Page 63 of The Turncoat King

It was his turn to comfort her, his big hand running up and down her back. “How many of you are there who can do this?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m doing the workings right—if there even is a right way. My grandmother could do it, I know that. She was revered in Grimwalt because of it.”

“Her skill was known?” Luc asked.

“Her housekeeper told me that her pieces were sought after, but easy to identify. She worked only in black silk, and in a particular style. So while observers might not know what the working in the garment was, they knew it was a piece by her, and the wearer had some kind of protection.”

“The cloak we found wrapped around your mother’s body . . .” Luc spoke slowly, as if working something out.

She nodded. “That used to be covered in black silk embroidery. The Queen’s Herald must have thought the thread itself was magical, and forced her to unpick it to work whatever it was he wanted her to do.” It also had the effect of stripping away her mother’s own protections, working by working.

“So there could be other items, made by your mother under duress, that are in the hands of the Queen’s Herald?”

“There most definitely are. Although I would hope my mother would have worked some surprises into them, or made sure they had a short lifespan.”

“And he tried to make you do this, too?” There it was, the low, hot fury in his voice she’d heard earlier when the tent had burned.

“He tried. I refused at first, and then I agreed, and worked something very nasty into what he gave me. He only wore something I’d made for him once, and never again.”

“What did you do?” The rumble in her ear made her shiver.

“I worked in the suggestion that he stab himself.”

Luc went still. “Did it work?”

“He has a scar on his left side to this day.” She thought back to the incident. Her cousin screaming as he unsheathed his knife and stabbed himself, calling for his guards to pull his new coat off him.

Luc breathed out. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

“He hit me with his sword. That’s when I had to sew the skin above my eye. But he didn’t dare kill me. He was hoping to wear me down over time. It cost him relatively little to keep me alive. If I was dead, he had no chance of using me to benefit him.” She shrugged. “Then he must have kidnapped my mother. And then my being alive was how he forced her to work for him.”

The rage of knowing her mother had been in the dungeon below, while she walked around and around her small cell in the tower above, swept over her in a wave. She tried to push it down, but like the ocean, it would not be stopped.

She could hear herself keening, trying to cry as silently as possible.

She felt Luc’s hand, soothing her, rubbing her, as he crooned to her just like he had when she’d first discovered her mother’s body, and she was struck again that he seemed easy in the role.

“Did you ever soothe babies?” she asked, when her throat was no longer so tight.

He nodded. “When I was in the camps.”

“It shows. You have a well of patience and empathy that I’ve never seen in any of the Kassian soldiers I’ve been forced to interact with over the years. You are better for it. Stronger for it.” She wiped her tears away. “What happened to the babies?”

“Some grew older, fought with me. Some were returned home.” There was satisfaction in his voice. “When I turned on the Kassian, my first order of business was to liberate the camps. I knew betraying the Kassian army on the battlefield would lead to repercussions for any Chosen still under their control.”

“So you destroyed the camps?” She hadn’t heard anything about his exploits while she’d been imprisoned. About his amazing revolt against the Kassian two years earlier. About the liberation of the camps. And the battles he and his Rising Wave had fought since, gaining more and more of the north west, the land that used to belong to the Cervantes.

“They are gone. And Cervantes is under our control again.”

He was marching to Fernwell, the Kassian capital, to make sure it stayed that way.

She would do everything in her power to make sure he succeeded.

She turned in his arms, facing him, and kissed along his jawline, until, with a growl, he captured her lips with his, and for the second time in two nights, she made a note to work a silencing spell into the canvas.

Chapter 20

The guard sent to find him ended up resorting to calling his name softly as he searched for Ava’s tent.