Chapter 25 #2
“No need for that. I’m not looking to hurt you.
I told you this match would be advantageous for us both.
I’m a powerful man and I needed a powerful wife.
There are none who come close to you in that regard.
But I don’t want you to think this arrangement between us is one-sided.
I know you seek vengeance. I know my brother will have unleashed you the moment he realised he couldn’t stop our nuptials.
He will want you to disappear on me now, to run off in pursuit of revenge and leave me looking like a man whose hand in marriage was unwanted.
But I can offer you something far better than the simple freedom to hunt your prey. ”
“And what’s that?” I asked, my voice dangerous with warning.
I could gut him before he could so much as scream and be gone before his guards even came looking for him.
I was free from my star bond to Dragor now.
I could go after Cayde and let death have me the moment he was vanquished.
So what if I was named a traitor if it was the cost of me fulfilling my oath?
Though even as I thought that my gut twisted uncomfortably, my oncoming demise not as comforting as it had once been.
“I will give you the whereabouts of the man you hunt. I’ve already been working on it and am certain I’ll be able to give you all the information you could ever want about him within weeks.”
“Why should I believe you?” I sneered. “It serves your agenda to keep me here while the future of the kingdom is being weighed and decided.”
“It does,” he agreed. “But I am a man of my word if nothing else. Come, I’ll show you.”
Evard turned from me and strode deeper into his chambers.
Reluctantly, I followed, my eyes moving over the lavishly decorated hallway with gold-leaf coating the doorframes and exquisite tapestries and portraits lining every wall.
The focus of the art wasn’t vain or filled with warfare the way Dragor’s chambers were.
Evard had chosen landscapes and animals from all across The Waning Lands to adorn his walls. I was surrounded by colour and beauty.
My new husband didn’t so much as glance back as he led me into his study, either brave or foolish enough not to mind opening himself up to attack so easily. Or perhaps he knew that I could kill him without much effort whether he faced me or not.
Evard’s study was located in the base of a tower, its curved walls creating a cosiness I hadn’t expected in this cold castle.
A fire had already been built in the grate before us and the warmth of it washed over me as I stepped into the prince’s personal space.
Red and gold rugs covered the wooden floor before his desk, and there was a collection of comfortable chairs clustered closer to the fire.
Papers and books were spread over the desktop with blots of ink staining the wood and scribbled notes in every empty margin.
I tipped my head back to look up into the open space above us.
The tower extended over five more floors above our heads, the heart of it open while the walls were crowded with the biggest collection of books I’d ever seen.
It was his own personal library, little wooden walkways and curving staircases leading between the shelves, the roof itself painted like a dark sky with the constellations of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius all depicted upon it.
There were no windows in here at all. it was a sanctuary hidden from everything beyond it, nothing here aside from us and the written words of thousands of others.
“Do you like to read?” Evard asked, noticing where my attention lingered.
“I don’t often get the time,” I admitted.
“And when you do I’d wager it’s all military strategy and training techniques?
” He smirked at me and my lack of answer was confirmation enough.
“Well, if ever you wish to broaden your tastes in the written word, I would be a more than willing guide to help you find a tome which will satisfy your desires. For now, I’d wager this is the most interesting thing to you in here. ”
He took a ledger from his desk, knocking several sheaves of parchment aside as he did so, and offered it to me.
I moved closer to him to take it, the leather cover warm as I took hold of it.
My other hand moved to grasp the vial of blood at my throat before I even fully noted the weight the book seemed to hold. Ether crackled around me expectantly.
The ledger had nothing at all marking its cover, nothing to tell me what I might find inside it, but there was a potency to the air which told me this was important.
Evard moved away from me, dropping into a comfortable wing-backed chair beside the fire and waving a hand in invitation for me to join him in another.
I hesitated but something about the thin ledger I held in my grip made me think I’d want to be sitting down when I opened it.
