The Bridge Kingdom

by Danielle L. Jensen

  The woman’s gaze landed on Lara. “Who’s the sullen one?”

  “My cousin. He’s learning the trade.”

  Marisol tilted her pretty head, eyeing Lara as though she were trying to place her face. “Eyes like that, your mother must’ve been dallying with King Silas himself.”

  Aren choked on his drink. “Now wouldn’t that be something?”

  “You might have more fun if you smiled a bit more, boy. You could learn more from your cousin than how to sail a ship.”

  Lara gave her a smile that was all teeth, but the woman only laughed, her attention back on Aren. “How long are you here?”

  “Only until tomorrow, assuming the storm breaks.”

  Her jaw tightened in obvious disappointment. “So soon.”

  “My presence is required back home.”

  “That’s what you always say.” Marisol exhaled softly, then shook her head. “You’ll be needing rooms for your crew for the night, then? And your cousin?”

  Lara’s stomach flipped. But not for him. Surely he didn’t intend . . .

  “For them. And one for me as well.”

  One of Marisol’s eyebrows rose, and Lara fought the urge to punch her in her pretty little nose.

  Jor cleared his throat. “He’s gotten himself married off, Marisol.”

  The woman stood so abruptly that she knocked against the table, sending liquid sloshing out of the glasses.

  Setting down his drink, Aren gave Jor a black glare, but the older man only shrugged. “No sense belaboring the conversation. Now she’s been told, so we can get on with business.”

  Marisol’s eyes glittered, and she blinked rapidly. “Congratulations. I’m sure she’s charming.”

  “She has a temper like wildfire and a sharp tongue to go along with it.”

  Marisol’s gaze shifted to Lara, far too many realizations flashing through her eyes. Rather than staring her down like she wanted to, Lara fixed her attention on a crack in the table. “I’m sure she’s very beautiful,” the other woman said.

  Aren was quiet for a moment. “As beautiful as clear skies over the Tempest Seas. And equally as elusive.”

  Lara’s stomach flipped as his words registered, a compliment wrapped in a dark truth that she couldn’t deny.

  “Well, that explains why you’re in love with her, then,” Marisol said softly. “You’ve always been enthralled by challenges.”

  Lara snatched up one of the little glasses and downed the contents, her ears buzzing even as she looked anywhere but at Aren.

  Jor coughed loudly, then waved his arms in the air. “We need a round of drinks over here.”

  “Perhaps more than one.” Marisol sat at the table, giving the slightest of nods to the musicians. They set aside the stringed instruments, retrieving drums and tambourines, filling the room with rhythm. Young women dressed in bright-colored dresses danced through the tables, the bracelets of bells around their wrists and ankles jingling as their voices accompanied the music. Moments later, the patrons began to clap, the din making it hard for Lara to hear herself think.

  Marisol clapped along. “There is no evidence the king is building up his fleet in an effort to fight the Valcottan blockade. Not even any sign that he intends to. I have informants up and down the coast, and not a single shipyard boasts a commission from the crown.”

  Lara blinked. This woman was a spy?

  “The prices of imports have skyrocketed. Food is limited to what Maridrina can produce itself, which is little given all our farmers have been turned to soldiers, and famine is on the rise in the cities. It’s only expected to worsen.”

  Aren clapped along in time to the music. “Amarid isn’t picking up the slack? I would’ve thought they’d be clamoring for the opportunity.”

  Marisol shook her head. “Amaridian sailors are crying in every port that the alliance between Ithicana and Maridrina has destroyed their incomes.” Her eyes flicked to Aren. “And now that the alliance isn’t working out as intended, they seem happy for Maridrina to pay the price.”

  “Vindictive of them.”

  Marisol took a sip from her drink, then nodded. “The support of the Maridrinian people for the conflict with Valcotta had been on the wane for years, because no one believed there was anything to be gained from it. But since the wedding and Valcotta’s subsequent retaliation, favor for all-out war with Valcotta has grown tenfold. Men and boys both are throwing themselves at army recruiters, fancying themselves the saviors of their people, and—” Marisol broke off, casting a quick glance at Lara.

