Shattered Kingdom

by Angelina J. Steffort

  Addie’s breath caught at the thought of the Dreads of the Skies—the last one of them—having left their magic under the foundations of the castle. Maybe not just there, but also—

  “The water.” Her hand darted to her side for the bucket that wasn’t there.

  Now it was Joshua who couldn’t follow her.

  “The water Lady Linniue keeps requesting. It’s from the hidden well under the north tower. It’s,” she hardly whispered, “Dragon Water.” It had to be.

  “Dragon Water?” Joshua raised an eyebrow as if he didn’t know what to make of her conclusion.

  But Addie didn’t care. She didn’t give him a moment to ask questions but offered something no one else had yet believed in this castle. “Before your mother brought me to Eedwood castle, I was a prisoner in Lands End.”

  He stared. It was all he did.

  “Everyone knows that Lands End is where the dragons used to reside.” She took a steadying breath. “But what nobody knows is that of the prisoners who go to Lands End for whatever crimes they committed, none return. Not alive.” Addie saw them before her, the cells in the dark caves, the cold—cold that went not only under your skin but right into your heart. “There was something more there than human evil, and the nights they worshipped Shygon,” her voice shook at the mention of the god’s name, “the cold and the darkness seemed to grow worse than on others. They sacrifice them.” She had pushed it so far from her mind, the destiny that had awaited her in Lands End. “To Shygon.”

  Joshua looked positively dead, his skin a shade of chalk-white that any corpse would be jealous of, his eyes a stark contrast to his pale-pink lips. “They pray to the god of dragons?” he asked in a whisper.

  Addie nodded, unable to repeat the words. It was forbidden. The last one to have done it had been the last Dragon King. And he had brought destruction over Neredyn.

  “If what you procure for my mother is Dragon Water—” He rested both hands on his thighs and his eyes widened. “Do you think my mother worships the god of dragons?”

  Addie almost burst from gratitude that he had said it first. The god of dragons—or the god of forbidden magic—that’s what all of Neredyn called him if anyone dared speak his name.

  “One thing I can tell for sure,” she replied, voice anything but steady, “there is magic involved, or your mother wouldn’t be able to control you.”

  “We don’t know that for a fact,” he said too quickly, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he had come to the same conclusion.

  “So, if she does—” Addie glanced at Joshua’s bandaged neck, his hands, and then back to his face where emerald eyes looked at her in wonder. “The question remains: why?”

  He didn’t cringe at her words but glanced past Addie to where Armand had appeared in the secret door. Addie jumped to her feet, habit taking over.

  “I should kill you,” the young lord said through gritted teeth. “I should lock you in a cell like the animal you are.” He had drawn his sword and held the tip of it high enough that it came to rest on Joshua’s collarbone as he walked up in a few quick strides and planted himself before his cousin. “I should impale you for what you did to her. You had no right—”

  Joshua, to his credit, didn’t move. “It might be a mercy, cousin.” His eyes were bleak as they held Armand’s furious gaze.

  His words made the young lord yield, though. “We had an agreement.” He lowered the tip of his sword to the height of Joshua’s chest, not seeming to notice as Addie inched forward.

  Armand’s fury was intimidating. A facet of the young lord she had never before appreciated. But she rallied her courage anyway, searching deep in the well of her heart for the words that might spare Joshua Brenheran—and save the young lord from the biggest mistake of his life.

  “How many times did I want to hit your face on the delicate tea table in my chambers,” Joshua said with a dark kind of humor.

  He stopped as Armand’s hand twitched, bringing the blade dangerously close to his skin. He gave Joshua a feral grin. “I’d like to see you try now.”

  Addie didn’t think as she stepped in front of Joshua, pushing the flat of the young lord’s blade aside with her bare forearm. “You’d make a mistake killing him.”

  Armand’s eyes wandered to her, incredulous and wide, but there was a warning there.

  “Why did you lock her up in that cell?” he asked, not moving his sword. “What did she ever do to you?”

  Joshua was quiet for a long moment before he said, “She offered to help me get back to Ackwood.”

  Armand’s blood turned cold. “She offered what?”

  Joshua, half-hidden behind Addie’s slender shape, was about to repeat what he had said, but Armand was already wheeling around, pacing rather than spearing his cousin like he wanted to.

  He had seen the necklace on Gandrett. The same necklace that Joshua was wearing. A Brenheran heirloom.

  There were three of them—one for each of Lord Tyrem’s children. And one of them had to be running around without it right now. It wasn’t Joshua for sure since his necklace was visible beneath his unbuttoned tunic.

  “Tell me who she is,” Armand demanded. “Tell me now.” He could hear the urgency in his own voice, the shaking, the loss of control.

  Years. He had spent years with Joshua, getting to know him, plotting how they would eventually put him on the throne. How the future king of Sives would bestow peace on both halves of the territory. And all this time…

  “I don’t know who she is,” Joshua said calmly. “At the dance in honor of Demea was the first time I ever saw her.”

  At least it sounded like he was telling the truth, but… “How can I know you’re not lying now?” Armand hissed.

  To his surprise, it was the servant girl who responded, “Because he wasn’t himself when he locked her up.”

