He lifted his torch in the third cell. Nothing on the walls. Nothing under the hay. He was about to give up when he spotted uneven letters etched into the leg of the rickety wooden bench.
BEWARE IMOGE
The last letter was only partially carved—the guard must have succumbed before he could finish his task, but the intent was clear. Carys had spoken to the guards. She promised them she would return. If Andreus was to guess, one guard had left the warning for her to find. Only Carys hadn’t returned. And now, between the confession of his mother, the ramblings of the gaunt, dirty woman in the last cell, and this final confirmation, Andreus understood, to his own deep revulsion, the truth of what had happened.
The men in these cells had exchanged working for the Queen to serve the stars. His mother had said herself that she had plotted with Micah to have the King, his father, murdered. The strange words of the old woman and this etching served as proof of his mother’s horrible confession. It also gave credence to his mother’s belief that when Imogen learned of the scheme, she altered the plan and convinced the assassins to murder not only the King, but Andreus’s brother and much of the King’s Guard as well.
Andreus wanted to sink to the ground under the weight of the truth. Instead, he limped out of the cell and downstairs, very much aware of the silence. The distraction Graylem had provided was over. He had to get out of the tower in a hurry.
He placed the torch in a sconce, yanked open the door, and plunged into the cold. In the distance, he could see men coming his way. Keeping his head down, he ignored the tightening in his chest as he made his way across the courtyard and into the palace.
His head spun as he yanked the helmet off, removed the cloak and the mail vest, and stashed all of them in the servants’ stairwell outside the hallway that led to his rooms. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck. He forced a smile as he swaggered toward his rooms, stumbling several times from the pain growing in his leg and expanding in his chest. He stumbled and hoped if anyone was watching they would interpret his uneven gait as the drunken King returning after a night of carousing.
When he had switched clothing, he had forgotten to take with him the remedy that would ease the curse. Each step made it harder to walk—harder to breathe.
He reached his rooms, and his knees went weak. He thought about the black vials he had hidden in the adjoining bedchamber, and knew he didn’t have the energy to make it that far. Or maybe he didn’t want to reach the remedy. Maybe he deserved for the curse to take him.
He stumbled into the chair next to the crackling fire. He hadn’t cried when his father and Micah were dumped onto the palace steps. He hadn’t cried when he stood over the body he thought belonged to his twin or when he buried Imogen. But he cried now.
Imogen had used him. And he had let her.
He could have seen through her soft touch and seductive words. Carys had warned him, but he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t wanted to. From the first, he had wanted Imogen. More, he wanted what she said she believed him to be.
Perfect.
Perfect like his brother who had been born first, without the curse. Who had secured the promise of Imogen’s hand and body because he was the Crown Prince.
When given the chance, Andreus had unhesitatingly embraced a woman who claimed he was perfect and turned his back on one who never expected him to be.
His lungs burned. It was like he was underwater, taunted by the view of a surface he could never hope to reach.
Carys had protected him. She had loved him, and even as he returned her affection, he had hated her for being born without the curse. He resented that she had to stand for him because there were times he could not stand for himself. And most of all he had hated the scars she was forced to bear because he was alive.
Carys wasn’t perfect. She never once pretended to be or wanted anyone to think that she was. She had told him she would give him the throne, and he had turned against her anyway. Why? Because deep down he didn’t believe her. Because if their roles were reversed, he couldn’t be trusted to do the same.
The room spun.
Andreus laid his head back on the chair.
Spots of light danced in front of his eyes.
Lights.
He gasped for air and fought to breathe.
Everything he knew of Imogen’s plot to steal the throne began and ended in one place. With the lights.
Wait—
He pushed himself out of the chair. His legs buckled, and he fell onto the thick carpet.
Tomorrow, he thought as blackness slowly pulled him under, he would find the person Imogen had worked with. He would use the lights and punish those working against Eden.
In doing so, he would find redemption.