  “And?” Aren prompted.

  “And there is a growing number of voices suggesting that the alliance of the Fifteen Year Treaty should be broken. That while Maridrina starves, Ithicana continues to profit off trade with Valcotta. That if the Bridge Kingdom were a true ally, they would deny our enemies port at Southwatch.”

  Lifting one shoulder, Marisol let it fall. “The concessions Ithicana granted Maridrina haven’t benefited our people in the slightest. But rather than blaming King Silas, they blame Ithicana for the hardship. The people are itching for a fight.”

  Maridrina will starve before they ever see the benefit of this treaty. Aren’s words echoed through Lara’s skull. How right he’d been.

  The song ended, the dancers faded back to their other posts, and the musicians chose a more subdued song for their next piece. Marisol stood. “I need to get back to work. I’ll have food sent over and rooms made up for you and your crew.”

  Her father, Serin . . . all her masters. They’d lied to Lara and her sisters. That in itself was no great revelation—she’d realized that Ithicana’s villainy had been exaggerated and expounded upon in order to turn the girls into fundamentalists with one clear goal: the destruction of Maridrina’s oppressor. But until this precise moment, she had believed that while her father’s methods had been vile, his motivation had been pure. To save Maridrina’s people. To feed them and protect them.

  Except Ithicana wasn’t the oppressor. Her father was.

  Lara and her sisters hadn’t been isolated in the desert compound for their safety. They hadn’t even been kept there to conceal her father’s plans from Ithicana, not really. It had been to keep Lara and her sisters from the truth. Because if they’d known that their mission was driven not by the need to right a wrong, but by their father’s endless greed, how willing would any of them have been to betray a husband? To tear apart a nation? To see a people slaughtered? Promises and threats and bribes were paltry motivators compared to the fanaticism that had been burned into her and her sisters’ souls.

  But for Lara, that fanaticism burned no longer.

  27

  Aren

  “Why are we here?” Jor motioned for one of the girls to bring another round of drinks. “What are we risking wild seas and enemy territory for?”

  Pushing his food around on the plate in front of him, Aren didn’t answer. Lara had gone upstairs to their room an hour ago, silent, her face pale. He’d told her to remain there until he returned for her own safety. He had no expectations that she’d listen.

  He’d known. Standing in the water with her next to Snake Island, he’d known. All the little peculiarities about his Maridrinian wife, the little things that had struck him as odd, had accumulated until there was no denying it.

  Lara was a spy.

  The woman he’d goddamned fallen in love with was a spy.

  In the early days of their marriage, he’d believed Lara’s apparent disdain for him was driven by her discomfort of being forced into a marriage that she didn’t want. A life she hadn’t chosen. But the shock on her face when he told her that her father had been given the chance to feed his starving people and had bought weapons instead signaled she’d been lied to on top of everything else.

  Aren employed enough spies of his own to know the best of them believed that the work they did was for a greater good. The Rat King would be hard-pressed to find a spy who believed Ithicana was the cause of Maridrina’s pligh
t, so he’d created one: a daughter raised in total isolation to implant a false sense of righteousness.

  Except now she knew the truth.

  “Aren?” Jor’s voice was unconcerned, but Aren had never heard the captain of his guard slip on a pseudonym, particularly that of his king. The older man was worried. And rightly so. Ithicana was caught between a rock and a very hard place.

  Before Aren had a chance to answer, one of his crew stepped inside the tavern and nodded once. Aren’s heart sank. “You’re about to find out.”

  Outside, his guard reported, “She’s walking up the main boulevard. Gorrick is tailing her.” He handed Aren his bow and quiver.

  Aren took the weapons without comment and started up the street, Jor on his heels. Vencia was crowded as always, and it took him a bit of time to find the tall Ithicanian tailing his wife. “Go back,” he muttered to Gorrick once he had Lara in his sights. “We’ll take it from here.”

