Shattered Kingdom

by Angelina J. Steffort

  It was impressive how Joshua had been keeping track, all those years, of all those thoughts that had been his own, and how he had managed to stay sane. The only thing that still wasn’t clear was how much time he had truly missed during those blackouts and what had happened during those hours or days or weeks.

  So they all were convinced there had been someone controlling Joshua’s mind. The only question left was if it was truly Linniue who did that to her son.

  Armand turned to the side, trying to shut out his thoughts, when the sound of Gandrett’s voice disturbed him from the open door to the secret passageway.

  “Armand, come quick,” she called, “it’s back.”

  He was on his feet, sword in hand, and rushing to the secret door before he could even give a thought to what she might have meant was back. Too urgent was her tone, too terrifying the thought of her getting into trouble again.

  A brief look at Joshua informed him the future king of Sives was fast asleep. The guards at the doors were not going to let anyone in or out.

  When he made it to the corridor, Gandrett was standing halfway in, hand on the wall and a mixture of fear and excitement on her now completely healed features. Gods, had he ever acknowledged how beautiful she was?

  “Do you see it?” She whispered, now that her eyes had spotted him in the doorway.

  Armand closed the gap with a couple of quick strides, sword at the ready, his eyes on her, alive and healthy—and possibly the biggest liar of all times. For some reason, he didn’t care about the latter as much as he should have as long as the former applied.

  “What is it?” As he asked, he saw it.

  There was a door etched in the thick, stone wall. In a small alcove that he had passed countless times, there was a door.

  He blinked, clearing his vision and hoping he had not seen right.

  “Good,” Gandrett commented, “You see it too.” There was relief in her voice as if she had been doubting the existence of the entrance they both were staring at.

  Armand reached out his hand and examined the door, the spider webs that had been torn in front of it. He could have sworn the door’s temperature was a tad cooler than the stone surrounding it.

  “Where did it come from?” he mused aloud, fascination and alarm mingling in his stomach.

  But Gandrett didn’t give him time to think. She grabbed him by the forearm, hand firm and unyielding as he attempted to pull it open.

  “Listen to me,” she whispered, her eyes sparkling in the torchlight. “I came across this door the first night you sent me back to my chambers. I’ve been in there.”

  What? “Why didn’t you tell me?” He remembered very well that night she had returned to her chambers, looking like someone had dragged her through the dirt. He had felt guilty for using her to provoke his father, had felt, with her history, she might understand him, better than anyone, his difficult relationship with his tyrant father. How she had deceived him—

  “There was no indication I could trust you,” she plainly said, all ladylike words, all smiles, all pretenses gone, replaced by a fierceness that was illuminating the dim air around them.

  He wanted to ask if she trusted him now, if that was why this time she had called for him. But he couldn’t bring himself to. Too much did he dread the answer she had in store.

  “There are tunnels behind this door,” Gandrett continued, “and I don’t know where they lead, but we had better get a warm coat, or we won’t make it out of there again.”

  He stared. At her bravery, at her practicality, at her not being any of the things every other girl he had met was. “You are intending to go in there?” he asked.

  “Preferably just you and I,” she nodded. “I wouldn’t want to risk anyone else seeing what’s in there.”

  Armand tried not to sound like a frightened boy as he asked, “What’s in there?”

  The flesh on Addie’s back was raw from the beatings with the rod. She had endured it before at Lands End, and here in Eedwood, when Linniue’s guards caught her at her attempts to escape. So she bit down on her tongue and swallowed the pain.

  “So…” Linniue strolled around her with a smile, making a small circle around the bucket beside her. “Can I expect you to do a simple task such as delivering a bucket of water properly next time—and not a day after the order?” Her voice was so sweet, almost as if she were talking to her friend Lady Isylte Aphapia of Ilaton—only, her fingers were still gripping the rod that had gotten acquainted with Addie’s blood instead of the teacup that she usually carried around the chambers.