  It took Armand a moment to understand the words she had spoken.

  “Someone put a spell on him,” Addie explained before he could ask specifics. “We suspect his mother.”

  To his surprise, Joshua nodded.

  “He has been under a spell since the very first day he came here,” Addie added.

  From the very first day? Armand stopped and watched the clouds pass by his windows, his mind racing. If what they claimed was true and Joshua hadn’t been himself—

  And as Addie and Joshua told him everything they had figured out—the Dragon Water, about which he added he knew had healing properties, that the last Dragon King’s dragon had resided under the castle, the suspicion of aunt Linniue worshipping Shygon, the god of dragons—it all made sense. Painfully perfect sense. That Joshua had stopped fighting from one day to the other. That he had roamed the castle freely, never as much as asking to send a message to his family. That he had been perfect. Perfect and invisible, his identity a secret to all but a few. Armand broke for his cousin’s fate of a mother who had given him away just to bring him back as a prisoner—even if his prison had been in his mind.

  “Was any of it real, cousin?” The question was as simple as it was scary, the answer of it defining whether what he’d been working toward—what his mother and he had been trying to achieve—had all been a lie. He turned around to face his cousin, who looked even paler than usual.

  Joshua’s face was unreadable as he said, “I told you I would have given anything to smash your pretty Denderlain face into the coffee table so many times.” He exhaled a long breath and gazed at the ceiling as if calling for Vala’s aid. “The goddess knows, I have been occupied with two minds in my head—the one that grew to agree with your plan, and the one wanting me to get you to spill every detail of the plan to have something to hold against you one day.”

  “So that’s what she wants?” Armand prompted, betrayal thick in his voice. “She wants to rid herself of me?”

  Joshua shook his head. “I have not the slightest idea what her ulterior motive is.”

  “Not her love for her son, for sure,” Addie added dark
ly, and both of them gave her a look that could only be described as pained agreement.

  “But she has been encouraging me to make my plans with you.” Joshua glanced at him with those green eyes that seemed haunted. There was truth in them. Even if there were so many open questions. Why would Linniue spend years deceiving this court if she wanted her own son on the throne? “I don’t know what she is waiting for… What her plans are.” Joshua sighed through his nose, frustration and pain plain on his face.

  Armand’s own mind was trying to grab a hold of what was going on—what had been going on all this time, unnoticed. That all he had been working toward might have been a lie. And Linniue? Could she truly be behind this? He’d known his aunt to be eccentric, difficult even, but this? Deceive her entire family about the father of her child, only to one day use her son against all of them? Was it truly Linniue alone, or was Joshua deceiving him as well? Was there even a spell?

  “And where is that spell now?” Armand returned to the sofa where he planted himself in front of Joshua, sword still in his hand. “How do I know you’re not lying right now?”

  “Because if I were, I would not be sitting here telling you this but would rip your sword from your hands to ram it into your stomach.”

  Joshua’s words were as harsh as they were convincing. His cousin had never raised a finger against him. Never… And it had taken long for him to trust Joshua. With his Brenheran heritage and his claim to what should have been Armand’s… If his mother hadn’t paved the way for trust, he might have been convinced this was purely Joshua’s craving for power. But with all they had been working toward, with what he had promised his mother, with the proof of Joshua locking up Gandrett in the dungeons and attempting to kill her—

  It couldn’t be him.

  It had to be Linniue. If they were right. Even so, betrayal by the aunt he had known his entire life was hardly any easier than by the cousin he had been seeing as the future of Sives.

  “Our plan is still intact, Armand,” Joshua said to him, his green eyes like clear waters. “That is—” He rested his back against the sofa, exhaustion creasing his forehead. “If we can make one adjustment.”

  Armand raised one eyebrow as he waited, still uncertain what or who to trust.

  “Get me out of Eedwood. Return me to my father’s side. Take over your own lordship of Eedwood and end your father’s reign of terror so together we can build up the future.”

  Armand listened, his heart quickening as he heard the words he had hoped would one day be spoken. And yet he couldn’t enjoy them, the bitter taste of betrayal weighing heavy on his heart.

  “You as the Lord of the East while my father remains Lord of the West until the day he dies. And then, I will take my throne and rule over all of Sives with you as my chancellor.”

  Armand didn’t respond. Not to this. But his gaze fell on Joshua’s necklace once more.

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Gandrett awoke, she was tangled in blankets, and where her stomach was supposed to be, a gaping pit of hunger demanded bothenia crust. By the candlelight, she could tell that it was past sunset even if the lack of daylight triggered alarm in her system. The last time she had woken, she had found herself in a pitch-black cell somewhere under the last Dragon King’s residence in the north tower by the future king of Sives. She was still trying to wrap her head around it—that her mission, the big mission she had been sent on had been only half a mission because the truth was Joshua belonged to Ackwood as much as he belonged to Eedwood. And if he was the cruel type of person she had gotten to know him as, then either there was something very wrong with him now, or his family had a very mistaken image of him.

