Page 22

CHAPTER 22

T hroughout his childhood, Thaddeus had been a serious child. Fidgety, nervous, soft-spoken, and never prone to exaggeration. Which was why, when he’d come to Callum with his plan to join the poisonkeepers at Inasvale, Callum had escorted him there personally.

Rarely did Thaddeus say anything in jest. And when he did, it was more likely to be a play on words that nobody got—including Callum.

“Thinning,” Laena repeated. “Thinning how exactly?”

The fear in her voice was evident, and no wonder. The mages had ruled the Vales for hundreds of years, leaving generations of wreckage in their wake. After ruining their own world—the Miragelands, it was called—they’d stormed the Vales like avenging demons, enthralling humans to do their will.

A group of rebels had finally risen to oppose them, and they’d been locked back behind the barrier ever since. How the rebels had managed it was a mystery. Nobody knew how it had been done, except for the few who’d been there. Callum had often suspected the secret might unveil a way to free the mages once more .

Only a fool would want to. But then, there were fools aplenty in the Vales. Heart-tithed magic was a remnant of the mages, a way to access their power. Had Callum not objected to the premise of the magic—that the pain of a loved one bought it—he still would have objected to the idea of accessing anything the mages would offer.

Anything they offered would be a trick. He’d no doubt of it.

“I can take you to the pool,” Thaddeus said. “Perhaps?—”

The door burst open, interrupting Thaddeus’ suggestion as a tall, rail-thin man flowed into the room, black robes swirling around his body like a mist. Thaddeus dropped to his knees, crossing his hands over his chest, and bowed his head.

Callum had met the poisonkeepers’ master once before. He hadn’t been impressed then—he had, in fact, been near convinced the man had recruited Thaddeus through manipulations and lies—nor was he impressed now. The man’s head was completely bald, his beard black as ink and cropped close around his chin. And though he was certainly not the only man to wear a beard alongside a bald head, the arrangement gave the master a distinct air of being upside down.

Landon Moore strode into the room on the master’s heels, looking as smug as a man possibly could. Like he’d just slain a dragon and devoured its tender heart. Callum would have wagered he’d been paying attention to their conversation in the courtyard, and that he’d been the one to summon the master for the sake of shortening their meeting. Possibly with the simple aim of annoying Callum until he snapped.

Moore stopped in the doorway, crossing his arms and leaning against it as though looking forward to the show.

“Brother Thaddeus.” The master’s voice was deep and resonant. “What is the meaning of this secret conversation?”

“It is no secret, Poison Master,” Thaddeus said. “They were merely telling me of their journey.”

The truth, yet not the truth. Thaddeus was as a brother to him, but Callum had no illusions that he would keep their secrets. He belonged to the poisonkeepers first and foremost—his loyalties were theirs.

Though he hadn’t spilled the entire story yet, either. Interesting.

The master scanned the room, his gaze catching first on the crystal laid out on the table, then flickering past Callum as though he were invisible. When he reached Laena, however, his eyes narrowed. “Traitors,” he said, “are not welcome in our halls. Princess Laena will need to find somewhere else to stay.”

Thaddeus’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing. He, at least, had known Laena’s identity from the first.

Landon Moore certainly had not. He straightened, his jaw falling open in a way that would have been most satisfying had he not then taken a step into the room. “I thought you were a random courtier. A member of the council.” He laughed, delight and disbelief playing across his face in turns. “Did the queen of Etra truly send a whore to treat with King Hawk?”

The implication being that she, too, had stolen the delegation.

Laena’s face turned white, and Thaddeus’s head snapped up, as if he could not have imagined this reaction. Thaddeus had always been the kindest of them. He would not have expected this reaction.

“Maybe she’ll take up with me,” Moore said, taking another step into the room. “Or am I not common enough for your tastes? Do I not smell enough like horsesh?—”

Callum stepped in front of Moore, blocking his path to Laena. And his view of her, too. “Princess Laena is the Etran queen’s emissary, and a member of the royal family,” he said. “You’ll speak to her with respect.”

The corner of Moore’s mouth turned up in a definite sneer, the kind Callum had always thought belonged to puppet-show villains. “King Hawk will not agree to treat with her. He’ll send her to a brothel, where she belongs.”

Rage exploded on the edges of his vision, and suddenly Callum’s hands were around Moore’s neck. He shoved the man back against the wall as the general clawed at his fingers, struggling to draw breath. But Callum was bigger than Moore, and stronger—and much more dedicated to training, or so he once had been—and it was a simple matter to hold the man in place. Black anger throbbed at his skull, tunneling his vision into this one man, this one villain.

Thaddeus reached him first, dragging him away from Moore with a good deal more strength than Callum would have expected from him.

“Apologize to her,” Callum spat as Moore gasped for breath, doubling over and clutching at his throat. There would be bruises tomorrow, and Callum could not be sorry for it.