  Addie nodded. Not because she agreed she would do better, but to herself that she could do this—endure this and not break. Only until the lady let her out of her chambers again, and then, back to the young lord and the future king of Sives. A shudder ran through her at the thought of the events of last night. Could it be that there was hope? Hope in the shape of Armand Denderlain and an emerald-eyed prince—for that was who Joshua was. A prince of Sives. Probably the last if they didn’t manage to put him on the throne.

  She shifted her feet, eyes glancing for the door. So close, she might be able to run… only to be dragged back by Linniue’s guards. Who knew how many other people in this castle were under her spell—

  “Don’t even think about it,” Linniue answered Addie’s silent pondering and lifted her rod.

  Addie cringed where she stood.

  “I have different plans for you tonight.” She opened the door and called for one of the men guarding it, who saluted and on Linniue’s beckoning, grabbed Addie by her arm and dragged her to her knees. “I made a mistake assuming you would understand the importance of your task—your only task,” Linniue hissed as she bent down enough to look into Addie’s eyes. Linniue’s gaze beamed in a darker shade of the young lord’s hazel, and there was no warmth there. “As you have been trained in Lands End.”

  “Trained,” Addie repeated, trying to make sense of the lady’s choice of words.

  The response was a lash on her back.

  Addie gritted her teeth as she panted through the pain. She should have known better than to provoke the lady, and any sign of being a coherent being with thoughts and opinions seemed to fall into the category of provoking.

  Linniue giggled at Addie as she grabbed her hair out of nowhere and pulled her head back.

  Addie tried to free herself, but the guard didn’t loosen his iron grip on her arm. Instead, his second hand grasped her by the chin and forced her mouth open while Linniue exacted a flask from the pocket of her dress, wheeled the lid open with one hand, and lowered it into the bucket before she brought it to Addie’s spitting lips.

  “Drink up, Addie,” Linniue cooed, her eyes sparkling with insanity. “It will soon be over.”

  Addie coughed up the water Linniue forced into her mouth, no longer a single doubt in her mind that it was Linniue who had spelled Joshua Brenheran. It was the water that she used for it—

  Only, the water in Addie’s bucket was from Armand’s bathing chamber. A different sort of excitement rose in her as she remembered the scent in his chambers—wildflowers and something that she couldn’t identify that was very masculine. She thought of that scent, the people she was doing this for, as she fell into her role and finally gulped down the water and stopped fighting.

  Let Lady Linniue think whatever she was doing had succeeded. All she needed was to get out of here alive to let the young lord and the future king know that it was Linniue who was doing this.

  “Your commitment to your task will have much improved after I am finished with you.” Linniue giggled again and let go of Addie’s hair in favor of a knife she picked up from the sideboard where a silver tray was waiting with a variety of utensils, none of them promising an easy death.

  Addie held her breath as the guard tore open her dress on her shoulder and Linniue let the blade hover over the bare skin, murmuring in a language she hadn’t heard since Lands End.

  The language of the dragon lords.
>
  She was doing it—Linniue was doing it, praying to the god of dragons. Addie recognized the songlike murmur, even some of the syllables she had heard in Lands End so many times. And she knew what it meant—

  A scream escaped her as Linniue brought down the blade on her shoulder and didn’t stab, but carved something on the part where skin stretched thinner over the bones. She screamed and screamed until she tasted the salt of sweat and bitterness of dirt on the hand the guard shoved over her mouth.

  “Hold your breath for later when the real fun begins,” said Linniue as she was done, leaving Addie’s shoulder dribbling with blood. Then, she stepped back and gave Addie a smile. “From now on, you will not only obey me to a full extent. You will have the honor of being part of my inner circle.”

  Addie silently sobbed through the lady’s words. For Joshua and the young lord. For a better future.

  “Lead her into the caverns.” At her command, the guard dragged Addie back to her feet and forced her forward to the wall that looked the way it always did—except that there was a door.

