Page 23

“ R iok, did the servants arrive at the ship safely?” Jaoven, pacing along the length of their common room, cast a questioning glance toward his eldest advisor.

“Yes, Your Royal Highness, along with all of our belongings and Princess Lisenn’s trousseau. We’ll be ready to set sail this afternoon, before the tide goes out, and if all goes well, should be home in Capria tonight.”

The prospect sickened him. He increased his pace.

“You can still back out, if you want,” Clervie said where she lolled on the ivory couch.

Jaoven, halfway across their common room, paused to favor her with a frown. He hadn’t told anyone else of his misgivings about Lisenn. Now that Iona had disavowed the accusation, he saw no reason to broach it again. “Why would I back out?”

“You tell me. You’re the one wearing a track in the floor.”

The rest of his personal entourage—Elouan, Denoela, Neven, Riok—offered no sympathy. They were the only ones left, the few privileged to witness their prince’s nuptials and return in triumph with him. He waved a dismissive hand and resumed his course. “I’m only working off some nervous energy. It’s not every day a man marries a crown princess.”

“Especially when he’s in love with her younger sister.”

He stumbled but caught himself. Swiveling, he leveled an incredulous glare at her. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have to pretend outrage,” said Elouan beside her. “We all know it.”

“I am not—!”

“Jove, you’ve sacrificed a lot for Capria. We understand. But you don’t have to lie to yourself while you do it.”

“I am not —!”

“Ugh,” said Denoela, tossing her head. “You’re smitten. Anyone with eyes can see it. You perk at every mention of her name, and when the pair of you are in the same room, you can hardly look anywhere else. She’s probably the only one who hasn’t figured it out yet.”

“Because she’s so busy pretending she has no interest in him,” Clervie quipped, and the pair of girls exchanged a knowing glance.

He strode back to the space between the two couches, finger raised as though to chastise them all, but when he opened his mouth the words stuck in his throat. His advisors stared back, waiting, every one of them equally nonchalant while his insides roiled.

With a grimace and a cutting swipe of his hand, he returned to his pacing.

“Smitten,” Denoela called to his back.

“Shut up,” he said. “So what? Even if I were it wouldn’t mean anything. She openly despises me, and Capria needs this alliance with Wessett. It’s too late to change the terms.”

“It’s never too late until the vows have been exchanged,” said Riok, the last person Jaoven expected to voice such a sentiment. “If you go to King Gawen right now, give him your deepest apologies, and confess where your feelings lie, he surely must hear you out.”

Jaoven flung a hand toward the door to the hall. “The wedding is in less than an hour . ”

“Then you ought to make up your mind quickly,” Elouan said.

“And insult our host and his heir by jilting her almost at the altar, and because of an irrational attachment to her sister, no less!”

“At least you’re admitting it now,” Neven said, much to his consternation.

Riok interjected before the prince could burst. “These matters are easy to smooth over in the public eye. We have only to announce that we’ve received urgent word from Capria, and that we have to return there immediately. Start a rumor of instability at home and the wedding gets postponed. King Gawen has our assurances that we will come back, and we do, in about six months’ time, with the object of our alliance as Princess Iona instead of Princess Lisenn. The intervening time allows him to find a suitable husband for his elder daughter—for which no one will blame him, for who can expect Lisenn to wait at our leisure?—and that clears you a path to Iona with much the same provisions as the original treaty agreement. The thrones of Capria and Wessett won’t combine, of course, but plenty of people in our kingdom will be grateful for that, and I can only imagine the same sentiments exist here.”

Jaoven’s mouth hung slack. Amid a surge of billowing hope, he registered the glibness of this explanation and how little it surprised the rest of his entourage.

“We’ve been discussing it for days,” Denoela said. “We didn’t want to scuttle the treaty unless we had a method of salvaging the more important parts.”

“And we didn’t know how honest you were being with your own feelings,” Neven piped up.

The haze that had overshadowed him for the past week seemed to lift. “But you’re assuming King Gawen would go along with the proposal.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Riok asked. “He can’t force you to marry Lisenn, and why would he want a son-in-law constantly pining after the wrong daughter? ”

The prince’s ears burned. “I am not —”

“You’re pining,” Denoela and Clervie said together.

