Page 121 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

GARIN

L ilac’s hands shook violently, her expression unreadable. Garin could tell she’d been crying, likely from seeing Sable and Jeanare’s bodies.

A quick glance told him they’d remained untouched, and the soldier he’d carried from Monfort-sur-Meu was still snoring, concealed in the middle of the hay bales. The door to the storage carriage down the hill was open, the horses snorting under their breath.

What was she doing here ? Why would Myrddin allow this?

Panting, Garin struggled to steady his breathing, righting himself upon Myrddin. He grabbed the warlock by the arms, causing him to yelp.

“Why are you here?” Garin snarled, an overwhelming surge of want and new hungers flooding through him, unbidden.

Myrddin scoffed. “She slit my throat!”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen! You were meant to protect her!

” Garin’s fury boiled over. He snarled, lunging at Myrddin—but a searing flash of violet burst from the warlock’s chest. Agony lanced through Garin’s hands, surging up his arms like fire.

He cried out, staggering back as blistered skin bubbled across his palms, only to shimmer and slowly begin to mend before his eyes .

Artus was laughing. “Come to arrest me, little queen? You and your servants?”

Two arrows soared through the air—one from Yanna stuck inches from Artus’s head into the doorframe, while Lilac’s flew into the house, also narrowly missing Artus but actually hitting someone else in the arm.

If it was Lilac’s first time wielding a longbow, she was a natural; impressive, in fact.

There were screams and yelps of pain, but Artus hushed them with a garbled command.

“I’ve come to do what my grandfather and father didn’t have the nerve to,” Lilac said, her hair whipping around her face.

“I would think twice about that.” Artus’s gaze flickered to Garin before boring tauntingly into hers.

“Your own guard was ready to kill more Daemons than enemy forces by the look of your armory. Armand convinced Henri to have more made after Lilac went missing, but that section has always existed. And you had no idea, did you?”

“In a kingdom built upon oppressing its most vulnerable communities? I should have guessed.”

“When Rupert walked into The Jaunty Hog, all too proudly discussing his decision to return to Renald’s guard, we knew the perfect opportunity had fallen into our lap.

” Artus chortled himself into a coughing fit.

“Just before the town crier called us to the square to announce your stupid decree? It was too perfect.”

Lilac made a noise of disgust, glancing down at Rupert’s lifeless corpse. Its glassy eyes reflected the moon above. She scrunched her face full of fury and approached him, reaching for the arrows in his chest.

Garin tutted, smothering the shallow stab of jealousy in his chest. A scrape, really. “The arrows stay in him.”

She froze, straightening once more. “You sent him,” Lilac snarled at Artus.

“And that God awful wine,” Garin was quick to add, imagining the sheer joy of draping the blabbering imbeciles in the fallen duke’s innards.

“We all heard you enjoyed it,” replied Artus.

“Bog’s son proved himself useful after all.

While everyone rushed to watch you humiliate yourself, Inwold had his men transport most of the hawthorn weaponry in the Trécesson armory.

” Artus looked back down the hall at a tall, hulking fellow skirting the corner of the parlor.

The man said nothing, reddening and trying to shrink into the crowd.

Artus laughed and turned a scathing eye toward Lilac.

“It was meant for her. While I’d hoped it would make her delirious enough to forestall or have Maximilian forfeit their marriage entirely, what it did to you turned out to be as useful. ”

Knowing it was all intentional—that he had missed it—made Garin see red. His lip curled over his fangs. “An adverse reaction could have killed her.”

“Oh, one could only hope.”

Garin had never wanted more badly to put his hands on someone.

To tear into them with his bare fingers.

When he started for the house, the rest of the crowd scuttled into the back rooms. He limped past Yanna and Lilac all the way to the porch.

He stumbled on a divot in the dirt, barely catching himself in time on the railing.

Myrddin was at his side to help him, but Garin growled in warning, and the warlock backed off. He righted himself, shuffling up the last two stairs.

In the doorway, Artus was waving the deed like a festival prize.

“Come quickly. Even as the mongrel of the house, I think it only fair you witness the moment it is gone from your family name.” He held it teasingly under the torch at the base of the stairwell that led up to his childhood bedroom in the attic.

