Page 52 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

51

Kat

A s I returned to our suite and found no sign of Bastian for the tenth day in a row, I had to wonder if Braea was deliberately keeping him away from me. There had been more summons from her in the hours of darkness, and during the day, he seemed to be constantly busy. Maybe I was just being paranoid.

Maybe.

I didn’t escape the queen’s demands, either. After Cyrus’s death, I had written a report of my time in Dawn and had a full debriefing that lasted a couple of days. Faolán joined Bastian and me for that, so it didn’t end up in a different kind of debriefing. (Ella would be so proud of that one.)

It hadn’t ended there, though. In the weeks since, I’d been ordered to re-write my report and add to it more times than I could recall. I was sick of the sight of the damn thing.

Then there were the more pleasant demands. We had a lot of social invitations, including a trip to Ari and Lysander’s estate.

It was a special kind of privilege to know I’d been missed, but all together, it felt like we barely found five minutes to be alone.

I, however, found myself alone in our suite, without Bastian, when there was a knock at the door. I looked up from the report I was adding an addendum to—gaps weren’t allowed, according to Her Majesty’s feedback after my fifth version. A guard brought in a parcel from Zita.

In their takeover, they hadn’t yet found the mirror, but she had come across Ella’s lock picks. I hadn’t seen them since I’d killed Uncle Rufus, and for a long while I just stared at them.

These little pieces of metal had saved my life.

I ran my thumb along the edges, finding a sharp area of damage on the handle of one. Must’ve been from our confrontation in the bathroom. I’d lost track of the picks in the chaos, but now I had them back, I could repair and return them to Ella. Remembering Bastian had files in his workroom, I headed inside to search.

The place had been tidied since I’d last been in here. Most of the projects had disappeared. But at the centre of the table sat a flat, bark covered block. The wooden tablet Sepher had given Bastian. He’d told me about it, but I’d been so busy since returning to Dusk, it had slipped my mind.

The bark definitely formed the shape of a flaming crown. I turned it over, searching every side, but that was the only symbol I could pick out. It had to relate to the Crown of Ashes, but how, exactly?

“What secrets are you hiding?”

The gauntlet sounded like a place, perhaps in or leading to the Underworld—“the world beneath”—certainly not an object. What if it was a map showing the location? I squinted at the craggy bark. Nothing but organic shapes.

Then there was “the anointed one”—whoever that was. “We’ll need them to enter the gauntlet,” I sighed. “And ‘It can only be found after shedding skin.’”

I straightened. “Wait. Bark is a tree’s skin, right?” I ran my hand over the rough surface. “Is there something underneath this?”

It was a piece of wood, of course it didn’t answer, but…

I reached for Bastian’s tools.

Minutes later I was hunched over the workbench, surrounded by the resinous scent of raw wood and little heaps of bark that I’d painstakingly peeled away. The piles grew as I worked, and my breath caught as it revealed lines. Not rings like a tree normally had, but?—

“What the hells are you doing?” Bastian stood in the doorway, eyes bulging. “We’ll never be able to fix?—”

“Look.” I held it up. “There’s writing underneath.”

His mouth hung open mid-word as he covered the space between us in two strides and stared at the few letters I’d uncovered. “Stars above, there is.” He pushed it back into my hands and grabbed another knife like the narrow one I was using. Together, we chipped away from the edges, finally meeting in the middle.

“‘The way is through the trees,’” I read out. “The gauntlet. Has to be. That’s a route somewhere, right?”

“So, a forest? Lucky we don’t have a country that’s covered in them. Oh, wait.” He flashed a sardonic grin. “Let’s see if there’s anything on the back.”

“Or the sides,” I added.

But there were no more words, just the mingled wood of two trees—one a light brown, the other a darker, warmer colour.

I huffed my frustration. “I thought there’d be more of a clue than that. Maybe if we speak to the others, they’ll have some ideas. There has to be something we’re missing.” I held up the tablet, tilting it in the light. “A hidden code or secret text or something. ”

“No, I think it is only the message. We have to work out what it means. It’s not just any old tree.” He frowned at the writing, brow crinkling in this way that made me want to kiss it. He took a sharp breath, bolting upright. “What if it’s the Great Trees? This is yew and oak wood that’s grown together.”

My mouth dropped open. If that was true?—

“It’s just a theory, but what if Sure came here not for some last piece of information but to enter the gauntlet itself?” He gave a short laugh of disbelief.