  Addie didn’t fight. All she needed to do was to get through this and get out alive to tell Armand and Joshua. She had to.

  If Linniue had been performing the spell on her, Addie didn’t notice any sign of it. Maybe it would come later, and she would be forced to betray the only allies she seemed to have in this castle, no matter how unlikely it was at all a servant girl had allies. Or maybe the spell hadn’t worked because of the fake Dragon Water.

  Either way, she wordlessly walked into the corridor that the guard exposed as he pushed open the door and shoved her into the chilly air.

  Gandrett. Addie thought of Gandrett and the first time she had met the girl, half-frozen, as she’d fallen through a door in the wall that had sealed itself back in place, leaving no trace it had ever existed.

  A magic door.

  As was this one.

  Addie braced herself for the cold, the shiver that ran across her bruised and bloody back as painful as her carved-up shoulder, and stepped toward her fate.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Of course, Armand had wanted to go first. Gandrett wouldn’t have expected otherwise.

  Now that they had made it halfway down to the colder areas of the tunnel, she was already wondering if she should have left Armand behind, if it would have been smarter not to involve him at all and just get it over with. She pulled the coat he had lent her more tightly around her and followed him down that path that had almost destroyed her last time.

  She could have simply ignored the door and grabbed Joshua and run instead.

  But, it seemed, the castle had a message for her, showing her the door—or it had something to do with her sudden magical abilities, which were as unproven as Nehelon’s kiss. It could have been Joshua incinerating the chain and the blade—only, what incentive would he have had to destroy the advantage he’d had over her?

  Gandrett felt Armand’s eyes on her as she pushed past him to examine the frost that was collecting on the stone walls. It melted as she brought her torch closer and trickled down the stone until it froze back to it out of reach of the fire’s heat.

  “This must be the dragon lair that Joshua talked about,” Armand said out of the blue.

  Gandrett was still chewing on what Armand had told her about Joshua’s split mind and how they suspected his aunt for putting a spell on him to prevent him from running.

  To a certain degree, it made sense. At least, it explained how the Brenherans could have described him as such a saint when he had attacked her here and tried to kill her.

  After giving her a summary of the discussion he’d had with Joshua and Addie, Armand had been awfully silent on their way down here even though she could almost feel that he carried words on his tongue that if he didn’t speak them now might never be spoken. For before the first light of day, Gandrett would be gone. And if they were right about Joshua and the spell, this time, he would come gladly.

  “Did Joshua say anything about when he’s returning to Ackwood?” she asked just to make conversation.

  But Armand’s sigh was answer enough that this was a story that might take longer than the endless stretching darkness before them.

  However, he grabbed her hand and pulled her over so she faced him. There was no sound other than the crackling of the torch, and the air smelled of ice and fire.

  His gaze wandered down to her chest and back to her eyes, face unreadable. His fingers pulled her hand up toward him, and he examined her calloused palm with a brush of his thumb. “These are not from sorting jeweled weapons,” he noted, looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

  Gandrett swallowed. So it was time. Time for the truth, or as much of it as she thought Armand could handle.

  “I came here with a mission, Armand.” It hurt more than she had thought to admit that she had been lying to the young lord, the man whom she had been told was the enemy when in reality, he was the one trying to save Sives. Her heart ached for him as his eyes turned shadowed. “To bring Joshua Brenheran home.”

  He let go of her hand and reached for her neck, almost making her let her training set in and bring him down before his fingers brushed against her throat. But he wasn’t attempting to harm her. His fingers picked the thin, silver necklace from her skin and weighed the pendant in his palm.

  “Joshua has the same necklace,” he said with a voice that sounded like defeat rather than anger. Gandrett would have never believed that she would wish for anger instead. “It’s a Brenheran heirloom, he once told me. There are only three of them in all of Neredyn, and the one you are wearing is not his.” It was there, the silent question whether she was one of them—a Brenheran. Or just some stranger, unlucky enough to be bestowed with the task.