“She’s gone,” Thaddeus said softly.

“Fled, like the traitor she is,” the master said.

Thaddeus held Callum for another beat, and then, apparently satisfied that his brother no longer intended to murder General Moore, he let go and turned toward the master. “We have a tradition of housing every lost soul in the Vales who appeals to our door,” he said. “No matter who they are. Is it not so?”

The master flushed, eyes flashing, but Thaddeus held his ground, merely meeting the man’s gaze with calm patience. Maybe he wasn’t as naive as Callum assumed.

“It is so,” the master said grudgingly. “The Book requires it.”

Moore gestured to Callum, his face red. “But he attacked me.”

Whiny, for a general. What in all the worlds had Hawk been thinking ?

The master, who had regained his composure, drew up taller. “And that is a matter for your king to address. And to punish, as I’m sure he will. Our healers will see to your injuries.” He glared at Callum. “And you will be gone in the morning, or I’ll know the why of it.”

And with an imperious flap of his robes, he swept out of the room.

By the time Callum made it out to the courtyard, Laena was gone. He shaded his eyes against the bands of red sunset, which were setting the pink-petaled trees alight with blazing glory. He walked behind the main building, in the direction his soldiers—Moore’s soldiers—had headed earlier, where he found Godfrey and Edmun leaning together against the trunk of a well-placed tree.

Edmun looked up at him with a frown. “Captain?”

Callum grimaced. “I believe you know it by now, if you did not know it before, but that title is no longer in use.” Edmun lifted an eyebrow, and Callum sighed. “And I apologize for the deception.”

“Young brute.” Edmun shook his head, though the news could have been no surprise to him.

It was the hurt on Godfrey’s face that made Callum want to cringe. The young man was frowning, as if he could not believe Callum would have lied. But he had. Completely and thoroughly. He’d lied, he’d led them into danger, and he’d failed them. Multiple times.

At the moment, all he cared about was finding Laena.

“I can’t deny it.” Callum glanced around the yard again, barely seeing the neat row of guest cabins lined up there. “Have you seen Princess Laena?”

Edmun shook his head, but Godfrey cleared his throat. “She went running out the main gates,” he said. “Into the city.”

Godfrey might be angry with Callum, but he adored Laena. They all did. Callum nodded his thanks, and Godfrey looked away, swallowing hard.

He’d make it up to the young soldier later, if he could. He’d make it up to all of them. For now, he had to find Laena.

He didn’t know where a disgraced princess would choose to go when distressed. But he knew well enough where a disgraced captain would go, and he’d spent enough time with Laena by now to learn that it might very well be the same place.

Inasvale held a surprising number of taverns for a city run by holy men. Not that holiness necessarily translated to sobriety—the poisonkeepers were known to age their own wine, after all—but the size of the population hardly seemed fit to support the number of drinking houses he now walked past.

He fully expected to find Laena in the first pub, where cheerful flute music emanated out into the streets, or perhaps the second, where a splash of stained glass decorated the front door. Almost ostentatious by Inasvale standards, that amount of decoration.

By the time he reached the eighth tavern, he was beginning to think he’d miscalculated. Perhaps disgraced princesses visited seamstresses or bookshops or a blacksmith’s forge. Though at this hour, those options were limited at best. The sunset had given way to a milky dusk, and stars were beginning to shine boldly through the heavens. Lantern-bearing travelers made their way through the streets, their straight-backed daytime postures relaxed into smiles and even laughter.

Callum found Laena in the ninth tavern, which bore a painted sign dubbing it the Playful Otter. Did everything in Inasvale have to be so damned… well, cute? For a place that protected the known world from the threat of evil banished mages, it was too charming for its own good. Could do with a few more mercenaries or a hardhearted pirate or two.

Perhaps the master provided enough unpleasantness for an entire city .

Laena sat at the end of the bar, with such an impressive distance between her and the next customer that he had to assume she’d violently rebuffed any attempts at conversation. He only hoped she’d done so without her ice magic. If the master heard of it, she’d be clapped in irons before the sun rose.

One elbow on the bar, a half-empty bottle of wine, and a glass at her side, she’d certainly wasted no time. Her complexion was no longer ghostly pale—in fact, she appeared rather flushed—and she’d found a ribbon somewhere to secure her hair at the nape of her neck.

“Mages,” she said when he eased onto the stool beside her. “I thought I’d be unfindable here. Un-find-able? Is that a word?”

“Is it not a word simply because you said it and I understood it?” he asked.

“That’s preposterous. You’ll understand what I mean if I say I’m plimping down to the store, but that doesn’t make it a word.”

“You’re making assumptions,” he said. “If you say you’re plimping down to the store, I have no idea if you’re skipping or walking or riding, or if the word simply means you’re going without specifying the manner in which you plan to achieve it.”

She snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so many words.”

“What are you doing here, Laena?”

