CHAPTER 23 #3
Again, he was right.
“Here’s how we fix this. You leave Kair Toren tonight and go straight to Selva. I will tie up loose ends here.”
He didn’t tie up loose ends. He severed them. That’s what Shears did.
“The loose ends work for me,” Everard said.
“Just her then.” Solentine looked at me. “She is a threat, Ramond.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She belongs to me.”
Solentine blinked.
I laughed. It sounded exactly how I felt, bitter and apathetic.
“Now isn’t the time to be distracted by a woman,” Solentine said.
“I’m not distracted,” Everard said.
Solentine examined me like I was a poisonous bug. “What do you really know about her? What’s her family name? Where is she from? Why did she approach you?”
“I know enough.”
“Let me confine her until we get some answers.”
“No,” Everard said.
“She will be perfectly safe, and once we resolve our current problems, we can revisit this like rational people. Let me close this breach in our walls before the enemy streams through it.”
I would not survive that confinement. Solentine had decided I needed to die.
Black smoke slid off Everard, spilling onto the floor. His eyes blazed with green.
Cold sweat slicked my back. I couldn’t help it. It was an instinctual, knee-jerk reaction.
“Sol,” he said, pronouncing each word slowly, “she is mine.”
Solentine stared at the nightmare in the flesh.
A moment passed.
Solentine sighed.
It was over. He wouldn’t lay a hand on me. Everard had claimed me as his. He had known Solentine since they were teenagers. He understood how Solentine’s mind worked, so he left him with zero ambiguity. I was now a possession of the Sleepless Duke.
The two of them could fuck right off.
“Why were you in the plaza?” Solentine asked.
Everard leaned against the wall. “Ulmar Hreban hired a man to kill some prominent knights and display their bodies. He aims to assassinate the Sun Margrave and disguise the murder as the latest in the string of random killings.”
“To what end?”
“He wishes to become the next Sun Margrave.”
“And you know this how?”
“Maggie told me,” Everard said.
Solentine looked at me, then back at Everard.
Neither of us said anything.
“Splendid.” Solentine raised his hands. “One small question: How does Maggie know this?”
“Magic,” Everard said.
Solentine’s eyebrows crept up. “Magic! Of course. Why didn’t I see that before? For a moment I suspected that you’d taken leave of your senses, but now I am sure of it.”
He was jumping on my last nerve. He couldn’t touch me, so he had decided to discredit me. It wouldn’t work, but my shock was starting to wear off. I was no longer numb. I was angry. I couldn’t vent my anger on Everard, but Solentine was right there.
“Let me see if I can guess how we got here.” Solentine crossed his arms on his chest. “A young woman approached you with an offer. Some vital information to bait the hook. Perhaps she needed a protector. She presented herself as a victim or she might have tried to seduce you.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” I said. “All of the seducing.”
“Then in a relaxing moment of peace, she fed you this inane Hreban plot. Ramond, I’m begging you, use your common sense. Does that turn of events seem likely to you?”
“Yes,” Everard said.
“Hreban couldn’t attain that position in his wildest dreams. He is the Fool of Lerem. Would it help to clarify things if I told you she approached me first? I didn’t take the bait, so she switched her target. The only question here is who is behind her.”
“Bless your heart,” I said.
“And that means?” Solentine raised his eyebrows.
“‘Eat dirt and die.’ I should’ve let Krasta slice up your arm. You’re an insufferable ass.”
“Ah, so you were the one who sent the note. Congratulations, you warned me not to get into the carriage with a man infamous for gutting his rivals with a hunting knife. The cypher was a nice touch, though. If only there weren’t several hundred people proficient in it.
Is this the part where I am supposed to be impressed?
Please let me know. I don’t want to miss my cue. ”
I would strangle him.
“What makes more sense, an agent planted by a Great Family or a woman with mysterious powers who wants to help you for no apparent reason? If her magic was real, she would know things nobody else would . . .”
Everard looked at me. “As of now nothing has changed. Colart still loses his life. Matheo dies. The city burns. The kids still fall victim to the war.”
I knew where he was heading. He was reminding me that the Butcher had gotten away, and Solentine had an entire network that could look for him. He was jerking my emotional leash.
“The sooner we climb over this wall, the better,” Everard said. He sounded so much like his Reynald self right now. But that man was a lie.
In this moment I hated him.
Solentine opened his mouth. “As I said—”
“Three Drops of Blood.”
Solentine stopped mid-rant. “What?”
“When you were twelve years old, you were required to spend one month during the summer at your paternal grandfather’s estate.
He was a mean old man, and you hated his guts.
Your grandfather treasured his grape vines and the wine produced from them.
They were the only things he loved in this world.
His most prized wine, Three Drops of Blood, came from a one-hundred-twenty-year-old vine, the apple of his eye.
That horrible old bastard babied it like it was made of gold. ”
Solentine held very still.