“Fine. I’m pining. For a woman who wants nothing to do with me.”

“I think she does,” said Denoela.

“I know she does,” said Clervie. “She’s nearly impossible to read, but I finally figured her out. If she cared nothing for you, she wouldn’t go out of her way to avoid you, and if she hated you, she would show it. But if you’re worried, the obvious solution is to speak to her before you find her father. Confess your feelings, confirm her sentiments, and then set the ball in motion.”

“Again,” said Jaoven, “the wedding starts in under an hour.”

“Again, you should make a decision quickly,” Elouan said with a wry grin. “Find her and confess. Whether she accepts you or not, I think you realize you can’t marry her sister anymore.”

The truth of that statement struck him full in the face. With his feelings acknowledged aloud, even the thought of kneeling at an altar beside Lisenn sickened him.

“My father is going to wring my neck,” he muttered, and he resumed his pacing.

“Doubtful,” said Riok. “He has prepared himself for any outcome, even the unfavorable ones. So what would you have us do?”

His breath staggered in his lungs. Was he willing to throw away his kingdom’s security on the chance he could win Iona’s heart? But the treaty would be salvageable as long as King Gawen himself didn’t run the Caprians from his island for the effrontery of it all.

“Go to the ship; ready it for an immediate departure,” he said. “If this turns sour, we might need a quick escape.”

Riok and Neven departed to fulfill this command. “I’ll order your carriage to the courtyard,” Elouan said, and he followed them.

Left behind with the pair of women, Jaoven asked, “Where would she be?”

“On the day of her sister’s wedding?” said Denoela. “Probably with the bride. Shall we find her for you? ”

“I’ll come with you. It might be awkward to pull her away for a private word, but it’ll be easier if I’m somewhere nearby.”

Clervie grunted, amused. “‘Awkward’ doesn’t begin to describe the trouble we’re about to cause.”

They left the diplomatic quarters, resplendent in their wedding finery, but they got no further than ten steps down the hall. Several servants ran past in an adjoining corridor. At their rear, Aedan of Gleddistane appeared, but he backtracked when he registered the Caprians’ presence.

“Is Iona with you?” he asked.

Jaoven, startled to hear her name spoken so soon after his resolution, said, “No.”

In three steps, Aedan fisted both hands into the prince’s doublet and shoved him against the wall, thrusting his face within two inches. “I’ll ask again, prince of Capria: is she with you or have you seen her in the last hour?”

An urgency underlaid the menace with which he spoke. Jaoven, far from taking offense, was alarmed instead. “No. What’s happened?”

The marquess backed up and cast a speculative glance toward the adjoining corridor. “She’s gone. I need to find her.”

Jaoven dogged his steps, with Denoela and Clervie close behind. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Her maid said the queen summoned her early. She left her room with a pair of guards, but she never arrived at the chapel.”

“You think she ran away?”

Aedan spared him an exasperated glance. “If she had run off on her own power, she would have taken Bina with her.”

The prince’s stomach gave an odd lurch. “So someone’s kidnapped her?”

“ Someone .” Aedan scoffed. He checked around the corner, both ways, and then skulked further up the hall.

“Who has her?” Clervie asked, keeping close to the wall .

The marquess paused, glanced up his path, and then back at the trio of followers he’d acquired. A muscle rippled along his jaw. “I’m going to level with you Caprians, all right? If she’s not with you, Lisenn has her. Our crown princess is an absolute monster. Most of us support this treaty solely to get her out of Wessett, and you ”—he poked Jaoven in the chest—“were the sacrificial bull who was supposed to carry her from our shores. But none of that matters if she kills Iona before she goes.”

The prince’s blood ran cold. “Kills? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about a sister who has tortured Io since the day she was born, in a dynasty that never lets their second child become a threat to the chosen heir. You asked last night about ‘The Bird among Thorns’? Well, Io’s the bird and Lisenn’s the snake that’s stalking her. I just didn’t think she’d strike before her own line of succession was established.”

“The broken wing,” Clervie murmured. “It wasn’t the injury she had when she came home from Capria.”

“No, it was the dozens she received before she ever left our shores,” the marquess snapped. “She lived among you, silently enduring, because if anyone learned who she really was, her father would have brought her home, and nothing any of you could do held a candle to Lisenn’s abuse.” On that declaration, he flung himself down the corridor.

