I shouldn’t be surprised, but all this time being a prisoner without really being a prisoner has spoiled me.
“Was a deal struck?” I ask. “Am I being traded for something? Ransomed?”
Lu braces a hand on the hilt of her sword. “I don’t know yet.”
I give a quick nod, hating the not-knowing.
She looks me up and down, and I can tell she wants to say something, but for whatever reason, she seems to hold back.
“Ready to go, my lady?” the guard asks.
I nod, because it’s a natural response for me to be compliant, to follow orders. What I really want to do is stay by this fire, to give Lu a hug and tell her that I’ll miss her if I don’t see her again. To thank her and the other Wraths for helping me.
Maybe Lu sees the struggle in my face, because she steps forward and says, “Remember what I said, Gildy. Don’t lie down for the thumbs, okay?”
I can’t reply, because I think I might cry, and Lu doesn’t seem like the kind of person who wants you to sob all over her. I nod instead.
I’m silent as I lead the guards to the tent, my mood brooding. When I slip inside, the two soldiers stay outside to keep watch, their shadows outlined through the sunlit leather.
I can’t just do nothing in my tent though, because I’ll go crazy. So instead, I make myself busy.
I wash, I plait my hair, I clean out the ash and replace the basin with new coals, even though I’m not sure Rip will even be back to use it. I roll up the furs on my side of the tent. Unroll them. Roll them again. Decide maybe I should try to take a nap, so I unroll them once more. Lie down. Can’t sleep.
I find the trio of peonies Hojat gave me, effectively smashed and nearly disintegrated, but I take the one that’s held up the best and snap off the flattened head of the blossom before slipping it into my pocket.
Looking around the tent, I realize that the small space somehow became a comfort to me, and I won’t be back after today. This is it.
There’s a choking feeling that settles in my throat, and I lift a gloved hand to it, as if that will ease it.
But instead, I feel the scar from when King Fulke held a blade there. With simmering fear rising in my gut, I remember that the last time I was caught between two kings, I nearly had my throat slit.
So what’s going to happen to me this time?
I don’t know how the hell I manage to fall asleep, but I do.
Something wakes me though, like a shift in the air. I sit up on my pallet and wipe the weariness from my eyes. Stretching, I straighten my dress as I stand and then go to the front of the tent and peek through the open strip.
My watch dogs are still sitting outside, talking quietly, voices muffled. I pull my coat on, careful to draw my hood overhead even though it’s not snowing, and then check my gloves, sleeves, and collar. When all is secure, I duck outside.
Both guards immediately jump to their feet. “My lady, you aren’t supposed to leave the tent.”
“I have to use the latrine.”
They share a look with each other, like they’re about to forbid it. Irritation swarms inside me that shows in the tightening of my mouth. “Did your king say I wasn’t allowed to go pee? Because things could get messy very quickly,” I deadpan.
The guard on the left goes pink in the face, as if talking about pee embarrasses him.
“Pardon, my lady. Of course you may go. We’ll escort you,” the other man says.
With a nod, I let them lead me away from the camp and behind an embankment, then into an outcropping of bare-branched trees.
Much to my embarrassment, the guards stay only a few paces away while I do my business. Bright side? Soon, I won’t have to go in the snow anymore.
When I’m finished, I peer around the tree, glimpsing the backs of the guards where they’re standing. They took a few more steps so that they’re on top of the gentle slope instead of behind it. At first, I think they did it to give me a little more privacy, but when one of them points, I realize it’s because they’re looking at something.
Unease creeps up my spine as I walk forward to join them, snow coming up around my ankles with every step I take. When I reach the top beside them, a gasp comes from my parted lips.
The city is surrounded.
Perfect formations of Fourth’s army are placed in the frozen valley around the entirety of Ranhold, like a dark horseshoe tossed down, ready to strike the stake of the castle.
From up here, the semi-circle of black-clad soldiers looks like a curled hand, ready to squeeze, to strangle the city. I feel that hand like it’s on my stomach, holding me in a painful grasp.
Seeing the army like this...it’s so different from the way I’ve come to know them—gathering around fires, evenings filled with camaraderie. But I saw a glimpse of the battle-ready men when I saw them in the fight circle. I knew what was coming, so it shouldn’t surprise me.
“Fourth is attacking?” I breathe.
“Not yet,” the guard to my left answers.
My eyes dart from left to right as I try to pick out familiar soldiers in the lineup. But from this far away, they’re not much more than black ants ready to swarm, though it still doesn’t stop my eyes from skimming.
I’m looking for a spot of mustard hair, a behemoth male, a quick-footed female.
Spikes on a spine.
But I can’t pick anything out, not from this distance.
I don’t know what I thought would happen when we arrived. The idea of battle was there, but it didn’t feel real.
This...this feels real.
“Your army is going to decimate them.”
The guards don’t disagree with me, and my stomach hurts with misery for the innocent people of Ranhold.
“Serves them right,” the other guard tells me without sympathy. “They did this. Fifth Kingdom attacked our borders. Killed some of our men.”
I turn to look at him. “What’s your name?”
“Pierce, my lady.”