13
Carys kicked upward and connected. Errik grunted. He loosened his grip and she rolled to the side, but not fast enough. Errik grabbed her cloak and yanked her back onto the cold ground.
“Stop,” he hissed.
“Not as long as I draw breath.”
She ignored the muttering of the wind and fumbled for the fastening of her cloak. The garment came free. Errik flew backward, and Carys scrambled to her feet. She drew the second stiletto from her pocket as Errik pushed her heavy cloak off him and got to his knees.
She cocked her arm back, prepared to do what she should have done when he first revealed his identity as a Bastian. His eyes latched on to hers. One eye was swollen with a gash underneath it. But despite the injury, his were the same eyes that had made her want to believe in him.
Whom could she trust?
Errik had betrayed her.
Just as her brother had betrayed her.
Just as everyone in her life betrayed her.
The wind gusted.
She cocked her arm back, but couldn’t throw. Not yet. “What did you do with Larkin?”
“What do you mean?” Errik blinked.
“Where did you take her? Is she still alive? Did the Bastians you turned her over to kill her or are they hoping I will surrender myself to them in order to secure her freedom?”
“Carys.” Errik looked directly into her eyes. “I didn’t take Larkin. I would never turn her over to my uncle or anyone. She’s here with me. We’ve been looking for you since you and Garret disappeared from the cave. Larkin refused to believe you’d been captured by the guardsmen we saw that night—”
“What guardsmen?” Carys asked.
“Larkin heard voices during her watch and woke me up. The two of us went out to see where the voices were coming from. We spotted Captain Monteros and two dozen members of Eden’s guard to the west of the cave and had to take a circuitous route back to avoid being discovered. Only, by the time we returned, you and Garret and all of our belongings were gone.”
Carys shook her head. “But we looked for you. Garret and I searched . . .”
Shouts rang in the distance. The sound of them was closer than below.
Errik pushed to his feet and slowly stood with his hands raised in front of him. “I don’t know what Garret told you, but we should probably talk about it later. When we arrived, Kiara met us just outside the entrance to the Village of Night. She assured us you would be arriving soon and that once you did we should gather your belongings and your horse and meet you here. After all her effort, I doubt she would be pleased if we didn’t get safely away.”
Hope leaped. A shadow of doubt followed. She lowered the stiletto, but held it at the ready in case she needed to strike.
“If you don’t believe me, will you at least believe Larkin?” Errik asked quietly. He leaned down, picked up Carys’s discarded cloak, and winced. “She’s waiting for us.”
The shouts grew louder.
Errik pointed toward the large rock formation.
Carys took a step backward, then another, still wondering if this was a trick to get her to lower her guard. She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t. Too much had happened for her to trust.
Carys spotted a fi
gure near three horses. Her black hair was woven into a haphazard braid. The woman was holding a notched bow pointed toward the darkness on the other side of the rocks, and she looked as if she knew how to use it. The woman shifted. Moonlight struck her face, and Carys had to stop herself from yelling her friend’s name.
Larkin pivoted at the sound of Carys’s approach, lowered the weapon, and smiled. It was the grin that had teased Carys to laughter all her life. The one she had feared, since leaving the cave with Garret, that she would never see again.
“You’re here! We saw Captain Monteros arrive this morning, and I wanted to come find you, but Errik said we had to trust Seeress Kiara,” Larkin said, the bow falling limply to her side as she took several steps as if to embrace Carys before stopping herself short and giving an embarrassed smile.
Carys blinked, then smiled back as she closed the ground between them and wrapped her arms around her friend. They had only hugged once, as children, before Larkin was told it was inappropriate for a commoner to hug a princess.
“I found the markings you left for me. I knew you would try to make it here, but I wasn’t sure if Garret would interfere. Errik said you would make it. He said that no matter what Garret tried, there was nothing he or anyone else could do that would stop you.”
“He said that?”
