Shattered Kingdom

by Angelina J. Steffort

  “Her face looks pretty bad.” Addie didn’t go into the brutal details of the swelling or the black and blue bruise that was developing along her nose and lips. “As for the rest of it, she needs food and rest.” Addie watched Joshua’s eyes darken at her words, and she could almost feel how sorry he was. How little he had wanted for this to happen. Instinctively, she rubbed her thumb over his hand in small circles. “You saved her by hurting her like that,” she reminded him. “It was a better option than killing her.”

  “It should have been I who was locked up in that cell.” Joshua turned his head in disgust at himself then cursed as he moved the burnt areas around his neck too much. “I deserved every little inch of what she did to me.” He waved his bandaged hand at his neck and flinched.

  “What exactly is it that she did to you?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “You didn’t abduct him,” Gandrett thought aloud. “You brought him home.”

  Armand eyed her with calculating cool. “What would a merchant’s daughter know of the politics in my court?”

  Gandrett blinked at the question, realizing she had said too much. Heat flooded her as he stared her down. “Isn’t it common knowledge that—”

  “Not common knowledge. No,” was all he said. “And no one but the inner circle of his court even knows Joshua Brenheran is here.” He was on his feet, pacing again, the bowl swaying in the wake of his rushed movement. “Probably no one outside Ackwood castle knows he’s been gone for years. It would make the west look weak.”

  Wasn’t there an easy way out? A solution she could fight out with her sword, for that was what she was good at. That was why the Lord of Ackwood had bought her from the Order of Vala to retrieve his lost son.

  Vala help her, there were no words she could say to make Armand any less suspicious. Nothing. She couldn’t even run, her body too weak after the strain of the day—or more than one. She hadn’t had a chance to ask.

  And she, sure as Shaelak reigned over darkness, couldn’t return to Lord Tyrem Brenheran empty-handed.

  “Who are you, Gandrett Starhaeven?” Armand had stopped before her, his expression as if someone had dragged him through the mud. And as she didn’t respond, “We both know you used magic down there.” Gandrett’s stomach knotted as adrenaline rushed through her system, wiping all exhaustion away as her instinct for survival set in once more. His gaze lowered to her bandaged hands. “The question remains: did you use it to defend yourself or to attack?”

  Gandrett couldn’t help registering some sort of fascination flickering in his eyes as he ran his hands through his hair like sorting that honey-gold mess would straighten out his problems, too.

  “I don’t know what happened down there,” Gandrett said truthfully. “The only thing I know is that I was defending myself and that Joshua locked me in that cell right after you left to speak to your father.”

  He froze, all agitation vanished, his lips paling as he took her in as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Gods above, Gandrett, that was three days ago.”

  Three days? That explained why she had been near exhaustion even before Joshua had attacked her in the cell.

  “How can you be even standing?” He still bore that same look, but his voice had turned devastated.

  Gandrett attempted to smile but gave up as her injury stung at the strain. “I’m not standing, Lord Armand,” she said and gestured at the sofa. She had endured worse, had spent longer without food, without knowing when she’d see the desert sun again. Yet, here he was, giving her that look that could have meant she was Vala made flesh.

  Armand didn’t laugh. His lips didn’t as much as twitch. “Aren’t we past you calling me Lord Armand?” His face was unreadable as he measured her, gaze slowly swiping over her as if he was looking for something, some hint to give her away.

  “What am I supposed to call you, milord?” She thought of the days she’d spent preparing with Mckenzie exactly for this, for deceiving Armand Denderlain, for making him believe she was something she was not.

  But he didn’t fall for it. He didn’t seem pleased at her words, the way he had in the beginning when every not so deliberate statement had sent him laughing. No. Armand Denderlain had finally caught on to it that something was wrong with her, and he had done so at the worst possible moment. When her target was finally just one room away.

  “Call me Armand.”

  Now it was Gandrett who stared as Armand returned to her side and picked up that bowl, placing it in his lap. He reached into the water, wrung out the cloth, and continued where he had left off earlier.

  “After what happened, I think we are beyond titles”—his eyes narrowed as he leaned closer, cloth brushing over her cheek—“and beyond lies, I hope.”

  It was an honest offer, she could tell by the look in his eyes—so open, so vulnerable.

  So what if she told him the truth? That she had come here working for his enemy? That she had befriended him only to betray him? That she was neither a lady nor a merchant’s daughter, but a Child of Vala, that she would not marry any man and what Deelah had hoped for would never happen?

  Neither of them felt like the right thing to say—not yet. So she said, “Thank you, Armand, for coming to my rescue.” She gave him a long look—not the flirtatious type that Mckenzie had taught her and that she had perfected during her hours spent with Brax, but a deep look that let him, she hoped, glimpse into her soul. “I didn’t deserve it.” That was the truth.

  Truth. He had told her the truth about Joshua. All those years since he had found out he even had a cousin. Then, the day his father had ordered him to bring Joshua to Eedwood under the impression he was abducting his enemy’s son to have a tool to pressure him.

  That’s what his father had been doing all those years—using Joshua against the Brenheran family. To keep at bay their efforts to win over central-Sives and slowly push back the Denderlain troops that were scattered over the territory in strategic positions, ready to strike the moment Brenheran made a move.