Jaoven, hot on his heels, clamped a hand on his shoulder to haul him back.

Aedan wrenched away. “I don’t have time to waste. Do you understand? We have been watching over her for years, and now to lose her when a more prolonged safety was in sight—?” Anguish twisted across his face. He resumed his path, checking to his right and left at each doorway they passed until they arrived at the bottom of a staircase.

Jaoven’s pulse escalated as he kept pace beside the young nobleman. “Why didn’t we know this before now? ”

“I just told you. We were using you to get rid of our tyrant queen before she could ascend. If you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll run away.”

They reached the next floor. Before Jaoven could answer this counsel, a voice rang out from the other end of the gallery.

“My lord!” A servant jogged toward them, waving her arm. With a cagey glance toward the Caprians, she motioned the marquess toward an open door, a neglected drawing room with pale light filtering through its leaded windows.

“They’re with me,” Aedan said, glancing toward Jaoven with a warning in his eyes. “You can speak freely.”

But still she urged him through the open door. “The guards are patrolling in this direction.”

They all ushered inside without further argument, and the servant shut the door. In deathly silence they waited as two sets of footsteps marched along the gallery they had vacated, the floorboards creaking.

When the patrol had moved beyond hearing, the servant whispered, “She’s in Lisenn’s rooms, we’re sure of it. A page saw two guards leading her up the stairs.”

Aedan cursed. “She went with them willingly?”

The servant, helpless, shook her head. “They must’ve told her a tale.”

“Why was Lisenn’s room not the first place you checked?” Jaoven asked.

“Because Lisenn was supposed to be in the chapel annex with her attendants, putting on her wedding finery,” said the marquess.

“She hasn’t been there for half an hour,” said the servant. “They dressed her, and then she left again.”

He punched the wall, swearing. “Capria, do you want to help? Of course you do. Just look at your stupid face. You need to delay the wedding. Go to the chapel, tell them you need to renegotiate something in the treaty, or pretend you’re sick. I don’t care. Lisenn probably means to secure Iona before the ceremony and then deal with her after the knot is tied. King Gawen wouldn’t countenance losing his spare any earlier than that.”

“You think he’s involved?” Clervie asked.

“It’s his royal guard leading Iona into danger,” Aedan snapped. “Of course he’s involved.”

“We can go to the chapel,” said Denoela, catching Clervie’s sleeve. “We’ll tell them Jove was delayed. It’s roughly what we meant to do anyway.”

The marquess opened his mouth to argue, but Jaoven cut him off. “I’m coming with you. If she’s not in Lisenn’s room, where else do we look?”

“The dungeons are accessed through the cellar beneath the kitchen, but the staff would know if anyone passed that way. She’s in the tower.”

At the door, the servant peeked up and down the gallery. “We’ll keep an eye out for the patrols,” she said and then slipped through, beckoning for them to follow.

They split ways, Denoela and Clervie trailing the servant while Jaoven crept behind Aedan to another set of stairs. The next landing opened to narrower halls. They passed through a small library. When they arrived at a broad study, voices echoed in the corridor beyond, approaching.

The marquess snagged Jaoven’s sleeve and yanked him into the slim space between a set of heavy curtains and the windows they concealed.

And not a moment too soon. From beyond their hiding place, King Gawen said, “You should not have acted so prematurely. It wouldn’t have killed you to wait.”

“It has been killing me, by degrees, slowly,” Lisenn replied, a harshness to her that Jaoven had never heard before. He edged to one side, glimpsing the pair through a gap between the curtain and the wall. Her sneer could have turned a man to stone. “Watching everyone fawn over her, precious Iona . And you knew it was killing me. That’s why you pulled her into all of those encounters with the Caprians, to show me how easily she could strip everything I wanted out from under me.”

Her father grunted a laugh. “And everyone gravitated toward her as I warned you they would.”

Lisenn growled. “They never will again.”

A ball of lead formed in the pit of Jaoven’s stomach. Aedan’s restraining hand upon his arm alone kept him anchored in place, a reminder that they needed to be silent and unseen until the Wessettan king and his heir had moved on.