“Well, Pierce, I heard that your soldiers slaughtered Fifth’s army pretty effectively at that battle,” I tell him. “Isn’t that enough?”
He shrugs. “Not to our king.”
My fingers curl into my skirts, gripping them tight.
I know Midas tricked King Fulke into attacking Fourth’s borders. I know that this is essentially Midas’s fault. But to wage war, to be ready to decimate a kingdom...it’s like a lead weight in my chest that drags me down.
I hate the power plays of kings.
Ranhold Castle flies purple flags at half mast, a symbol of their dead king. The walls of the fortress glitter gray and white like marbled stone, proud spires pointing up to the Divines.
It would be pretty, if it weren’t for Fourth looming around them.
“Come, my lady,” Pierce tells me. “Time to get you safely in your tent.”
“I don’t want to go back to my tent,” I reply.
The thought of being cooped up where I can’t see, can’t know what’s going on, it makes me anxious.
Pierce gives me a sympathetic look. “Apologies. It’s orders.”
I press my lips into a firm line as they turn and lead me back. They let me walk along the line of the embankment though, like they’re trying to give me extra time to see.
It’s a testament to just how big Fourth’s army is that the camp isn’t completely deserted. There are still some guarding the perimeter, some on horseback, others on foot.
But no one jokes or drinks or plays dice by the fire, no one smiles. The soldiers are in battle mode, faces formidable and bodies tense, none of them familiar to me.
Then, just as we’re about to descend the slope, I feel it.
A pulse.
The single beat strums, rippling along the ground with a strange, errant swell. I stop in my tracks, every single hair on the back of my neck rising to attention in crippling awareness.
“What is that?” I whisper, palms gone clammy, fear
racing in my heart.
The guards turn to look at me with confusion marring their faces. “What’s what, my lady?” Pierce asks.
I follow my instinct to turn, to look, and that’s when I see him.
A lone figure in all black, standing at the back of the army.
Even from this distance, even though I’ve never seen him before, I know who it is, because I can feel it. Because power pours from him, like a deluge of tainted water from the falls.
King Rot.
His menacing silhouette starts to move, striding forward, and I watch as the pure, glittering white plains beneath his feet begin to change.
Die.
My eyes widen as brown tendrils streak through the snow, forming from every footstep he takes. His power is reaching out, clawed fingers scratching the ground and leaving behind wounds to fester.
Veins appear in the snow like poisoned blood, the color of dead bark. Those lines stretch out, a frozen lake cracking, ready to crumble.
I can feel it every time he takes a step. Because that pulse of power comes again and again, delivered through the ground and traveling up my feet.
It makes bile rise in the back of my throat. The power feels wrong, ugly, like a sickness ready to spread.
The farther King Ravinger walks, the more land he ruins. The cracked veins infect the snow around it, destroying its crystalline purity. The frozen-flaked ground churns and collapses, turning a sickly yellow-brown shade.
Fear has an iron grip around me, but I can’t look away, and I can’t take a full breath. I don’t know how his army doesn’t run from it, run from him. I don’t know how they stay in formation, because even at my distance, my every instinct is telling me to flee.
He continues to walk forward, straight up an empty path between the organized lines of his readied army. Not an inch of power crosses beneath the soldiers’ feet. Not a single rotted line touches them. The control of that makes me shiver with intimidation.
This man doesn’t have power. He is power.
King Ravinger’s gait is steady but sure. He doesn’t stop walking until he’s standing directly at the front, with the might of his army at his back and his power around him like a halo of decay.
All the rumors about him are true.
No wonder a fae male like Rip follows him. This is might. This is true unfettered strength.
With this display, I have no doubt in my mind that he’s something to fear. Because King Ravinger just proved that he can rot the world and collapse it beneath the arrogance of his feet.
The question is, who is he going to walk all over?
Chapter 34
AUREN
Sitting in the tent, I stare and stare.
There’s a pendulum swinging in my mind, in my chest. Back and forth it goes, with every heartbeat, every thought.
Past and present. Right and wrong. Truths and lies. Knowing and not knowing. Doubts and trust.
It’s a constant tick in an unending tempo.
I’m not sure how much time passes that I sit here without moving. I just know that I’m still staring, that pendulum still going to and fro, when I hear voices outside.
My tent flap is lifted, like the invitation of an open door. I take a deep breath as I stand, pulling my hood over my head once again, checking my coat and gloves.
When I walk outside, the skin of my face tingles all over. I probably would’ve had to squint from the daylight if Osrik hadn’t been looming over me.
He nods to my guard dogs, making Pierce and the other man depart, until it’s just Osrik and me.
Just like the first night I met him, he’s a mass of intimidation, but even more so in full armor. I don’t envy the blacksmith that had to fit him for a chest plate.
Today, his usually unkempt shoulder-length brown hair is pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck. His beard though, that’s as wild as ever.
He looks down at me, a sword at either hip and a helmet under his arm. He’s wearing his signature scowl, and his brown eyes are hard. He’s the epitome of a Fourth army soldier, right down to the wood piercing in his lip and the gnarled branched hilts of his blades.
