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Chapter twenty-two

Aldric

S torming into the royal Drakmori pavilion, Aldric snarled, “I don’t want to do this.”

There Edmund sat, sipping wine. Clearly smug with himself.

But what was there to be smug about?

Edmund arched an eyebrow. “You don’t want to do what?”

“ This .” Aldric waved a hand toward the exit. Toward the humid night. Toward her , wherever she was out there, with her talk of helping one another. And her little dagger. “I’m done. Keep your intrigues. Just leave me Blackrun. That’s where I belong.”

A muscle in Edmund’s jaw ticked. His eyes burned with a clear and growing anger.

But Aldric met that heat unflinchingly. He had problems aplenty, and all were far more serious than his little brother’s ego .

Edmund drained the last of his wine and carefully set the goblet aside. When next he spoke, he asked, “Did you truly come here to reject my generous offer, Crow?”

“Generous?” Aldric spat. “You brought me here to do your dirty work, Edmund—”

“I am your king ,” Edmund seethed, on his feet in an instant. “And you will address me with all the respect I deserve.”

Aldric bit his tongue before he could point out that he was . Edmund was spoiled. Pampered. A child on the verge of throwing a tantrum at any given moment.

What respect did such a man deserve from anyone at all?

Shaking his head, Aldric warned, “I sail for Drakmor in the morning. I wish you luck with the queen, brother. But I am needed on the border.”

His blood still hummed with the old Kunishi’s warning. His mind whirred with the shieldmaiden’s accusation. “You’re just another of the Bonesinger’s puppets. Where you go, death and darkness follow.”

What did that mean? What did any of it mean?

“Need I remind you what is at stake here, Crow?” Edmund asked. His brother’s words were as cold as the mist snaking its way through the wilds of Kuni. “Is your memory truly as short as your stature?”

Aldric narrowed his one good eye. “No.”

He remembered Edmund’s threats perfectly well .

“Then why must you test me?” Edmund scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “You are just like him, you know,” he muttered, flicking him a sidelong glance. “Father was always testing me, too.”

Aldric frowned.

Drawing himself up to his full height, Edmund clasped his hands behind his back. “I tell you I will kill your little forest nymph if you do not comply and yet, clearly , you do not believe me. Very well.” His brother tilted his head to the side and smiled. “Shall I send a Kingsguard to cut off one of her ears right now? Hmm? Will that sate you?” Edmund pursed his lips. “Which do you think she will miss the least? The left or the right?”

Aldric tightened his jaw. He fought to keep his face devoid of all expression. “I did not bring her,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “She is still at Blackrun.”

Edmund laughed at that assertion. “You’re a terrible liar, you know. Let me see.” His brother leaned in closer, eyes narrowed. “Have you hidden her in the camp with your mutts?”

“No.”

Edmund smiled again. “She is on your ship, then.”

“No,” Aldric snarled. “As I said, she’s at Blackrun.”

But he realized his mistake when his brother’s smile widened.

His pulse quickened, trilling out a warning in the moment before Edmund purred, “Well, there’s only one way to settle this once and for all, I suppose. Shall we go set fire to your ship and find out together?”

Aldric didn’t remember grabbing the dagger hidden within his left sleeve. But there it was all the same, gleaming in his grasp. He pressed its tip against his little brother’s abdomen in unspoken warning and waited.

No doubt Edmund would call for the Kingsguard standing just outside the tent’s entrance. No doubt Aldric was moments away from imprisonment. Or execution.

And he didn’t care. He wasn’t just going to stand there and let this worm threaten the one person who actually cared for him. His Sons knew what to do if he didn’t return to the camp.

They would take care of her.

But Edmund didn’t call for his guards. He didn’t draw his own blade.

He simply sneered and withdrew from that nearness. “You disappoint me, Aldric,” his brother admitted while pouring himself another goblet of wine. “I was raised on stories of you, you know. The great Crow of Drakmor.” Edmund barked out a laugh. “Kunishi’s Bane, they called you.”

Aldric’s brow furrowed.

“Now, I see you’ve grown weak ,” his brother spat in the midst of sinking back into his chair. “Old and weak. And here I had hoped you might be my ally in this. Especially since I am giving you such a great gift—”

“Gift?” Aldric echoed with a harsh laugh of his own. He slammed his dagger back into its place within the sheath strapped about his left forearm. “You wish me to paint my hands with the blood of that silly girl.”

“I am gifting you Elmoria ,” Edmund snarled. “So you can finally be a king, as you were born to be. ”

Those words hung in the air between them, smoldering with the full weight of their siren’s song. A king, as he was born to be.

