Chapter 4 Aren
Aren
King Aren Kertell stared at the gray seas before Northwatch Island, half imagining that he could see the continent in the distance. The storm had passed, the threat of wind and rain and wave vanquished for the time being, and yet every instinct in his body screamed that danger was at his doorstep.
“We’ve had five Harendellian ships miss their port times,” the harbormaster said from where he stood at Aren’s left. “No sign of them on the horizon.”
“Perhaps they delayed over concerns with the storm.”
“The Amaridians came in on the heels of it with no trouble,” the man answered.
“The missing vessels know these seas as well as we do, Your Grace. They know how to chase a squall, do business, and then get back to safe harbor before the next winds rise. One or two ships missing I might excuse, but five?”
Aren didn’t disagree, and he fought the urge to reach for a weapon, his hackles up.
His gaze flicked to the two Amaridian vessels moored at the piers.
Their crews were busy unloading barrels of wine that his soldiers were checking to ensure their contents sloshed.
Fool me once, shame on me, but fool me twice… “Any gossip?”
“None,” Lara said from behind him. Aren turned to watch his wife approach, Jor and Lia at her heels. As was her custom, Lara had Delia in a sling that held their baby as close to her as the weapons sheathed at her waist.
She stopped next to him, nodding at the harbormaster, who inclined his head and went back to work.
“The Amaridian crews said little of interest,” Lara murmured once the man was out of earshot.
“What could be gleaned from them about Harendell is all old news and of little consequence, but they saw no reason that merchant ships would have delayed making the crossing to Northwatch. They said nothing about Ahnna.”
She lifted her hand to pat Delia’s bottom through the sling, swaying back and forth to keep their baby asleep.
“Their silence is telling. Never have I known a ship to arrive that wasn’t peddling information as much as wares, and for not one of them to have a coded message from our spies is equally concerning.
” Lara’s blue eyes met his, her face shadowed with unease.
“Something has happened on the mainland, Aren. I feel it in my bones.”
Lara validating his trepidation only made the crawling sensation across his skin worse. “I should have made Ahnna come back with me. Should have dragged her home by her ankles, because I knew she was somehow twisting Harendell’s sentiment toward Ithicana.”
His wife shot him a dark scowl. “No one has reported anything to validate that thought. Quite the opposite: All reports speak of Edward’s fondness for her.”
“They also speak of his bastard’s fondness for her.
” Aren scuffed his boot against the pier and scowled.
“James acted like Ahnna was his. I know what that sort of possessiveness looks like, and it’s not how a man acts over his brother’s future wife.
If there is something untoward between them, it would explain her refusal to return with me. ”
“Untoward?” Lara gave a soft laugh. “How very Harendellian of you. Maybe you’re right and James is taken with her—it would be understandable, because Ahnna is a very beautiful woman.
Or maybe his good Harendellian manners demanded he intervene given that you approached your conversation with Ahnna with all the tact of a battering ram.
Did you really expect him to do nothing when he came upon you ordering her about in the dark corner of a tavern, your words having reduced her to tears? ”
“I expected him to mind his own business.”
Lara snorted and rolled her eyes skyward. “You disliked him from the moment you met him.”
Her comment wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but Aren knew that James’s behavior wasn’t just Harendellian chivalry at work.
The tension between Ahnna and the bastard prince had been thick in the air, the familiarity between the two of them undeniable.
Whereas when he’d watched her with William, Ahnna had appeared bored and the crown prince had barely looked at her twice, the connection between them as intense as cold oatmeal.
Aren didn’t want to think his sister was fool enough to cross the line with the wrong prince, but the timing of the rising animosity toward Ithicana coincided with Ahnna’s arrival, and James had been at her side since the beginning.
If Aren sensed impropriety, then the Harendellians would as well, and they would not view it favorably. “He’s arrogant.”
Lara only made a soft humming noise, patting Delia gently on the back as she swayed.
“If Ahnna crossed a line, Edward would send her back and demand reparations for the slight. This is something different, Aren. I…I think this is something worse.” Her hand moved from Delia’s back to her sword, scarred fingers toying with the hilt.
His wife could handle the worst the world had to offer, but God help him, Aren wished she didn’t have to.
Wished he could give Lara a moment of peace and happiness untarnished by endless threats against the lives of all she held dear.
In his darker moments, he felt the sickness of regret that he hadn’t run away with her once Ithicana had been liberated, leaving Ahnna to rule while he and Lara carved out a simple life.
Aren said none of that, though, only murmured, “Our defenses are bolstered. Ithicana is used to defending itself.” He wrapped an arm around Lara’s shoulders and returned his gaze to the sea. “If nothing else, Amarid is still here to trade.”
Katarina had been a paragon of courtesy of late, offering to renegotiate trade agreements and make reparations for conflict, the traffic back and forth between Northwatch and her capital of Riomar ceaseless in recent weeks.
I regret my part in what Silas did to your nation, she’d written.
In my old age, I find myself reaching toward peace and alliance, so that I might leave a legacy of prosperity to my son when his day comes to rule.
Aren didn’t trust Katarina as far as he could throw her, but there was an air of desperation in how aggressively she was seeking Ithicana’s favor that made him question whether her actions were driven not by greed but by fear.
And there was only one nation that Amarid feared.