She reached for the bottle, adding another generous pour to her glass. “I should think that was obvious. I thought I’d give your problem-solving method a whirl, Captain Farrow.”

“Not a captain. How’s it working?”

She raised her glass, lips twisted in a poor imitation of a smile. “Delightfully well.” She tipped her head back and drained half the glass.

“Come morning, you may have a different opinion,” he said.

She set down the glass and leaned toward him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “P’rhaps not. But I like it now.” Her hand slipped, and he caught her before she could topple off her stool.

She laughed, but there was no mirth in it. And when he settled her back on the stool, she held onto his arm. “He called me a whore.”

A fresh surge of rage spiked through his chest. “I heard, my lady.”

“Not a lady. I’m a whore. Remember?” She released his arm and leaned back on the bar, swirling her wine hard enough to slosh several drops out onto the counter. “I know people think it. The traitor. The whore. But they don’t often say it out loud.”

“They shouldn’t think it, and they shouldn’t say it.”

“Kat wanted me to do it.” Laena leaned her chin on her wrist, eyes locked on the swishing liquid. “She wanted me to fuck him and leave so she could be queen, and now she acts like I’m less than a worm in the garden. Worms have value. Good for the soil.”

The way Callum heard it told, it’d been a surprise to the entire country. Laena and Katrina’s parents had died of fever, years back, but there were always talking heads to deal with, or so he’d learned from spending years in the palace. The regent and the council, and all the lords and ladies that’d been prancing through those pretty gardens.

He didn’t think anyone had known enough about the fool stablehand to want Laena to do anything. Supposedly, she’d merely appeared one morning in her riding skirts, her beau at her side, and announced her abdication. Simple as that.

But he’d seen how Katrina treated her. More importantly, he’d seen how she used her magic. There were layers to this that no one else understood, layers that Laena had kept from everyone.

Now she leaned closer, her lips brushing his ear. “Can I tell you a secret?”

His heart hammered in his chest, begging for her to go on. Begging for her to stop. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear more about the fool stablehand who’d left her. Or what Katrina had caught them doing together. “Can I stop you?”

“I didn’t leave for him.”

There was more to the story, but he didn’t want Laena telling him when she was too drunk to be sure she wanted to. He stood, taking her gently by the arm. “Come, Princess. Let’s get you to bed.”

The yard with the guest cabins was quiet by the time they made their way to it, with only the gentle whisper of the salty wind through the trees. The stars watched from above, diamonds in a moonless night, as he helped Laena toward the door that’d been marked with a slip of paper bearing her name. Written, Callum noted, in Thaddeus’s hand.

When they reached the steps, however, Laena stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you for finding me.”

He swallowed, all too aware of her nearness. “I thought you wanted to be unfindable.”

She ran her hand up his arm and across his shoulders until her fingers met the skin of his neck. It was all he could do not to shut his eyes and lean into her touch. “Princess?—”

She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his, and mages but she tasted good, the tartness of the wine she’d been drinking mixed with hints of sweet honey, of fresh apples from a tree. That cinnamon spice, always that, threaded with the apple’s sharpness. But she was anything but cold; she was warm, as soft as a rose petal, and for a moment he was so surprised that he returned the kiss, his mouth moving on hers before he could quite stop himself.

She made a sound like a whimper, pulling him in closer, but he forced himself to break the kiss. Even so, she lingered close, her breath tickling his upper lip and nearly stealing his will away entirely .

“You do not have your wits about you, my lady,” he whispered, his voice a husk in the dark.

“I had my wits about me the other night, when we nearly kissed.”

He reached behind his neck and took her fingers gently in his, sliding them away from his skin. “And yet we did not kiss. Even if we had, wits then do not translate to wits now. Let me get you to bed.”

“Come with me,” she said. “You want to bed me, do you not?”

Oh, he wanted to. He could practically feel that silken hair tumbling around him, her naked hips settling against his. His cock stiffened just thinking of her like that, draped above him, giving herself to him fully.

But he should not have even let her kiss him in this state. Indeed, had she not surprised him, he’d have broken it off sooner.

Gently, he put another inch between them, reluctantly letting a breath of cool air between their bodies. Which he very much needed right now, though admittedly it was doing little to quell his very obviously growing need. Demons, she was beautiful, gazing up at him in the starlight.

She swayed on her feet, and he shook himself, forcing his brain to take the lead so he could help her up the first step and open the door.

The room was outfitted much like Thaddeus’s, though with fewer books strewn about. A narrow bed in the corner, a bureau, a table, a shelf. That was it. Callum assisted Laena into the bed. But as he stepped away, she locked her fingers around his.

“Stay,” she said. “I won’t try to kiss you, I promise. Just… just stay with me. Please.”

He nodded, his throat tight. As if he could deny her anything she wished. She sighed with relief, and he would have lost his mind entirely had it not sounded like a sob. Callum lay on the bed, the mattress creaking under his weight, and held her in her arms as she wept.