Yes. He was born to be a king.

Drakmor’s king.

Aldric’s heart raced as he looked at his little brother. The pretender. The usurper. Edmund was born second. Edmund was the spare. Not him.

He drew in a slow breath through his nose, trying to still the rising tidal wave of his anger. He reminded himself that Edmund had been just a boy. Only five years old. The fault lay not with him.

It lay with that vile mother of his. She was the serpent who had always been hissing in King Warwick’s ear, poisoning his father against him.

As if the viper herself had heard his thoughts, Charlotte Hargrave suddenly appeared. Her silhouette haunted the doorway leading deeper into the pavilion, her face cast in the harsh shadows thrown by the one lantern illuminating the room. Within her hands, she held a flat, slender box.

The sight of her was enough to boil his blood anew.

There stood the wench who had seduced his father. The villainess who had driven his mother to despair.

His stepmother, two years his junior.

Aldric turned his head to the side and spat on the floor, trying to rid himself of the foul taste Charlotte’s nearness brought to his mouth.

“As charming as ever, I see,” the temptress hissed from the darkness .

“Ah, Mother. Excellent timing. Aldric?”

Aldric looked back to his brother so he could include Edmund in the disdain blazing its way through his body.

Edmund chuckled. “No need to look at me like that. Mother simply has a present for you.” His brother’s lips curled into an infuriatingly bright smile. “Why don’t you fetch it from her?”

“I would rather eat glass,” Aldric dully intoned.

Charlotte was quick to threaten, “That can certainly be arranged.”

“Behave, the both of you.” Edmund waved his free hand between them. “Mother, give him the box.”

For a few moments, Charlotte but stood there, frozen in place, glaring at him all the while. But finally, she stalked forward and extended the box his way.

Aldric reluctantly snatched it from her hands and looked back to Edmund. A sudden weariness settled across his shoulders while he waited for his brother to explain what part the box was meant to play in the bloody business he had been tasked with.

Perhaps he was meant to beat the beautiful queen over the head with it.

“Now then,” Edmund drawled. “You are going to be a good little Crow and marry the queen. You are going to be crowned King of Elmoria. And then you will use”—his brother flicked a glance toward the box—“ that when the time is right.”

A whisper of dread skimmed across the back of Aldric’s neck at his brother’s latter words. When he finally opened the box to peek within, he understood why .

Aldric released a hiss of breath and let the box tumble from his hands.

“Be careful with that, you stunted buffoon,” Charlotte snapped when the box clattered to the ground.

But he ignored her. “Where did you get that?” Aldric asked his brother instead.

Edmund merely smiled again. “Never you mind that. Simply use it when the time is right.”

“No,” Aldric snarled as he took a step backward from the discarded box. But even at that distance, his danger sense still clanged, warning him to flee. “I will not carry that… thing with me.”

Edmund’s latest smile died a swift death. “Surely you are not testing me again, Crow. I had hoped you were smarter than that.”

Charlotte didn’t miss her opportunity to offer a sweet utterance of, “A hope clearly in vain, darling.”

Aldric shot her a venomous look. But when next he spoke, his words were for Edmund alone when he warned, “She will never agree. This queen. You’ve set the price too high.”

He recalled the way Seraphina de la Croix had looked at him beneath the darkness of the trees, a blade in her hand. Her grip on the dagger had been all wrong. And she had been bluffing with her threat of violence.

But the hatred shining from within her eyes had been real enough.

“You underestimate that woman’s desperation,” Edmund sighed with a wave of his hand. “She will agree. She will agree because we are giving her no other choice. And when she does…” Hi s brother leveled a flat look his way. “You will do your duty. Kill the de la Croix woman and take Elmoria for House Hargrave. Keep the throne warm for one of my future sons.” Edmund laughed. “There is no need to sire any of your own.”

“As if anyone would even wish to aid in such an odious task,” Charlotte hissed, always so eager to prick him with the sharp edge of her words.

But those particular barbs didn’t sting the way she no doubt hoped they would. Aldric had resigned himself to that fate long ago—dying a forever bachelor with no children to his name.

What woman would ever wish to resign herself to such a fate? Being the wife of a monstrous, little thing like him?

He had embraced loneliness long ago. All hopes of love he had buried in his youth. But now he realized the Lord on High had a much crueler fate in store for him.

Aldric swallowed hard and glanced back to the box now lying at his feet. With the lid partially cracked, he could see the dark glint of the dagger housed within.

Now he realized he was not meant to die a bachelor. He was meant to die a widower.

And it was to be a tragedy of his own making.

Assuming the Queen of Elmoria was foolish enough to walk into his brother’s trap.