  The man opened his mouth to argue, then saw the expression on Aren’s face, and faded into the crowd.

  Lara strode up the center of the street, still wearing her disguise, which meant the drunks and rabble-rousers left her alone. Yet as they tailed her, he wondered how the disguise fooled anyone at all. Every time she turned her head to regard something that had caught her interest, torchlight framed the delicate lines of her face, her full lips, the long column of her neck, the rounded curve of her ass. The slight sway to her step. No Harendellian ship boy he’d ever met walked like that.

  She was so painfully beautiful, and even knowing that she’d used it against him didn’t lessen how powerfully he was drawn to her.

  He silently pleaded: Please let me be wrong about what you intend to do.

  But there was no denying the route Lara was taking, up the switchback streets in the direction of her father’s palace, that blue and bronze testament to his hubris and greed.

  Jor cursed as he, too, realized which way Lara was going. “We need to stop her.”

  Aren sidestepped a drunken pair and moved into the shadows closer to the buildings. “Not yet.”

  The farther they climbed, the fewer people filled the street, but Lara hadn’t once looked back. As though it hadn’t even occurred to her that he might have her watched.

  “What are you doing, Aren?” Jor hissed.

  “I need to see if she’ll betray me if given the chance.”

  But what he hoped was that the truth had turned her. That, now awake to her father’s deception, she’d turn her back on whatever purpose she’d been set to. If she was the sort of woman he believed, no, prayed, her to be.

  She kept walking toward the gate, the guards flanking it regarding her with bored interest, a lone youth of no concern to them. Aren stopped in the shadows where the guards wouldn’t see him, pulling a single arrow from his quiver. The bow was his own, but the wood felt strange and unfamiliar beneath his sweating fingers.

  Jor reached for his weapon. “Let me do this for you.”

  Aren stepped sideways, nocking the arrow as he shook his head. “No. I brought her into Ithicana. She’s my responsibility.” Lara wasn’t slowing, and the guards at the gate perked up as she approached.

  One of the guards called out to her. “What are you about, boy?” Lara didn’t answer.

  Again, Jor tried to take the weapon. “You’re half in love with the girl. You don’t need this on your conscience.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She stopped a dozen paces from the heavy iron gates.

  “State your purpose or be on your way,” the guard shouted.

  Aren slowly drew the bow, aiming the arrow at the center of her slender back. At this range, it would punch straight through her heart. She’d be dead before she could damn him, and Ithicana, more than she already had.

  Aren’s heart was wild and frantic in his chest, hot sweat mixing with the rain running down his back. As he blinked, he saw her fall. Saw her blood spill out in a pool around her. Saw those cursedly beautiful eyes of hers lose their spark. Then he blinked again and she was standing motionless in the darkness. She took a hesitant step forward. His arm quivered.

  Another step.

  The bowstring dug into his fingers as he slowly began to straighten them, knowing that despite having no choice, he’d never forgive himself for killing her.

  Her body rocked and his heart skipped. Then lightning flashed and Lara whirled, sprinting away from the gates. Jor jerked Aren deeper into the shadows as she passed, heading back into the city. He took a step to follow before everything he’d eaten for dinner rose in his throat. Bracing a hand against the wall of the building, Aren puked his guts out onto the street.

  “Follow her,” he managed to get out. “Make sure she gets back safe.”

  Only when Jor had disappeared down the street did Aren rest his head against the slimy wet stone. A half a second. That had been the difference between her running into the night and her lying dead on the street. Half a second.

  The stench of vomit filled his nose, but that wasn’t what made his eyes burn. He scrubbed at them furiously, hating the King of Maridrina to the depths of his soul. The alliance between Maridrina and Ithicana made a mockery of the word, for it felt Aren had no greater enemy than Silas Veliant.

  “You,” someone shouted. “No loitering. Get on your way!”

  Casting one backward glance at the palace where Lara’s father slept, Aren melted into the night.

