CHAPTER 20
The waiting was killing Tyghan. He strapped on his sword, centering it on his back, and lashed out with his hand, for no reason at all.
Magic flew from his fingertips like shimmering darts, shattering a vase.
It didn’t ease the energy straining inside him.
What had he been thinking? It was madness to let Bristol leave to meet a monster who had just beheaded his officer.
He was going after her, even if he had promised not to follow.
He cursed under his breath and threw open his door. Eris was there, his hand raised to knock. “She’s back.” Eris was breathless as he explained. “They’ve just returned. Bristol’s completely fine—not a scratch on her—and has gone with her friends to the dining pavilion.”
Tyghan doubted there was anything else that Eris could say that would keep him from flying to Bristol’s side, from holding her until it hurt, but he was wrong. When he added who she had brought back with her, Tyghan didn’t believe it.
Cael? Impossible.
Eris assured him it was true. Bristol had made a bargain with her mother.
“The even better news is that Kormick doesn’t know, and we must keep it that way. But we still have a problem.”
Tyghan recognized Eris’s sigh. It was always provoked by some boneheaded thing his brother had done. “Well?”
“Your brother has demanded that Bristol and the other recruits be executed.”
“He’s resting now,” Madame Chastain said when Tyghan and Eris entered Cael’s outer chambers.
She paused, noting Tyghan’s and Eris’s identical scowls, the angry dimple in the exact same place on their left cheeks, and wondered how no one else had ever noticed.
The older Tyghan got, the more the similarities surfaced.
“His lucidity comes and goes,” she explained.
“Olivia, Esmee, and I have done every cleansing spell we know, but we don’t dare remove the collar yet. He is . . . unstable.”
Unstable? Tyghan thought. That was an understatement. If Cael was ordering Bristol’s execution, he was within an inch of his own. Tyghan took a step toward Cael’s bedchamber. “I’ll speak to him—”
“He’s still sleeping. I wouldn’t—”
And then there was a crash. Cursing.
Get out! Everyone! Out!
Are you all idiots?
I can piss on my own!
And bathe myself!
Three servants streamed out of Cael’s bedchamber, including his groomer with a foamy razor still in hand.
“I guess he’s not sleeping anymore,” Tyghan said as he headed for the chamber door to knock some sense into his brother’s hard skull.
Tyghan hadn’t been in the king’s bedchamber since before Cael was taken. It was triple the size of his own quarters, lavishly appointed, and in perfect order—except for a rumpled bed, an overturned tray on the floor, and a broken bowl beside it. There was no sign of his brother.
“Cael?” Tyghan called.
“I thought I told everyone—”
Cael emerged from his bath chamber, buttoning his trousers, and stopped short when he spotted Tyghan.
Maybe it was the enormity of the room that made him look even more shrunken than he was.
Fragile. He had easily lost forty pounds.
It aged him. Or maybe it was the expression on his face.
Dark smudges hung beneath his eyes like moons, and his light brown hair reached past his shoulders in tangled strings.
He noted the long scar on Cael’s neck half-hidden by the collar that thwarted his magic, and a smaller scar on his chin, perhaps acquired during his abduction—wounds Kormick’s wizards never bothered to heal. Tyghan’s ire cooled.
“Brother,” Cael said, his voice husky. “It’s you. It’s really you.” And then he collapsed onto the floor beside the fragmented bowl. Tyghan crossed the room, lifted him in his arms, and carried him to his bed.
Madame Chastain entered with Eris and they stepped up to the bed. She looked down at Cael and sighed. “This is how it’s been going. He’s weak, but in true Cael form, he overexerts himself and then passes out.”
“Why did he order Bristol and the recruits executed?” Tyghan asked. “Is he completely demented? Doesn’t he know that Bristol rescued him?”
“He thinks it’s a trick,” Eris answered. “That’s what he was screaming out on the portico when he arrived. Apparently on the ride back he held a knife to Bristol’s throat and when—”
“He what?”