“What happened?” I ask, though I can barely talk with my heart in my throat. My ears strain to listen, but I hear no sounds of battle. Everything is still quiet. “Is it going to be war?”
“Don’t know yet,” he says. “King Ravinger requested a face-to-face meet. Midas sent an envoy.”
My heart leaps. “So a negotiation, then? They might not fight?” Hope clings to my limbs like it wants to make sure it doesn’t get dragged away.
“Possibly. But Midas made a request too.”
I pause. “What request?”
“An offering to be made by us in good faith.” He spits the term, like he doesn’t think it’s in good faith at all. “The bastard should be giving us something. We’re the ones with the upper hand.”
I already know what the request is.
“Midas wants me.”
Osrik nods. “He does. The envoy had a very specific message from Midas. He told us, and I quote: ‘Bring me my gold-touched favored, and I shall let your King Rot have an audience with me.’” Osrik’s face twists in displeasure. “What a slimy, arrogant prick,” he says.
I’m not surprised by Midas’s message, just like I’m not surprised by Osrik’s disdain.
“And your king actually agreed? He’s handing me over, just like that?”
“Yep. Just like that.”
Now that does surprise me, but I can’t even try to guess the way King Ravinger thinks or what he may be planning, though it makes me feel uneasy. It can’t be this simple, can it?
I let out a slow breath. “Well, it’s a good sign, right? That the kings are willing to negotiate terms? Anything is worth it to stop a war from breaking out.”
Osrik sighs at me, like I’ve just disappointed him. “I’ll never get how you fucking stand it.”
It. Midas. Being kept like a pet.
“I know,” I reply, and I also know that my voice sounds numb, because that numbness surrounds me.
Osrik grunts. “Ready?”
Yes. No.
The pendulum swings.
He leads me away from the tent and the camp, his stride so long that I have to take two steps for every one of his. We go up to the same embankment I stood on earlier, where five horses wait at the top of the slope, three with soldiers on them, two without.
“Can you ride?” Osrik asks.
I tug my gloves up, heart pounding, palms going slick. “Yes, I can ride.”
“Take the dappled one,” he says, and I smile at the black horse, admiring the sprinkle of gray spots on her chest. My mare is much shorter than Osrik’s horse. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be able to get up in the saddle of his stallion without a stepping stool.
Stopping in front of her, I give the mare a stroke before leaning down to make sure my leggings are tucked into my socks. “Need a leg up?” Osrik offers.
I shake my head. “No, thanks.”
He gives a terse nod and then seats himself on his horse, waiting for me to do the same. I carefully step into the stirrup and hoist my leg over, checking my skirts once I’m settled in the seat.
Maybe Osrik can tell how nervous I am by the look on my face or the way I grip the reins, but he brings his horse right next to mine. He gives me a hard look while the other Fourth soldiers position their horses to flare behind us.
“Well, you were right. You never did betray your golden king. That takes guts,” Osrik says, surprising me.
I wring the leather straps in my hands. “It’s not like you guys were torturing me,” I say with a small laugh. “As far as prisoners go, I think I might’ve been the best-treated one in all of Orea.”
He snorts. “Probably. Except I did give a good threat at the beginning. What was it I told you?”
I wrinkle my nose in thought. “I think you said if I talked bad about Kin
g Ravinger, you were going to whip me.”
Osrik grins. “That was it,” he says, proud of himself. “Did it work? Were you properly threatened?”
“Are you kidding? I almost peed myself. You’re a scary guy.”
A bark of laughter erupts from his mouth. He doesn’t look so scary when he does that. I don’t know what happened to make him not loathe me anymore, but I’m grateful. We’ve come a long way from his whip threat and calling me Midas’s symbol.
I tilt my head in curiosity. “Does it still piss you off to look at me?” I ask, remembering his previous words.
The amusement washes off his face, and Osrik studies me for a moment with a slight tilt of his head, gruff face solemn. “Yeah,” he finally replies. “But for a different reason now.”
He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask him to. I’m not even really sure why I asked him that question anyway. It doesn’t matter now. I won’t see him again after this. Even if we do end up at war, I’ll be on the other side.
That thought makes my stomach hurt. It’s hard enough being loyal to one side, but what happens when you have loyalty to both? I don’t want anyone to die. Not Fifth’s men, not Midas’s, and not Fourth’s army either.
“Time to go.”
Nodding, Osrik clicks his tongue, leading his black stallion down the slope. My horse follows, while the three guards keep space behind me, protecting the rear.
When we reach the flat snow plains and start making our way across, I notice that Osrik keeps us well away from the rotted path that the king cut into the land earlier. Even so, my eyes can’t seem to stop drifting to it, to follow the lines of deterioration, to take in the sickly, jaundiced snow.
I don’t know where the king is now, but I’m glad he’s not around, because I don’t think I could bear to be near that man’s sickening power ever again.
Once was enough.
As we get closer, I notice that the army is still in formation, though no longer at attention. They’re waiting now, waiting to see how kings will decide their fate.
When we ride through a line between the soldiers, I can feel the weight of hundreds of eyes watching me as we pass. We’re a silent procession, me readying to be handed off as an offering between monarchs.
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