“One day he punished you. He whipped you with a cane. The next morning, while everyone was asleep, you slipped out of your room, got an axe, made your way down to the vineyard, and chopped down the vine. You left the axe by it, so there would be no question that it was done deliberately. Then you snuck back into your room and pretended to be asleep. Unfortunately, your ten-year-old cousin found the axe and was discovered holding it. Your grandfather beat him to within an inch of his life. Nearly killed him. From your room, you could hear him screaming and the blows landing. Rumian worshiped you. And you did nothing. You sat in your room with a pillow over your head and you let him endure the worst beating of his life.”
Solentine stared at me, his face stunned. “You can’t know that. Nobody knows that.”
Everard smiled.
“Rumian still worships you. That man will do literally anything for you, and you’ve never told him. You’re a coward.”
Solentine’s hand moved to his knife.
“I was going to warn you soon, but I might as well do it now. After that beating, your aunt Griele arrived and asked your grandfather if he wanted to pick on someone his own size. She put him into sick bed for two weeks. Her swords were always precise. He disowned her, and you and your cousin never had to visit him again. When he died, he left everything to your father, Izarn, who promptly granted the villa and the vineyard to his sister. Griele and your uncle Brune moved in and turned that oppressive house into a warm and happy home.”
The look on his face was priceless. I was telling him family secrets only the closest to the Demarrs could know.
“Brune has been approached by a noble who is trying to get him to invest in a silver mine. In twelve days, he will sign documents putting that stupid vineyard up as collateral for the loan. His thirtieth wedding anniversary is coming up and when he heard the proposal, he thought the mine would be a nice present for his wife because the first gift he had ever given Griele was a silver necklace that she still treasures to this day. Brune married into the family and brought very little wealth with him. He always wanted to contribute.”
That bug-eyed expression he was making was so satisfying.
“The silver mine does not exist. Your family will lose the vineyard that has been its pride and joy for centuries, and you will have to do heinous things to get it back. It will break your uncle. He will never recover from it.”
Solentine opened his mouth and closed it without a word.
That vine incident had made Solentine who he was. It taught him that what he valued most was his family. He felt deep unrelenting shame, and he had sworn that he would never again do anything to harm his loved ones. I had hit him where it hurt.
“You should take a few days and see to it,” Everard said.
Solentine clenched his teeth.
“She is never wrong,” Everard said. “She may be off on dates, but if she says it will come to pass, it will.”
Technically, I’d been wrong quite a bit.
“Go take care of your family, Sol. I’ll stay here.”
“Your word?”
Everard nodded.
“Don’t leave,” Solentine said. “I’m begging you. Stay inside these four walls until I return. Don’t do anything. I will be back before the week’s end.”
I took a stack of pages from the shelf and handed it to him. “Light reading for the road. Burn it after you’re done.”
I had written out the brief timeline of events in case something happened to me and Reynald had to continue alone. This would save me a lot of explanations.
Solentine gave me a wild look and dropped through the window.
“Nicely done,” Everard said.
I didn’t answer.
The silence stood between us like a wall.
“What happened to the real Reynald?” I asked.
“He died.”
My heart squeezed itself into a tiny ball. “Did you kill him?”
“No. It was an accident. His horse fell. He died of internal bleeding three days later.”
“When?”
“He passed in the early morning on the sixth of Planter.”
I felt sad, worn out, and desperate. My heart hurt.
“Maggie,” he said quietly.
“Please leave.”
He turned, walked out the door into the hallway, and stopped just outside my room, wrapped in shadow. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I will never hurt you.”
My voice sounded hollow. “I liked you better when you were Reynald.”
“So did I.”
He walked away.
I took a piece of paper with Butcher’s hair from the desk and held it up to the lantern. A tiny drop of blood swelled on some of the hair ends. I must’ve really ripped a chunk out of his scalp.
There was blood on my sleeve, too, and it wasn’t mine.
Blood was good.
I folded the paper in half, slipped it into an envelope, and placed the envelope into the top drawer of the desk.
I walked down the hallway, knocked on Clover’s door, and told the children it was safe to come out.
Everard wouldn’t hurt them. He considered them his people.
Then I went back to my suite, closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it.
The triple moons shone their light through the open window.
I’d trusted him. I’d told him things.
He’d sat with me on the wall and tried to distract me from worrying by telling funny stories about the Conquerors, he’d held my hand on the bench in Sonndor, and when he’d smiled, he’d looked so . . .
He’d lied to me and used me. Just like he used other people to get what he wanted.
Everard was a strategist. Stepping between the kids and the slavers, swearing to put himself in front of the disaster that would grip Kair Toren, winning me over step by step; all of it was part of a carefully calculated approach.
Everything had been precisely measured and flawlessly executed.
Holding my hand had been part of the plan.
Was anything he’d said real?
Probably not.
It hurt so much.