“Calm yourself,” King Gawen said. “A bride should be smiling.”

“I would be smiling if you hadn’t interfered.”

He caught her chin, forcing her to look at him, a deathly rebuke in his eyes. “I told you you can finish the job once you’ve wed your prince.” The air around him fairly crackled with malice, his tone enough to quell even his sadistic daughter.

For Jaoven, however, those words produced the opposite effect. Iona was still alive. If they could get to her, they could smuggle her out while the king and the crown princess waited in the chapel for a groom who would never show.

Beyond the curtain, the king made an indulgent sound, patting his daughter’s cheek. “There’s your pretty blush. Let’s go down, shall we? We wouldn’t want to delay unnecessarily.”

Lisenn jerked away from him, her silk skirts rustling as she led the way. King Gawen’s stronger stride echoed in the corridor, receding into the distance.

When the echoes vanished, Jaoven and Aedan eased from their hiding place and bolted across the study. The hall to Lisenn’s bedroom lay beyond the open door. Aedan poked his head out and drew it back in.

“There are two guards,” he said. “Do you have a weapon you’re willing to use?”

“Yes,” Jaoven said curtly.

The marquess nodded. “Good. Count to five, and then follow my lead. ”

The wait, though short, was excruciating. They knew Iona was alive, but what state would she be in? What exactly had King Gawen interrupted?

Aedan, squaring his shoulders on an inhale, strode out into the hall. Jaoven followed on his heels, and they approached the pair of guards.

“What are you doing here?” the nearest man asked, his hand upon the sword at his waist.

A charming smile leapt to Aedan’s face. “Is Princess Lisenn in? Her groom has a wedding present for her, but he wanted her to have it before the ceremony, and of course I came to help the delivery so they don’t see each other.”

The guards exchanged a glance, though they relaxed a degree. “She’s not here. You must’ve just missed her on your way up.”

Brightening all the more, he swatted the back of his hand to Jaoven’s chest. “That’s even better. You can leave it in her room and she can find it as a surprise after the ceremony.”

“No one is to enter Princess Lisenn’s bedroom,” said the second guard.

The marquess cocked his head. “Not even her future husband? That seems rather—” With no warning, he drove his fist into the man’s face. Jaoven clocked the second one, a satisfying crunch of bone reverberating against his knuckles. The pair of guards buckled, hardly aware of what had hit them.

The prince and the marquess exchanged cagey glances as they shook the ache out of their hands. “Not bad,” said Aedan.

“Likewise,” Jaoven replied, and he reached for the door.

To their chagrin, it was locked. Aedan cursed and rammed his shoulder into it, but to no avail.

“Stand aside,” Jaoven said. After a self-conscious glance back the way they had come, he directed a mighty kick just above the lever.

The wood splintered on a crack, the door swinging inward. They dragged the pair of guards inside and shut the door behind them as best they could. It hung ajar, broken where the latch should have been .

“Iona,” Aedan called, confiscating a pair of manacles from his charge to secure the unconscious man’s hands behind his back.

No answer.

The bedchamber, although sumptuously furnished, seemed completely devoid of life. Jaoven left the pair of guards to Aedan’s care in favor of investigating. A glance in the wardrobe showed only an extensive collection of colorful gowns. The space beneath the bed had not even a speck of dust. After a cursory check of the area, the pair of men met each other’s gaze, frustration mirrored in their expressions.

“If she’s not here, where is she?” Jaoven asked.

“Wait.” Aedan held up a hand. With confusion knitting his brows, he turned a full circle and then eased backward to the nearest window, where he craned his neck. “The outer wall has a turret on this corner of the castle.” He straightened, shifting his attention to a row of bookshelves. “There’s more space in here than we can see, maybe a whole extra room. The entrance would be somewhere along there.”

Jaoven sprang toward the shelves. He tugged and pushed on the frames, each in turn. The second in line clicked, and the panel swung inward, revealing a small landing with only arrow slits for light. Three steps led upward to a plain wooden door that blocked access to the area beyond.

Aedan shoved past him and gingerly pushed it open. Jaoven, his pulse thundering in his throat, peered over his shoulder to steel and iron implements glinting in the glass-filtered sunlight. Curved hooks and twisted rods hung from the ceiling, alongside spikes and knives. The very sight turned his stomach.