“I wish Ahnna would write,” Lara muttered. “Or Bronwyn and Taryn, though they seem to have thoroughly cut themselves off from politics.”
As much as it frustrated Aren that the two had left Ahnna to her own devices, it did make him happy that Taryn was finally having a chance at the life she wanted.
A life away from violence and war, where she could focus on the music she adored.
Bronwyn would keep her safe—but more important, keep her happy.
A horn sounded from the lookout, indicating a ship on the horizon. Lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the bite of rain and wind, Aren made out a faint shape through the mist.
“Harendellian?” Lara squinted. “All I can tell is that it’s big.”
The horn blew again. Aren tensed, because the lookout was warning the rest of the island. The Amaridian sailors all turned to the sea, many of them familiar with Northwatch’s signals. Especially the signal that the ship on approach was no merchantman.
Behind him, his soldiers moved to ready the island’s defenses. The shipbreakers were loaded, and if that vessel came any closer, warning shots would be launched.
Jor and Lia came alongside them, and Jor handed Aren a spyglass. “Your eyes are better than mine, boy. Who’s out there?”
Aren peered through the spyglass, panning the horizon until the ship came into view. A sharp hiss exited his teeth. “Harendellian ship of the line. The Victoria. The decks are full of soldiers.”
“Just one ship?” Lara demanded, and at Aren’s nod, she added, “Then this isn’t an attack.”
“Make sure we have eyes all around,” Aren shouted, the wind carrying his orders to the soldiers behind him. “Send word down the bridge to be prepared for conflict.”
The Victoria drifted closer, turning sidelong just outside the range of the shipbreakers and lowering the rest of their sails.
“What in the fuck are they doing?” Jor growled. “I don’t like this.”
Aren didn’t answer, his eyes all for the empty longboat that was being lowered from the side of the ship.
It was unhooked and left to bob on the swells, Aren’s rising dread bobbing in his stomach along with it.
Everyone on Northwatch, including the Amaridians, stood in stunned silence as the Victoria lifted its sails and headed north, swiftly disappearing into the mist.
“Get me a boat.” The words croaked from his throat, barely audible over the wind, so Aren repeated, “Get me a boat!”
Lara gripped his arm. “Let someone else go.”
“No.” Because what if it was Ahnna in the abandoned longboat? What if it was his sister? What if his every fear had become a reality, except instead of demanding reparations for Ahnna’s behavior, Edward had sent back her corpse?
“Aren, please.” Lara’s blue eyes were filled with the same fear that was crushing the breath from his chest, but Aren only pulled her hand from his arm and strode to where his soldiers were lowering a boat into the waves.
With the Amaridians watching in silence, Aren climbed down a rope ladder into the vessel. His soldiers took up paddles, but Aren remained standing as they approached the bobbing longboat.
“Looks empty,” someone muttered. “It’s sitting high in the water.”
It wasn’t empty.
The Harendellians hadn’t sent one of their largest naval ships to deliver an empty longboat. Hadn’t stayed out of range of the shipbreakers because they expected whatever was in that boat to be well received.
Please be alive, he silently pleaded. Please don’t be lost to me.
No one spoke as they drew closer, and the humid air was thick with tension.
Why didn’t I make her leave? Aren asked himself. He stood tall, trying to see into the longboat as it slid into the valley of a swell. Why did I allow her to go at all?
A question he knew the answer to, though admitting it made him feel sick.
Allowing Ahnna to go to Harendell had been the path of least resistance.
His twin had not made his life easy since they’d expelled the Maridrinians from Ithicana.
Her unwillingness to forgive Lara—and her ongoing animosity toward his wife—had created a rift between them.
Worse still, his people were influenced by Ahnna, and many chose to follow her lead in continuing to blame Lara for their suffering.
He’d believed that after a taste of what Harendell had to offer, his twin would beg to return to Ithicana, and that when he facilitated it, Ahnna’s gratitude would temper any lingering ill will she felt toward Lara.
A decision that he seemed fated to regret for the rest of his life.
The sound of something impacting wood reached his ears. Something that sounded distinctly like boot heels hitting the side of a boat.
Whoever was in there was alive.
Relief flooded Aren. Ignoring the protests of his soldiers, he put a foot onto the edge of the vessel and leapt into the longboat.
He landed on one of the benches, easily keeping his balance on the rocking boat as his eyes shot to the figure bound and gagged in the pooled water at the bottom.
Bronwyn’s azure eyes stared up at him.
“Shit!” Aren dropped to his knees and pulled the gag out of her mouth. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
Bronwyn spat into the pooled water next to her, coughing violently, then croaked out, “Is Ahnna here?”
Aren’s stomach sank as he helped her sit. “No, she isn’t. Bronwyn, tell me what’s going on. Why has Edward done this to you?”
Bronwyn’s blue eyes welled with tears. “It wasn’t Edward.
” As he untied her wrists, she reached out with scraped hands to grasp him tightly.
“Edward’s dead. Murdered, and Alexandra barely escaped the same fate.
They say…they say it was Ahnna who killed him.
Stabbed him to death in his bed because William wed Lestara instead of her. ”
All the breath disappeared from Aren’s chest, because Lara had been right. This was so much worse than an illicit affair. Worse than he possibly could have imagined.
Bronwyn’s grip on him tightened, her teeth chattering. “James sent me with a message: Deliver Ahnna to Harendell for execution, or it will be war.”