Page 52 of Witchcraft and Fury (Chronicles of the Divided Isle #1)
THE THRONE ROOM
Sir Dirk Binns first found fame as a knight errant.
He won renown early in his travels for his skill with the sword, quickly earning a well-deserved reputation as the fastest blade in the Divided Isle.
Yet his daring exploits were overshadowed by his frequent failure to adhere to the chivalric code, and soon no self-respecting lord or lady would request his services.
He faded into obscurity until, years later, he fell in with Sir Gaderian Loveday.
The stranger left the room and Solar exited Loveday’s mind, guiding Cal back as well.
Cal’s eyes remained unfocussed for a long moment, and then he looked at her in horror.
She averted her gaze, feeling her world crash down around her, shock and betrayal rendering her unable to think, to talk, to act.
She barely registered the carpet drifting gently down to the drawbridge, nor Cal leading her into the palace entrance hall, her mind still reeling from what she had just heard. Loveday has been using me! And he ordered the death of his own brother …
Cal ushered her up several flights of stairs, through a door and into a library.
Loveday always said he enrolled me because I’m intelligent, resourceful and resilient, because I’m better than Hroth Archdale. But the truth … the truth is more terrible than I ever could have imagined.
The library was panelled in polished mahogany, sumptuous rugs covered the floor and bookcases rose all the way to the ceiling. The room was deserted.
Solar didn’t register her grand surroundings. Instead Loveday’s words from half a year ago echoed round her head:
‘… these are all skills that mark you out to be an excellent magical trainee. When we are thwarting the plots of goblins or ridding towns of werewolves, do you think I want a class of lumbering idiots by my side? No – I want students who are intelligent, courageous and used to living off their wits.’
It was all a lie , she realised. Grubber and Ralston were right – and Lady Faylseigh. He hadn’t wanted a talented witch; he’d just wanted a gullible girl he could frame for his own crimes. A gullible girl from an ordinary family without the power to fight back …
‘Solar, wake up! Have you not heard anything I’ve been saying?’ Cal’s voice floated to her as if from a great distance.
‘Wh-what?’ she asked, still in shock.
‘We have to act now! Your life depends on it!’ he said, taking both her hands in his.
At his touch she came abruptly to her senses.
‘Get off me!’ she yelled, tearing free of his grasp and turning away from him. She was breathing in ragged gasps. She didn’t want to look at Cal; she didn’t want to look at anyone. She wanted to be alone.
Cal laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Solar, we have to— ’
‘Didn’t you hear me? Get! Off!’ she bellowed, shaking free of him. ‘Leave me be!’ She picked up a book from the nearest bookcase and flung it above his head.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed, ducking. ‘You have to get your things and leave the city now, in secret. You have to escape! Leave Loveday to me.’
‘Don’t you understand? I’m going to kill him! I’ve been so stupid, but no longer! I’m going to tear him limb from limb! I’m going to cause him just a little of the pain that he’—she flung another book at the wall—‘has’—and another—‘caused me!’
‘There’s no time for reven—’
‘He’s been rearing me like a pig for slaughter!
I left my home to study magic with him! I left my sick mother and little brother for him!
’ she yelled, pacing up and down the room, curling her hands into fists.
‘And now I find out that he has commissioned a potion from Arkundu, a potion that only witches can brew. That he will poison the king and prince with it, leaving him, the king’s oldest cousin, to succeed to the throne, and then pin the blame on me, the only openly practising witch in the kingdom! ’
‘Solar, I know this must be hard for you—’
‘Hard for me? You know nothing of hardship! None of you’—her breath caught in her throat—‘pampered little lords do.’ She wanted to knock sense into him, to make him know the hurt she was feeling.
‘I endured months of taunts from you and the others about being a hag. Do you have any idea how that felt?’ All of the pain and torment from her first magic and sparring classes were coming back to her now.
She remembered every cruel blow from the boys’ practice swords, every barbed jibe.
‘And now I find out that it was for nothing. Loveday has spent the past six months training me in magic, just for this moment!’
‘I’m sorry for how I treated you, I truly am. It was unforgivable. But Loveday—’
Solar shouted over Cal, her voice breaking with fury and anguish.
‘I saw Loveday as a second father! He gave me hope that there was more to my existence than petty crime. Maybe a part of me even loved him!’ She strode over to a shiny mahogany table and turned it over with an almighty heave.