“I did.”
Larkin stepped back with a smile, and Carys turned toward Errik.
“Once again, I find myself returning what you have lost.” His eyes held hers as he flipped the stiletto in his hands and presented it to her. “I appreciate you not throwing it at me.”
The wind feathered the hair on the back of her neck, and Carys wrapped her fingers around the silver hilt. “I thought you had taken Larkin to your uncle. When I woke and you and Larkin were gone from the cave. Garret said—”
Voices called in the night. Some were behind the wall, but there were others that sounded closer. Carys shook her head. “You’re right. We can talk about the rest once we are away from here.”
“This way.” Errik unfurled Carys’s cloak and threw it over her shoulders, then pulled the pair of jeweled slippers she’d dropped out of his pocket and handed them to her. “The seeress said you would have the information you sought once we were reunited. But if you need more . . .”
“No, I have what I need,” she said, first looking at Errik and Larkin, then down at the slippers in her hand. Kiara had claimed the information she provided was the key Carys needed. The only way to figure out what the information Carys had gained unlocked was to walk up to the door—and the two people standing at her side would help her do that.
Errik’s uncle’s forces were gathering. The Xhelozi were growing bolder as the imbalance of the virtues grew. There was only one way to deal with both. The time had come to face her brother again.
“We must return to Garden City.”
The uneven terrain meant they had to let their horses slowly pick their way through until finally they reached a dirt road that led west. Carys could swear she heard her name carried on the breeze as she urged her horse to a gallop. The others did the same.
She glanced at Larkin several times to make sure her friend wasn’t falling behind, but while Larkin looked uncomfortable, she was steady in her seat, her bow at the ready. Days ago, Larkin hadn’t known how to notch an arrow, let alone hold a bow. Carys wasn’t the only one who had traveled far to reach the Village of Night. Larkin had traveled much farther.
Errik leaned over the head of his chestnut mount. She had believed the worst in him and still he was here at her side. Larkin said he had never faltered. He hadn’t turned against her even though Carys had stopped believing in him.
Garret had said he wanted her trust. He had deliberately separated her from Larkin and Errik so he could be the sole person she leaned on. According to Kiara, he had arranged the ambush at the Village of Night to solidify her belief in him. All because he wanted control of the power she had inside her.
Instead, Captain Monteros had double-crossed him, and now the men who betrayed Garret would be coming after her.
They pushed their horses, but eventually they had to slow their pace to a walk or risk injuring their mounts. Carys’s nerves danced as their horses plodded up a hill.
She glanced over and saw Larkin’s eyes flutter closed. Her friend tilted to the left as exhaustion tugged her under. Carys pulled on her reins, but Errik had spotted the problem and reached her first. He pulled his horse to a halt next to Larkin’s and kept her from falling as Larkin’s eyes snapped open. Her expression of surprise was so comical, Carys laughed as she urged her horse to the top of the hill. The laughter died on her lips as her mount headed downward and she rode into horror.
Dismembered bodies scattered around a low-burning campfire. Severed legs—some stripped of flesh. Torsos slit open and emptied on cold ground, stained with their lifeblood. And heads cut free and tossed into a pile near the raw, bloody remains of what was once a horse.
“Merciful Gods!” Larkin gasped from behind her. “What could have done this?”
Carys shook her head and nudged her horse forward. “It was Xhelozi.”
“But—the Xhelozi never come this far out of the mountains,” Larkin insisted, her voice pitched high with fear, tears thickening her words. “It is too long a way for them to get back to their dens before dawn.”
“Garret and I outran the Xhelozi the night the four of us were separated, and I heard them in the distance several times when we were traveling,” Carys said as Larkin turned her face away from the gore. “The Seeress Kiara said the monsters grow in number whenever the virtues are out of balance. They thrive in all kinds of darkness, not just the kind that envelop us when the sun sets but also the darkness that we create with our actions.” Carys gasped as she understood the full implications of the seeress’s words. “Soon, the lights on the walls of Garden City might not be enough to keep the Xhelozi from attacking.”