  The month he and his mother had spent convincing his father to let Joshua live in normal chambers—even if they were guarded like a prison, but with humane conditions—rather than the dungeons. All that time, keeping the truth hidden from his father. For if Lord Hamyn Denderlain knew that Joshua was not only Tyrem Brenheran’s son but also Linniue’s, he would have executed him on the spot.

  So Armand had played by his father’s rules, kept his head down, little by little, bought Joshua more freedom so he could spend time with his mother, so that he could see for himself that the House of Denderlain wasn’t the snake-pit everyone in Ackwood believed it to be. So Joshua would one day proudly carry both names and step on that throne and rule, not as lord of Ackwood or Lord of Eedwood but as king of Sives.

  Now that vision—everything he had fought for by keeping Joshua a secret, by putting up with his father’s moods, his hunger for power—that vision his mother and he had fought for, what he had promised to her, didn’t matter. If Joshua was the type of man who locked Gandrett in a cell for three days, only to go down and finish her off himself… Raw emotion threatened to burst from him. Devastation.

  Joshua had been so peaceful, so noble all those times they had talked. All those afternoons spent together when Armand had snuck away to meet with his cousin. The picture of a united Sives, the Sives his mother had dreamed about, they had painted together, building for the day that they were ready to set the crown upon his head. For Sives to be ready.

  “I didn’t deserve it.” Her words were like a blow to the head, and he studied her for a long moment, feeling less the lord everyone expected him to be and more the man he wanted to be.

  “If you asked me again, I’d help you,” he murmured as he watched the swelling on her nose reduce under the touch of Dragon Water. Probably the only gift the last Dragon King had left behind in Eedwood. Deelah had left a flacon of it for him so he could get her back in shape. So no one noticed just how badly she had been treat
ed in this palace. His chest hurt as he took in her face. Her beautiful face, brutalized by the Hope of Sives. “I don’t care if you have magic, Gandrett.” He glanced at the bowl. “Magic is all around us. Even if we can’t see it.”

  He felt her breath against the inside of his wrist as he reached to clean the other side of her nose.

  “You’re not going to report me?” Her eyes were wide like those of a chased animal, but her voice was steady.

  Never. “What would I do if they tossed you over the Ulfrayian border? Who would make me laugh? Who would entertain me?”

  For some reason, his response didn’t put her at ease the way he’d hoped. So he took a steadying breath—the sort he never usually took with women, and said, “You may have your secrets, Gandrett, and I have mine.” He allowed his free hand to brush a strand of hair from her forehead. “But before you, I never met a woman I even wanted to share them with.”

  He listened to his own words as he spoke them. Pathetic. Desperate. And yet—the truth.

  Gandrett pulled out of his touch. Answer enough that what resonated in his words wasn’t an option for her. At least, not now that she had just escaped death. He bit back the bitter aftertaste of rejection and dipped the cloth back into the water to dab the magic liquid on her lips for one last time.

  “Deelah will be back with food soon,” he changed the subject, hoping to give her the feeling of not being pressured.

  Gandrett remained silent. Deep in thought, it seemed a struggle that he couldn’t even begin to understand unfolding on her features.

  The bruises were already a light shade of purple when she finally spoke again, “If Joshua becomes king of Sives—” Horror won the upper hand.

  “The last time I saw him fight anyone was when they brought him to Eedwood,” Armand admitted with shame. The memory of his cousin in chains. That first time he had spoken to him, explained to him why he was there, that there was Denderlain blood running through his veins. And then the curiosity. That first meeting with aunt Linniue—

  “I don’t know what got into him.”

  “He was about to kill me, Armand.” Gandrett held his gaze as she spoke, her moss-green eyes weary. “He said it. He was unstoppable. So strong—too strong. I have never fought anyone that strong—” She bit her lip and flinched as she realized there should have been a bruise where her teeth dug into her lower lip. “What did you do to me?”

  She touched her face with cautious fingers, probing along the parts that had been injured an hour ago, and surprise spread under her hands.

  “As I said,” he found himself capable of a smile, “you have your secrets. I have mine.”

  But she was smarter than that, her eyes darting to the bowl in his lap. “The water,” she said and realized that she wasn’t the only one using magic here—even if his type of magic came from a hidden well at the bottom of the north tower that only a few people knew about, including him, his late mother, and aunt Linniue. He knew that Addie, the servant girl was the one to fetch it from the well every day, and Linniue had been using it since the day she had fallen ill.

  “It has healing properties.” That was all he was going to tell her about it, he promised himself. He had already told her too much. But for all that was worth, she was different from everyone else he had met. There was a quiet form of beauty in her that he had never seen before, someone whose heart and soul was blessed by the gods and untouched by the corruption of the Sivesian courts.

  For a moment, she looked like she was going to ask questions, but then she yawned as if the relief of pain had paved the way for sleep, and when he murmured that it was okay if she rested, that he would be right here when she woke up, exhaustion had already taken over her body, and he set aside the bowl and slid his arms around her shoulders and knees. He lifted her with ease and carried her over to her bed where he tucked her in. It was when he pulled the covers over her that the front of her robe slid aside and revealed two pendants resting on her chest: a small silver one showing the grains of Sives, and one that held shards of emerald. The twin to the necklace Joshua Brenheran was wearing around his neck.