  Gandrett’s pulse quickened to a speed at which she was sure, if Nehelon had been there, he’d have forced her to sit and calm down before she said anything, did anything. An heirloom for the Brenheran siblings. And Brax had given her his. The younger Brenheran’s emerald gaze and his outrageous smile flashed before her eyes—Think of me when you wear it, Child of Vala—and all of a sudden, she felt dizzy. Brax hadn’t gifted her just any necklace. The pendant, threaded with emeralds, was a token of the Brenheran bloodline, something more personal than any other thing he could have possibly given her.

  And now, it had given away her ties to Ackwood.

  Armand’s hazel gaze was patiently measuring her as she made up her mind whether or not the truth was something she should give—could bear giving.

  But Armand didn’t pressure her.

  “I came running when you called for help once. And I told you already that if you asked me again, I’d help.” He let go of the necklace and took her hand again, a gentle touch this time, full of curiosity and expectation rather than the resignation from before. “You can trust me, Gandrett.” It was there in his eyes that he didn’t want to think about the consequences of helping her, of what it would do to him, that it was a decision made by heart rather than the logic he, as a lord of Eedwood should be following.

  It cost her all of her force of will to bring herself to speak the words, “Lord Tyrem Brenheran hired me to bring back his son,” and they sounded bleak in the frosty air. The un-pretty truth that she had been lying to him from the second she had laid eyes on him—even before, when she had let that wolf attack instead of slaying it with one swift move of Nehelon’s—now incinerated—dagger.

  But Armand just nodded as if he wasn’t surprised. After all the other revelations of the night, it did indeed seem like her little secret was the least of his problems. For once, it made them allies—true allies. For if he cared about his cousin enough to lay down his own right to rule just to see Joshua on the throne of Sives, it would be the smallest of favors he could do him to get him out of Eedwood and far away from the people who had been controlling his mind. “You have always been too wicked-mouthed for a lady,” Armand said with a grin, all those thoughts on his face.


  His acceptance hurt more than a slap in the face. It let her writhe in the guilt of lies. Hadn’t Armand been anything but kind to her? Hadn’t he shared his own thoughts, his emotions with her, regardless of who she was? And she had not once found it in herself to trust him enough to tell him who she was. A liar, unworthy of Vala’s love. “Don’t you care that I am a fraud?” It was as much a question to her goddess as it was a question to the man before her.

  But Armand shook his head. “I am a fraud myself.” He shrugged. “A lord pretending not to be one. A secret rebel fighting my father’s terror-rule instead of the people he sends me out to kill when they don’t swear fealty. A leaf in the wind, belittled, laughed upon by his own father, putting up a show so no one sees who I truly am—” He smiled an apologetic smile. The smile of a man who had nothing to lose.

  Gandrett took a deep breath, bracing herself for what she was about to say, then found she was able to return his smile. “It doesn’t matter what any of them think,” she said and meant it. “The only thing that truly matters is what you think of yourself.”

  She ran her fingers over the back of his hand, and the smile vanished as his gaze fell on her mouth as their breaths became puffs of fog between them. Something tightened in Gandrett’s stomach—

  The faint sound of approaching footsteps made both of them jump.

  Gandrett’s hand flashed into her coat where it withdrew Nehelon’s knife from the bodice of her dress. She sent silent words of thanks to him, hoping that she wouldn’t be in his debt if he didn’t hear them, and shrugged at Armand, who was eyeing her as if now he was wondering if he had been right to say he didn’t care.

  But he didn’t speak. Neither of them did. Because far ahead, in the distance where the chilly draft was coming from, a light appeared.

  Armand’s hand froze to his sword, almost literally, as he drew it back and placed it on its hilt, the warmth of Gandrett’s hand immediately a phantom touch contrasting the icy steel.