eyes and channeled my one single promise.
I will never give up on you.
A spark seemed to light me up from the inside. Like tinder, my body shot to flames. And his returned. We were two coals burning in the dark.
When I pulled back his eyes were stars.
The Black Mage: Candidate Page 23