  Chapter Forty

  Magic. Addie was still trying to wrap her head around it. Gandrett had used magic on Joshua.

  The last mages had disappeared when the Fae had gone dormant in the forests of Ulfray, and whatever mages were left were either the Vala-blessed, who all of Neredyn adored like the goddess herself, or those unlucky few who were born with it and who were exiled into Fae territory. A meal for the wicked.

  Joshua had told her word for word how Gandrett had followed him almost three days ago, how he had punched the wall to prevent himself from snapping her neck. How he had fought the urge to kill her until he no longer had been capable of lying to his compelled self. Looking at him was like looking at a man with two souls in his chest.

  And Gandrett—

  Addie had known something was off with Gandrett after the girl had fallen through the wall. Had she used magic back then?

  “Fire,” Joshua continued, “is a type of magic that is most definitely not the magic of a Vala-blessed, so we can rule that out.”

  She had spent the past minutes trying to figure out how it was even possible. “You have been compelled to remain in the castle for years, and you are wondering how it’s possible someone has magic?” Addie’s words came easily as she spoke to the Brenheran heir, for who she saw wasn’t nobility but a prisoner with a soul broken as much as her own. And equal. “How do you think it works?”

  She thought about the last time she had seen him when he had been in control of his senses and actions. “What is different now—” She held his inquisitive emerald gaze. “What’s different from an hour ago when you wanted to kill Gandrett?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at his bandaged hand, slowly flexing it as if to test if it still worked. It did. “I was on my way to see my mother for tea when I—when my compelled ego—decided to go and finish off the girl.”

  His mother—Lady Linniue. A shudder ran through Addie as she imagined the lady as a loving mother. The only thing she could manage was to conjure that image of the lady the day she had brought her to Eedwood castle with the words, “Be grateful it is I who came to get you. At least with me, you’ll be serving a greater cause.” She hardly had dared to wonder what that greater cause might be, the prison in the north still too fresh in her mind. The freezing cold, the screams. And the ceremonies that she had listened to from afar—prayers to the god of dragons, the offering of sacrifices. What if it was all connected? The magic, the freezing cold as she had found Gandrett in the corridor that first time, the spell that someone had put on Joshua. All the while she was spinning her theories, Addie didn’t interrupt but gave him an encouraging nod.

  “It’s only recently that she calls me to her chambers for tea—she used to come to my rooms.” His eyebrows knitted together. “Sometimes at the weirdest hours of the day,” he noted. “She says I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Addie wanted to know and had the intuition it would be bad—if it was connected to Linniue, it had to be bad.

  But Joshua shook his head. “I don’t know.” He gave her a look that didn’t let her wish for anything good. “But I know that sometimes I black out after my visits with her.”

  “Do you think it has something to do with her?” Addie almost didn’t speak the words even if the thought was nearly tangible in the air. Accusing someone’s mother—especially if that mother was the one holding her fate in her hands.

  Joshua didn’t seem upset as he considered her words, his good hand extracting a necklace from in-between the fabric of his half-open tunic. “My mother ordered my kidnapping,” he said, face hardening. If she is capable of that, I think her capable of worse.” He didn’t seem like the lost son who had been reunited with his mother but haunted by his forced presence at her side. “Whatever that spell is that she put on me—if it was her—it must have worn off last night and also that day I ran into you in th
e north tower.”

  Addie hid her shame as he brought up that day she had denied him help.

  “What did you do differently then?” she asked quietly. She could almost smell the answer to the riddle Joshua Brenheran presented.

  And there was something in his emerald eyes. A horrible realization that made Addie dread the words he was about to speak.

  “I missed my visit with my mother,” he said with an ashen face. “Both times.”

  His words triggered something in her. Something that she might have been pushing away for too long. It was all connected. Even the task she had been brought here to do. “Do you think it has something to do with what your mother is sending me to procure for her every day?” she proposed cautiously.

  He eyed her as if she were speaking in mysteries. “I don’t know what errands you run for her,” he said, his good hand sliding up to his neck to probe the bandages, “just that whenever I see you, you are carrying a bucket with you.”

  “The water from the well in the north tower,” Addie explained, knowing that if he ever fell back under the spell that compelled him to do such horrible things, her life would end.

  The air between them went taut.

  “You know that I remember everything but those blackouts I had,” he whispered. “Everything.”

  Addie shook her head, indicating she didn’t understand what he was trying to say, but he no longer looked at her. He had gone into his own mind where he seemed to be piecing things together.

  “Linniue told me the story about whose tower the north tower used to be a long time ago.” He eyed her briefly as if checking whether or not she could follow before he was back in his thoughts. “The last Dragon King. It was the last Dragon King’s tower. His home, from where he flew out to slaughter and conquer.” There was revulsion in Joshua’s voice. “And his dragon slept under the castle in caves it dug with its claws, its magic seeping into the very soil under this Fortress.”