“Imagine, decades’ worth of toil and tears.

A sacrificing voyage across the channel to escape sickness. Safety from the plague, I’d imagine.”

An overwhelming rage swept over Garin when Artus tilted his head knowingly.

“A journey like that will test anyone’s character. Your mother struggled with melancholy, didn’t she? I’m sure scorning your father for pushing his own dad out of their boat when it had started taking on water did not help, either. They were only minutes from shore.”

Garin was beyond response. He thought of his hallucination. Of Loumarch being dragged back under by the Morgen.

No one had ever told him.

“Although he was not her own father,” Artus continued, “she often got on with him quite amicably. She appreciated his insights and humor as someone raised by strict physicians, long dead.”

Wiping at his eyes, Garin startled at the brush at his side; he hadn’t heard Lilac approach him.

She enveloped his hand in hers, twining her fingers between his and rubbing the back of his knuckles as they itched to tear into flesh once more.

Rage, sweat, and heat radiated from her, only driving his aching need to taste her.

“She despised Pascal for it,” continued Artus, loud enough for everyone to hear, “even as your parents turned from trying to sell their crops to harvesting illegal flora at the edge of the Low Forest. Your father, anyway,” he added with a look of disdain.

“Your mother was not better by any means, murdering unborn children. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when your father tried to pawn you?—”

“ Enough !” Garin shouted. He never wanted to hear about his father again. How could Artus have known these things? “What dark magic is at play here?”

Lilac remained silent beside him, but he could hear and feel her heart thrumming away.

Artus regarded them curiously, taking notice of their intertwined fingers.

Sighing, he tucked the deed beneath his arm and reached back into his pouch.

He fished out a palm-sized book—tattered brown leather with purple stitching at the binding.

Swirling leaves and flora were etched into the leather with a fine-tip knife.

Garin’s mouth went dry. It had been years since he’d laid eyes on the tattered journal Aimee would occasionally scribble in before bed.

When he was small, he’d curl up behind her in their cramped room, the sound of the fire and his mother’s quill soothed him to sleep on nights Pascal was out foraging. .

The last time he’d seen it was after her burial at the abbey.

He and Pascal had walked home in the snow that evening; not a word exchanged between them after thanking their neighbors at the parish for their condolences at her funeral.

Not even a quarter of the church had been filled, and most of them were nuns from the convent.

As his father hung the kettle, changed clothes, and threw a tangled clump of jewelry—two necklaces and Aimee's ring—on the table, Garin watched from the doorway.

Pascal had last withdrawn her journal from his coat last, tossing it next to the jewelry.

“Tuck this in the envelope at the back of your mother’s book,” he’d demanded, his expression cold.

He remembered wondering why Pascal hadn’t buried these things with her. Knowing his father, he’d probably spent the night before the funeral pouring through it. It felt like a hostile violation of privacy.

“What do I do with it?” Garin had asked. The last words spoken to his father.

“Get it out of my sight,” Pascal had snapped. “I never want to see it again.”

Garin had done what his father asked of him with shaking hands, barely able to touch his mother’s accessories.

He’d just shut the aumbry door when Pascal Trevelyan shouldered his medic bag and walked through the door without another word, and took their only horse to the battlefield Garin had assigned him to with the forged note he’d written.

Artus frowned, lingering on a page a little over halfway through, then glanced up.

“Her last entry was in autumn of 1354. You had just turned fourteen and she couldn’t believe how much you’d grown.

” He flipped through the rest of the book, finding empty pages.

“That’s it? Did she end up getting apprehended by the Church? Did your father finish the job?”

Seething, Garin gently loosened his hand from Lilac’s and all but lunged at the door. He grunted at the pain shooting up his leg and placed both palms flat against the threshold. “Give it to me.”

“No. No, I don’t think I will.” Artus shut Aimee’s journal and nudged Bog’s body with his toe. “If I’d known all it took was a musket to slow you down, I would’ve put one to your skull ages ago.”

“I’ll shoot an arrow through yours if you don’t give that book to him.” Yanna stood off to their right, just beyond the porch. The girl’s longbow was angled expertly at the door.

With a withering glance back, Artus strode down the hall toward the parlor.

“Artus,” Garin called out. He couldn’t bring himself to beg.