A small, catching breath in the corner broke the stillness.

“Io?” the marquess called, stepping fully into the room of horrors.

“Aedan?”

The single word, barely more than a whisper, spurred both men. They bolted around the table that blocked that corner from view, skirting to avoid bottles of acids and poisons, skewers and blades .

Iona, secured to a low wooden platform with her limbs extended from her, had a sickly pallor to her skin. Her eyes widened when she recognized Jaoven at her cousin’s side, but she quickly recovered.

“Hurry. She’ll come back if the wedding’s delayed.”

Meaning the prince’s presence here would only bring Lisenn upon them all the sooner. He dropped to work the leather strap that secured her left arm, with Aedan crossing around to her right. They made short work of the buckles, the rough, red skin beneath testament of her struggle.

As they moved to the restraints upon her ankles, she said, “Careful!”

Aedan had already pulled back the hem of her silken skirt, but he hissed and drew his hand away from an ankle swollen within its stocking. An odd angle jutted further up, midway along her shin. His huge eyes sought hers.

“It’s broken,” she said, forcing a smile as though it were a joke, even as tears spilled from her eyes. “She broke it so I couldn’t run.”

Jaoven already had the restraint off her left ankle. “Check the door,” he told the marquess, urging him out of the way. “I’ll carry her. Just make sure we have a clear passage out of here.”

He had seen his share of mangled limbs over the course of the Caprian war, most of them worse than this. The larger bone was certainly broken, but it was a clean break, and the smaller bone seemed possibly intact. Jaoven cast the leather band aside and scooped Iona up as she struggled to rise.

She hissed and looped her arms around his neck.

“You’re in shock,” he said, weaving between Lisenn’s gruesome collection of steel and iron implements, mindful not to peer at any of them too close.

She grimaced. “I know. I’ve had broken bones before.”

The reminder made him wince, but he almost forgot himself when she buried her face against his neck and breathed a deep inhale. Under almost any other circumstance, the intimacy of that act would have brought words of adoration tumbling from his lips. Instead, he tightened his hold on her, determined to see her safe whether he ever had a chance to confess his heart or not.

At the door, Aedan motioned him to hurry. He angled Iona out of the room, careful not to brush her injured leg against the stone walls as they crept back through the bookcase into Lisenn’s bedroom proper. The guards were beginning to stir. Aedan withdrew a dagger and thumped them both on the back of the neck with its hilt.

Jaoven, meanwhile, set Iona on the edge of the bed. She flinched as she moved her broken leg. “How soon before King Gawen comes looking for me?” the prince asked over his shoulder.

“I guess that depends on how long your people can waylay him.”

He didn’t doubt Denoela or Clervie on that count. Both were inventive. If anyone connected his absence from the chapel with Iona’s, though, it might set a broader search into motion, and Lisenn could take that as an opportunity to return to her handiwork.

Grimly Jaoven looked Iona in the eyes. “We have to get you away from here. There should be a carriage waiting for me in the front courtyard. If we can get that far, I can smuggle you to my ship and out of the country altogether.”

Her brows arched in wonder.

“A waiting carriage?” Aedan drily asked. “Were you getting cold feet?”

“Something like that,” Jaoven said. “I’d already decided against the marriage before you found me. Clervie and Denoela should be the only Caprians left in the castle. Elouan is with the coach. Everyone else should be at the docks by now.” He shifted his attention to Iona, the whiteness of her face wringing his heart like a sponge. “Will you trust me to get you out of here?”

He expected a sarcastic response, a rebuff even as her circumstances forced her to accept the offer. Instead, she only nodded, and the faith in her eyes almost undid him.

“Keep a tight hold around my neck as I carry you. It puts your weight on my shoulders instead of only my arms.” He scooped her up again, and she obediently wrapped around him .

“Sorry about my weight,” she murmured, evidence that the wry, contrary princess yet lurked beneath the traumatized picture she presented.

“You’re light as a bird,” he said. “The analogy is apt. But it’s the distance we have to go that might wear me out. Is the hall clear?”

Aedan, peeking out the door, beckoned. They exited the room to an empty corridor and skulked along its lengths.