Without a word, I moved to take the seat opposite him, the chair’s cushions curving around me impossibly comfortably.
I released my hold on the vial of my sisters’ blood and carefully opened the first page of the ledger.
I sucked in a sharp breath as I stared into the face of the man who haunted my nightmares depicted in a portrait so life-like he almost seemed to look back at me from the lines of fine paint.
Cayde was smiling knowingly in the image, his dark hair pushed back from his eyes.
The sight was like a punch to the gut.
At the base of the image was a note on his name, rank, training, the reasons for him becoming Sinfair. All of it false, of course. All of it simply a recounting of the lies he’d woven around himself while secreting his way into our kingdom.
“He did a very good job of falsifying his persona,” Evard said, though I couldn’t raise my eyes from the image of the man who I hated so viscerally it hurt.
It was all I could do not to shred the paper into a thousand pieces and cast it into the fire for good measure.
“Even when I knew to look for the falsehoods it was difficult to discover them.”
Evard waved a hand to encourage me to turn the page and with my fingers trembling from the rage I was forcibly restraining, I did as he wanted.
The next page held another portrait, this one of a large family gathered before an imposing manor house. There were two teenage boys in the painting, the younger of the two darker in features, an arrow drawn in red ink pointing him out amongst the group.
“Those were the family he chose to pretend to be a part of for his false identity,” Evard said, relaying the information which had been recorded alongside the portrait.
“The ones he and his companions killed so that he could take the place of the youngest, Cayde. It was a very well done thing. Every member of the family murdered, every person in the town closest to their stronghold too – and of course all of the staff who worked for them and ever had worked for them. They hunted them all – there had been a cook employed at their manor four years prior and they’d even tracked her down where she’d relocated and managed to murder her too.
It looked like an accidental fall down a flight of stairs but of course now that we know what we know, it is obvious what truly happened.
In fact, I was unable to find a single living Fae who had known the real Cayde Avior as a teenager.
There were a few who knew him a little as a child but they couldn’t confirm or deny whether this man was one and the same. It was very well done indeed.”
“Did you show me this just so we could sit here congratulating the bastard on his duplicity?” I hissed and Evard paused, seeming to realise how close to the edge I was before he went on more tactfully.
“No. Of course not. I only meant…you couldn’t have known, Vesper. No one could have known.”
My throat thickened at the tenderness with which he delivered my name.
He sounded as though he really was sympathetic to my pain, as though it meant something to him too.
Dragor had only ever seen my grief over my sisters as an annoyance.
Perhaps I’d sworn myself to the wrong prince all those years ago.
Not that I trusted this one any more than I trusted the others.
I said nothing but I turned the page again and this time I found something far more tantalising awaiting me on the thick parchment. A name.
“Alestro Sharbone,” I breathed and it was a curse upon my tongue.
“That took quite some doing,” Evard said and I could tell he meant it.
This information had not been easy to come by.
“But, there he is. That is his true name. Everything you might wish to know about the man he was before leaving Avanis. His lineage, his training to some extent, there is an image of him in his Drake form though I suppose you witnessed that yourself–”
“I did,” I muttered, sparing a glance for the squat, bull-sized lizard which I’d once thought must look something like a Dragon. How wrong I’d been. A Drake was short-legged and its snout was squashed, it looked more like a winged toad than a Dragon and in size the comparison was laughable.
“The next page details what we know about his betrothed – likely his wife by now – Septa Thorngrove. Not a lot to say about her really. She isn’t a warrior, just a breeding tool with a highborn name.”
An icy chill rolled through me as I looked at the portrait of the pampered looking noblewoman.
She had long, red hair and cool eyes. Not a scar to be seen on the skin left exposed by the cream dress she wore.
Did a creature such as her even know that war waged on beyond her walls?
Did anything of worth so much as wander through her vapid mind?
“He was betrothed to her before he came here?” I clarified and Evard nodded, watching me closely.