It fell with an ear-splitting crash, its spindly legs snapping, but this only made her feel more enraged.
‘You heard what his foreign accomplice said back there. “ Only a witch can brew Vixen’s Vengeance. It requires a woman’s magic, and leaves a unique trace on the corpse.
” The king’s physician will be in no doubt that it was my work! ’
‘Please, just calm down ! Someone will hear! Now is not the time to be drawing attention to ourselves!’ Cal urged.
‘He only enrolled me ’cos he needs a witch he can blame for brewing the bloody thing!
“No one will find it hard to believe that she, a hag, is capable of murdering with poison ,” Loveday said.
“ It won’t be long before the entire city is baying for her blood .
” But I’ll make him rue the day he met me in Falcontop! ’
She strode over to the door and made to open it, but Cal got there first, barring her way. She tried to push by him, wanting nothing more than to get past his unyielding, sculpted form that she had previously so craved. He did not budge, as immovable as an oak.
‘You can’t fight Loveday – you’re no match for him.’
Solar stomped over to the window. She looked outside. They were too high to climb out, and her carpet was nowhere to be seen .
‘I don’t care,’ she snarled. ‘I’m going to try anyway. Better than waiting for him to take the throne, frame me and execute me for treason! Let me out of here, or else I’ll … I’ll—’
‘Solar!’ Cal interrupted. ‘Just imagine how your family will feel if he kills you, when you could simply have run!’
‘Don’t you talk to me about my family!’ she spat. She picked up a vase from the windowsill and hurled it so that it shattered against the wall. She wanted to scare him, to destroy everything in the room, to smash everything that she could lay her hands on.
‘By the gods, will you stop throwing things and listen ? Loveday means to kill you. You can’t confront him!’ he pressed.
‘I saved his skin in Ravenbridge!’ she fumed, seething rage threatening to completely consume her. ‘I saved all your bloody lives. And this is how I am repaid?!’
‘Solar, shut up!’ Cal bellowed.
Solar recoiled as if she had been struck. She sank down slowly into a chair, panting.
‘That’s better,’ Cal said, relieved. ‘Now let me think, just for a moment. We have to do something. I don’t know what, but one thing is for certain: we can’t hang around in here shouting our heads off.’
Solar stared blankly, numb.
‘Solar, are you listening to me?’
‘We have to do something,’ she echoed in a mumble.
She racked her brains, feeling her temper slowly cool.
She tried to think clearly through the pain of deceit and betrayal.
I thought I was special. Loveday himself said I was the finest student he had ever taught …
that I could be the head of the king’s Magic Circle one day.
How stupid I was to believe him! There’s no place for a witch in this world .
‘There’s a court session today, when the king dispenses justice to petitioners. We could attend and tell the king about Loveday’s plot,’ she said at last, finally managing to collect her thoughts.
‘I don’t like it,’ Cal said firmly. ‘The king will never believe you over Loveday. You may have newfound fame in the capital, but you are still a witch, and people are distrustful of witches. We should run whilst we have the chance. Jump onto your magic carpet … fly away … I’ll come with you.
We could go anywhere: the continent, the Arid Lands even.
Start a new life. We’d easily make a living with our magical powers.
We could become treasure hunters, or magicians of fortune, or … ’
‘We can’t just leave the king to die,’ she said. His words of loyalty had calmed her a little further, but she knew he was wrong.
‘We have no choice but to!’ Cal insisted.
‘Try to tell him the truth, and he’ll ignore us.
But Loveday won’t. He’ll kill the king and we’ll both be next.
But if we leave now, at least we both get out alive.
And the king has the head of his Magic Circle, Kenric Storrbury, for protection.
And his guard. It’s not as if we’re leaving him without hope. ’
‘What use are guards against poison, Cal?’
Cal did not answer, so she pressed on. ‘You know first-hand the sort of carnage a ruthless king could cause. Think of how your father rose to power! And think of our brush with slavers just weeks ago. How much more common will the trade in human lives be once Loveday has legalised it? Arkundu isn’t just receiving Loveday gold in return for helping him: Loveday said the slave trade between our kingdoms will resume essentially tax-free, and he’ll give Arkundu permission to raid the coasts of our allies with impunity!
Let Loveday take the throne and you condemn the realm and its friends to decades of brutality and misery. ’