  Gandrett rolled over to glance at the secret door and found it open, but there were no sounds other than the rumbling of her stomach and the crackle of the hearth fire. She would have remained in bed just to enjoy that she hadn’t been cleaved apart by Joshua’s sword, hadn’t it been for the pressure in her bladder that couldn’t wait. She padded across the room and hurried to the bathing chamber,

  When she returned, a clicking sound from the window made her hand twitch to where her sword normally hung on her belt. Another click. Gandrett couldn’t spot anything from her position by the door, so she inched forward until outside the window she made out the fat, feathery shape of Riho, the crow.

  She loosed a breath and stumbled toward the window, catching herself on the windowsill.

  Riho clicked his beak at the glass once more, impatience in the gesture as far as that was something one could see in a bird’s behavior.

  So Gandrett unhooked the window and opened it just enough for the crow to hop inside.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him, and as he held out his leg for her to retrieve the small scroll of parchment, Gandrett dove for it and untied it with surprisingly healed hands.

  She remembered the Dragon Water, and a shudder ran down her back. What else was going on in this castle that no one had warned her about?

  Riho cawed lowly and waited for her to read Nehelon’s message.

  She stared at its contents, hoping she had misread, but when she read it for the third time, it still said, If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’ll turn the castle upside down until I find you.

  Somehow, it sounded like a threat.

  So Gandrett lowered her head to Riho’s and whispered. “Tell Nehelon I found Joshua and that I am no longer sure Joshua wants to return. Tell him I will try to get out as soon as I I’ve eaten.”

  She kept everything else to herself. The magic she potentially had performed, the days she had been locked in a dungeon under the last Dragon King’s tower. It was nothing to put into a brief message delivered by a bird. Especially if she was still trying to make herself believe the magic hadn’t happened.

  Riho took off with another caw and what Gandrett could swear was relief in his circular, black eyes, leaving Gandrett to deal with her hunger for answers as much as the hole in her stomach.

  She hadn’t lied when she had told Riho she’d get out of there soon. But first, she had to find Armand and Addie to figure out what had happened to Joshua.

  With quiet footsteps, she made it back to the bed where she picked up her water glass and drained it before she pulled Nehelon’s knife from under the pillow. Then she got her old dress—the one with the secret compartment in the bodice—from the wardrobe where Deelah had hung it after she’d fixed it, and quickly changed.

  As she sheathed the knife in her bodice, the memory of Nehelon’s tug on the fabric shook her for a moment, closely followed by the memory of his lips on hers. A memory, or a hallucination?

  So she made her way to the secret door and slipped into the passageway.

  Armand had slept better. He would have preferred not to sleep at all, but the fact that he had ridden out for one of his many fake-missions the evening before rescuing Gandrett caught up with him. Fake-missions where he didn’t silence anyone who spoke against Denderlain but spent his time promising the people of central-Sives a better future, a peaceful future, if they endured just a little longer, and returned with the blood of one of his father’s loyal men on his hands instead. One of those men who were willing to torture to get people to turn on Brenheran.

  The conundrum of Gandrett’s magic and her necklace might have something to do with it too, or the fact that he was sleeping on the rug before his bed, where he had fallen asleep after a long discussion with Addie and Joshua.

  They had decided that until they were absolutely certain where the spell that had bound Joshua originated from, the latter should remain hidden in Armand’s chambers.

  Addie, however, had taken off in the early afternoon to return to Linniue so his aunt wouldn’t suspect anything. His guards had retrieved her bucket and he had filled it with regular water before she’d left, to prevent anything from happening in case their suspicion about her was true—that it was Linniue who controlled Joshua and it had something to do with the magic in the Dragon Water.<
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  On the sofa, Joshua’s regular breathing was a comforting layer of sound. At least his cousin was sleeping well, unplagued by a second mind overpowering his. Hours and hours they had spent trying to understand the limits of the spell’s power. And Joshua had patiently explained in detail whatever Armand had asked—and Addie, who seemed to put a lot of effort into helping Joshua, given she had denied him help once. Armand’s mind was still spinning at the thought of having a second presence locked in his head with his own mind that sometimes was already too much to bear.

  How did Joshua stand it, having his own wishes, his own opinions smothered for years and not break?

  Joshua had laid out how the second presence in his head prevented him from ever bringing up that he wished to return to Ackwood or that he was even exposed to that constant internal struggle of not being able to speak his own mind. What a relief it must be for his cousin to finally say the words—that someone had been guiding him through Eedwood and potentially even picking through his brain to gather information.

  He had spoken about the nights and days he had spent wishing for them; those moments when the spell got weaker—over time, it seemed—and how he still always ended up back in those shackles of his mind. Linniue’s men must have been keeping their eyes open for his movements through the castle, or he would have managed to escape that one time he had broken the spell—or that it hadn’t been renewed.

  Armand’s head threatened to burst from trying to understand how it worked. And from the horror his cousin had endured for such a long time without as much as a word of understanding.

  “What got me through those years,” Joshua had said, and it warmed Armand’s heart, “were those hours spent planning with you.” That though he had been under a spell that had prevented him from even attempting to leave, there had been someone—who hoped for a better future for Sives. And that Linniue had been wanting him on the throne as well, only there seemed to be something more she desired. Something bigger she had been working toward.