Larkin blinked aside her fatigue. “My father! He and the others in the city will never know the attack is coming unless we warn them.”
Carys nodded. “It is one of the many reasons we must hurry.”
A rock skittered and Carys whipped her head toward the sound.
A hand moved from under a small bush near a fallen horse. She slid off her mount and hurried across the bloodstained ground, Errik keeping pace beside her.
Errik pushed aside the branches of the bush. Wide eyes stared up at them through a coat of gore. “Coming . . . ,” the man whispered.
The fact that the man was alive was a miracle. His legs were pinned beneath the gutted horse. Claw marks ran from his shoulder downward.
Errik squatted down next to the man and shifted the ripped cloak. “He’s part of the Bastian force.”
“Coming,” the man whispered. “Must meet.”
“Meet for what?” Errik asked.
“The battle,” the man wheezed. He struggled for air. “They won’t see our number.”
“How many?” Carys demanded. “How many are coming? When? When are you meeting?”
“Thousands. Soon. It’s time.”
Thousands of Bastian men. These few would not make it to the meeting point—but others would. And with Bastian traitors aiding the army from inside the walls, Garden City could quickly fall. She had to . . .
A shriek cut the air.
Carys stiffened. Errik stood beside her as she scanned the horizon, looking for the source of the sound.
Nothing. Carys’s heart pounded as she held her breath and waited.
Another cry echoed. This one sounding nearer still.
Carys whipped her head to the north and that’s when she saw them. Over a dozen tall shadows—more than the three of them could hope to fight—coming out of a distant grove of trees and running toward them.
“Come on!” Errik grabbed her arm. Side by side, they raced for their mounts. Her horse danced under her and shot off behind Larkin’s horse before Carys was settled in her seat.
Larkin’s and Errik’s mounts pounded the frozen ground just ahead of hers. She urged her horse to go faster. Behind her—Oh Gods, they sound closer—a chorus of Xhelozi screams raked the night. Fear swelled. She clutched the reins tighter and willed her horse to keep running.
“They’re gaining on us,” Errik shouted.
Carys looked over her shoulder. The wind roared in her head. The Xhelozi were closing the distance—almost bounding over the ground on their long, fur-coated legs. Despite her insistence, Carys’s fatigued horse was already starting to slow.
The Xhelozi screamed again. Carys clenched the reins tight as the wind howled. Her heart pounded in her ears as her fear bubbled and pushed to break free.
Larkin’s horse stumbled and Carys watched her friend slip from the saddle.
“Carys! Keep going,” Errik shouted as he leaped off his mount to help Larkin.
With the mauled, dismembered bodies flashing in her mind, Carys did the only thing she could do. She leaped from her own horse, balled her hands into fists at her side as she faced the creatures that were racing toward her with their hooked claws extended, and gave in to fear.
“Carys!” She thought she heard Errik yell, but he sounded distant compared with the pounding of the voices in her head.
Her cloak flapped as the wind around her swirled. Sweat dripped down her back. She dug her nails into her palms. Her muscles clenched and her stomach churned as the wind grew stronger, pulling dead leaves and branches and dirt into its embrace. Then, as if fired from a catapult, the wall of air surged forward.
Xhelozi cries echoed.
The wind roared and the monsters flew back with such force they were lifted off the ground.
Satisfaction pulsed inside her.
The wind whipped again. The air rang with shrieks of pain. Bits of fur and scales fell from the tunnel that churned and pulled at the monsters who dared try to harm her and her friends. The wind filled her and begged for more. More pain. More destruction. More vengean . . .
“Carys!”
Something yanked her backward. She crumpled to the ground and gasped for air. The howling of the wind faded as Larkin’s and Errik’s concerned faces swam in front of her.
Eden Conquered Page 16