I squeezed the wood. “That would mean the path to the Crown has been here all along.”

As soon as I mentioned the Crown, he blanched. “No. Kat. Wait.” He caught my hands and lowered the tablet to the workbench. “What are we doing? We’re not meant to be searching for the Crown. The longer that thing stays hidden, the better. I just need the queen to think I’m looking for it.”

I squeezed it tighter. “So you’re lying to her.”

“I can’t?—”

“I know. Not a lie, but you are deceiving her. You don’t trust her anymore, do you?”

He went still. He didn’t even breathe. Slowly, he swallowed and straightened, a wall growing higher. “The Crown is too dangerous for anyone to wield. No one can be trusted with it, so no one should have it.”

“I would trust you with it.”

He laughed, a bitter, spiked thing. “Me? Who is going to follow me? I may be Nyx’s child, but I still killed my father and I’m the son of traitors.”

“The people look to you already. When Cyrus put forward his register, they all turned to you for guidance—for leadership.”

“That was just a matter of practicality. I was the only person who could do anything to soften his foolishness.”

“And when they saw what Cyrus had done to your athair —was that practical? Who did they want to serve? Who inspired them to act against the king? You. All of it was for you .”

He opened his mouth, undoubtedly to argue, but I charged on.

“They love you. Perhaps not in the way they’ve loved Braea or Cyrus, but they see parts of you and they love you for it. They see that you’ve sacrificed for them, risked for them, acted for them, always , and they love you for it. If you let them see more, then I know they’ll love you even more.”

He pressed his lips together, glowering at the wooden tablet. “They don’t love me. They fear and respect the Serpent of Tenebris. There’s a difference.”

“Perhaps before that was true, but since Cyrus has taken the throne, you’ve shown yourself as the voice of reason. They know everything that tempered his harshness was down to you. Now , I think they love and respect you.”

He scoffed. “Kat, it’s you they love. The flame-haired woman who had the courage to kill her abusive husband… and who’s rumoured to have killed a villainous king. They love you , and I just happen to be the lucky bastard at your side.”

“Then I will help them learn to love you.”

He turned away, shaking his head with a heavy exhale.

A thick silence opened between us, but I couldn’t help turning over the fact his objections had all related to his own suitability. Nothing about Braea.

“So you won’t reveal who you are. What if the queen dies? What happens then?”

“A fucking disaster, that’s what. She has no heir, only distant cousins, of which Asher is the closest. Without a clear line of descent, it would be… messy. A civil war we can’t afford.”

“No, what you can’t afford is for her to remain in power.”

He whirled on his heels. “What are you saying?”

“You ask her. Whose arrows killed your mother? What’s the ‘infernal book’ Kaliban hated so much? Why did she keep insisting you prioritise the Crown of Ashes when people were dying? I will tell you one thing with certainty. She let Cyrus abuse his position just so she could look reasonable in comparison. She let people die under the pretext of not rocking the boat. Bastian, these two courts are not a fucking boat—they’re a cobbled together raft that’s going to sink before it finds dry land.”

Eyes round, jaw slack, he looked stricken. “You want to get rid of Braea.” He whispered it like he barely dared say the words out loud.

“Don’t you?”

His hands raked through his hair like he couldn’t stay still. “That isn’t… No . I don’t. Kat, I don’t think you understand. You’ve only seen me since…” He huffed and shook his head. “I grew up in the stable quarters with a name marred by two turncoat fathers. Braea saw my potential. She gave me a chance in her Queensguard—a chance many said I’d never get because I was destined to only ever be another Marwood traitor. She lifted me to that honour—one I hadn’t dared to dream of. And then after Sura… she elevated me even higher. Now, I have money and a much more comfortable life, yes, but, more importantly, I have the power to act to keep my people safe and the courts at peace. All thanks to her. Everything I am is because of her.”

“No, it’s because of you .” My chest ached as I stared at him, desperate to make him understand. “It’s your actions that put you here. She only gave you what you always deserved.”

His jaw worked side to side before he yanked a drawer open and tossed the tools in, ignoring their allocated sections. “You don’t understand how Elfhame works. Even if what you’re saying about Braea is right, we do not need more instability right now. We need peace and calm and a moment without a throne changing hands for five fucking minutes .”