  28

  Lara

  “Whiskey,” Lara muttered at the barkeep, easing onto a stool back at The Songbird, water dripping from her clothing to pool on the floor beneath her.

  The barkeep eyed her with amusement. “Can you pay, boy?”

  “No,” she snapped. “I intend to drink it and then run out the back.”

  The amusement in his eyes fled, and he leaned over the bar. “Listen, you little—”

  “Darling, can you bring up some more wine from the cellar?” Marisol appeared from nowhere. “I’ll handle this.”

  Shrugging, the barkeep strode toward an open door behind the bar. Once he was gone, Marisol pulled a bottle from beneath the bar and poured a generous measure into a glass, which she pushed in front of Lara. “I don’t know how they do things in Harendell, but I’m not in the habit of getting children drunk in my establishment.”

  Lara gave her a cold stare, drained the glass, then pushed it back in front of the other woman. Then she reached into her pocket and retrieved a gold Harendellian coin and slammed it on the bar. “Make an exception.”

  One eyebrow rose. “You are a charmer, aren’t you, Your Majesty.”

  “Do you bestow titles on all your patrons?”

  “Only on women with eyes of Veliant blue who travel in the company of Ithicanian spies.”

  There seemed little point in trying to dissuade her. “Either pour and talk at the same time, or shut up. I’m in no mood.” No mood for anything but to silence the questions that spun wild through her thoughts as she tried to come to terms with a world that seemed turned upside down. And certainly in no mood to make small talk with Aren’s former lover.

  Marisol poured, then set the bottle down next to the glass. “I saw you when you passed through Vencia on your way to Ithicana.” She rested her elbows on the polished wood. “The curtain was pulled back in the carriage, and I caught just a glimpse. You looked like you were going to war, not to be married.”

  Lara had been going to war. Or so she’d thought at the time.

  “The king ordered the streets cleared. No one was allowed out of their homes until you’d boarded the ship. For your protection, they said.”

  It had nothing to do with her protection. It was one last step to ensure that Lara boarded the ship convinced Maridrina was in the direst of straits and that Ithicana was to blame. One last piece of deception.

  “Then they loaded you onto the ship, and you were gone. Off to Ithicana and off, unbeknownst to me at the time, to steal away my favorite lover.”

  Lara gave h
er a sweet smile. “Given you hadn’t seen him in over a year, I’m not sure you had much claim to him at that point. If ever.”

  “You are quite the little bitch, aren’t you?”

  Lara plucked the glass Marisol was polishing from her hands, filled it, waited for the other woman to raise it, then clinked hers against it. “Cheers to that.”

  Swallowing the liquid in one mouthful, Marisol set aside the glass. “We expected things to change. For your father to ease his filthy taxes or at least to use the money for something better than his ceaseless war with Valcotta.”

  “But nothing changed.”

  Marisol shook her head. “If anything, it’s only gotten worse.”

  “Makes one wonder why I bothered going.” Except Lara knew exactly why she’d gone to Ithicana. To save her sisters. To save her kingdom. To save herself. In this precise moment, she half wondered if she’d damned them all.

  “Not your choice, I suppose.” Marisol’s eyes drifted over Lara’s shoulder, taking in the comings and goings of the common room. “What I do know is that you married the best man I’ve ever had a privilege to meet, so perhaps instead of drowning your sorrows, you ought to consider a better use of your time.” She inclined her head. “Either way, I hope you enjoy your evening, Your Majesty.”

  “Good night,” Lara muttered, refilling her glass. She knew Aren was a good man. Her instincts, which she should’ve trusted, had been screaming it at her for longer than she’d cared to admit, but she’d ignored them in favor of what she’d been told. She’d been duped. Manipulated. Played.

  She’d gone to the palace to kill her father.

  Her plan had been to use the codes she’d been given to gain access, then wait for them to bring her to her father—and kill him. With her bare hands, if she needed to. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been trained to do it. They’d kill her afterward, but his death would be worth it. Worth that moment when her father realized that she, his prized weapon, had turned on him instead.