“He was riding behind her on August and held her at knifepoint. His explanation was rambling and muddled, but he knows she’s Maire’s daughter. On Julia’s orders, Avery held a sword to his back to get him to release Bristol. Now he wants them all dead.”
Tyghan turned and slammed his hand against the wall. Cael had been back less than an hour, and already he wanted to kill his brother. He whipped back to face Eris. “You’re sure Bristol’s all right?”
“Disgusted, but completely fine,” Eris assured him, “but there is one other thing.” Eris glanced warily at Cael and lowered his voice. “He doesn’t know yet that you’ve been crowned the interim king. He thinks he’s still ruling Danu.”
Tyghan hissed, already anticipating Cael’s reaction.
“Then the sooner we disabuse him of that notion, the better. He needs to be updated on a few other things as well.” Tyghan surveyed the room and spotted a tall vase of flowers on a table.
He grabbed it, tossing aside the flowers, and threw the remaining water in his brother’s face.
Cael sputtered to life, bolting upright.
He cursed, shouting orders, but just as fast, Tyghan pinned him back against his pillow.
“Listen to me, brother, and listen carefully—”
“Get off me! What is the matter with you? I could have you—”
“Shut up! For once in your life, shut up and listen.” Tyghan’s update turned into a tirade that didn’t allow Cael any time to protest. “I am interim king now, by order of the council.” He went on to cover everything that had transpired since Cael snuck out to meet his mistress, from the lives lost, to the ground gained, like the recruits who had just helped rescue him, including the one who was bloodmarked, so Danu could close the door to the Abyss.
“It is seventeen short days until the ceremony. We have a chance now,” Tyghan went on, “a real chance, unless you screw it up. There is no magic within the inner circle of the ring to help you. You have to rely on your own strength. All you have to do is relax and regain your health—so when the time comes, you can step up on the Stone of Destiny and take control of Elphame. Twelve kingdoms want you on that throne, though only the gods know why—”
“Because I’m nice. They like me. I converse and laugh with them. I attend their parties. They’re afraid of you.”
“I don’t give two fucks about your parties and who they like.
I care about you showing up to the ceremony.
That’s it. Get better by then. That’s all you have to do.
My officers and I will handle the rest. And until you get your senses about you and compose a worthy apology to Bristol for nearly slitting her throat, you will not be leaving this room. Do you understand?”
“An apology? To the daughter of that monster—”
Tyghan’s hand clamped around Cael’s neck. “Don’t. Don’t say another word. Or I will do something I’ll regret. And you’ll regret it even more.”
“How dare you talk to me this way. I am not just your brother, I am your king.”
His voice wobbled, his eyes sunken, and Tyghan briefly saw his twelve-year-old brother about to be crowned king—the boy wiping tears from his cheeks with the sleeve of his royal coat. The boy Tyghan had forgotten, and Cael had probably forgotten too. The boy who never wanted to be king.
Cael reached out and gripped Tyghan’s hand. “I think it was her, you know, my betrothed, who betrayed me. She knew about my indiscretions. It was never a love match. She knew that from the start. We agreed.”
There were rumors of Cael’s escapades, and his betrothed certainly had motive, but Tyghan was skeptical. “How would she know where you were in the middle of the forest?”
Cael shook his head miserably. “I don’t know. I suppose the betrothal is off now?”
Tyghan only nodded. Cael was still delusional. He didn’t want to tell him that his betrothed had moved on in a heartbeat. She was married with a child on the way. He squeezed Cael’s shoulder. “Rest, brother. That is your only job right now.”
He stepped over to where Eris and Madame Chastain waited.
“Remove the collar. It might be part of the reason he’s unstable.
But be prepared to put on another if he becomes erratic.
No one is to enter these chambers without my permission.
His return must be kept quiet. I’ll send guards to relieve you. ”
“Where will you be?”
“The dining pavilion.”
He needed to see Bristol. Hold her. Know that she really was back. And he needed to find out just what this so-called bargain was that she had made with her mother.
He couldn’t feel good about it, even if it meant his brother was free.
Nothing Maire contrived could ever end well.
On that much he and his brother agreed. There was a trick in this somewhere.