I clenched my jaw like that would help me stay together when all I wanted to do was burst. He was wrong. Absolutely fucking wrong. And yet I couldn’t persuade him.

It was too soon. We were still too close to Cyrus’s death and Lucius’s before that. I would try again in a couple of months. He would listen then.

He glanced at the window, harsh lines carved between his eyebrows as though they’d been gouged with the knives we’d used on the tablet. “The sun’s setting. I need to go and brief the queen.”

He strode for the door, and I’d never seen him in such a hurry to leave my presence. In the doorway, he pulled up short and gripped the doorframe. He didn’t quite look over his shoulder, just to the side, casting his face in profile against the darkened hallway beyond. “I love you,” he murmured as though unwilling to leave on harsh words.

It eased my heart a little, but the deeper ache was still there. My eyes burned as I looked at the one I loved so dearly. “And I love you. I just… I wish you saw yourself as I do.”

He made a soft sound, then disappeared, leaving me alone.

What if he didn’t just need time? What if he never let go of Braea and all he’d done in her service? Could we live around that wrong or would we just be surviving?

Outside, the sky darkened.

Bastian came to bed late that night, slipping between the sheets in the darkness. “Are you awake? he asked softly.

I’d been lying there awake for hours, unable to shake off my fears after our argument. “Mm-hmm.”

“About earlier. I hated leaving you on that note. I… I hated almost everything about that conversation, in fact.”

I reached out, placing my hand on his chest. The warm point of contact soothed a little of my anxiety, and when he covered my hand with his, it helped even more.

“I… I can see why you might think… that about Braea.” He spoke haltingly, rather than with his usual smooth confidence.

It made me keep quiet where I might’ve spoken to comfort him or joked to ease the tension, but I didn’t want to interrupt whatever battle he was working through in order to say these words.

“I admit, I’ve found myself questioning her since she let Cyrus take you and finding out about my mother. I don’t trust her… not with Amaya or with my identity. And I’ve noticed she turns questions back on me. Whenever I confront her, somehow she manages to deflect blame elsewhere.”

I could picture it. He’d question her about me going to Dawn or Kaliban being arrested, and she’d make it his fault. It sickened me.

“She killed my mother. I accept it now. Sura wasn’t twisting things to justify her actions. Braea really did it.”

My eyes burned as I looked up into the darkness. The pain in his voice pierced my heart. This was all so hard on him. Yet he’d started to see through Braea’s manipulations.

“But,” he went on, “what I think or feel doesn’t matter. I have no choice. It would be selfish of me to pick anything or anyone else. I must think of my people. She is queen and I’ve committed too much to that and to her to turn my back now. She isn’t perfect, but she’s what we have.”

My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t speak—there was too much inside me and no one thing could get out. Was that what he really thought? She was the only option? He mattered so little?

“She’s made the hard decisions and become the Night Queen rather than the mother, the person… Braea. Your own feelings and desired don’t matter when you’re running a country. It’s the same as me killing my father for something bigger than myself.”

I hated the way it sounded like he was trying to convince himself—and succeeding.

He stroked the back of my hand. “What I have to remember and you need to understand is, she’s always done it all to keep stability for Elfhame.”

To keep stability or to keep power? With Nyx and Sura dead, no one could challenge her. Kaliban had lost Bastian as a son rather than risk her uncovering the truth. He had believed Nyx’s fears that Braea would kill him if she knew. Even Bastian admitted he didn’t trust her with Amaya.

Her lack of heir kept her safe.

“I admit, she’s a hard person, sometimes. But I hope that as you get to know her, you’ll understand why she is the way she is.”

In the darkness, I waited, but he said nothing more.

He’d come so close to admitting Braea was a danger to anyone who got in her way—him, me, and every single person in Elfhame included. Yet he’d walked himself back from that precipice and had tried to talk me away from the edge too.

I’d been wrong. Elfhame wasn’t clinging to a raft, desperate to survive.

Bastian was. He’d piled everything on it, his soul included, torn up into little pieces, one given for each life he’d taken, every person he’d tortured, the countless ways he’d used others in service of Braea.

After all, hadn’t he used me in an attempt to flush out Dawn’s spy in Albion? I was not the first. In Bastian’s list of betrayals, I probably wasn’t even the worst.

The problem was, the raft Bastian had been clinging onto for the past fifteen years was his queen.

How on earth could I compete with that?