Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAY
I have support from the King’s Advisor to leverage his resources to scour our own ranks.
If there’s a traitor to the Academy, they must be stopped lest they reveal our secrets and undermine all we’ve worked for.
—in a letter from High Magelord, Bearer of All, Gautier the First, to the First Guidelord, Luis
La’Angi Keep
The gleam in my acquaintance’s eye haunted me when I tried to sleep. I’d dropped the bar over the door to Audrey’s tower to keep him out, then walked beside him to make sure he wouldn’t try to snake his way back in. And he’d said to me, “She’s running this whole city, Chay.”
Like it was a blessing.
Luca thinking Audrey was malleable and ignorant was disgusting.
Luca understanding Audrey was a tempered blade was horrific.
I lay in bed trying to rest, my body heavy and my mind full of possibilities, none of them good.
I should’ve kicked him out. If the Duke found out Luca was visiting her…
It would be a breach of my oath, no question.
The problem was, I knew Luca was far more slippery than people realized. The Duke wouldn’t learn about his visit. Not this time, and probably not the next time. Because there would be a next time. He was smart. While being simultaneously, and somewhat strangely, very stupid.
I should never have pushed her so hard. I hadn’t felt like I’d had a choice. She could have talked me out of breaking her heart so easily.
I’d successfully hurt her well enough she’d stopped speaking to me. I should’ve known how she’d react. I should’ve done better. I’d never, ever meant to do so much harm.
Yet here we were.
My payment was the well-deserved sharp side of her tongue, which brought me a measure of solace each time she sliced off the festering flesh around the wounds I’d created.
My penance were the nightmares I had that Luca, too, might find those chinks in her armor. Unlike me, he would not just walk away.
There wasn’t any sound from the tower, but the watch had called morning.
I knew Audrey and Isolde would be on the top level of the tower now, training.
They’d be drilling punches, kicks. They’d be throwing each other around, catching one another in chokes and joint-locks.
They might pick up the knife and train that, for a time.
Audrey was damned good with it, if I was any judge. She didn’t fight fair, either.
No wonder she’d picked up the sword so easily.
I breathed into the fury at myself. If I’d just kept my dick in my pants, we wouldn’t be here.
She could’ve looked at me every now and then with those big, burning eyes and it could’ve cauterized my soul.
It wouldn’t matter. I could’ve helped her get toward her dream.
Enough skill with a sword that she wouldn’t be run through before she could transition to the knife.
That’s all she needed. It was achievable.
It had been achievable.
The watch called another hour and I gave up trying to sleep, readying myself for the day. They’d be down soon. Isolde would go to get Audrey food to break her fast, more likely than not. Her time outside the tower had been intricately planned since I’d ripped the heart out of her chest.
She didn’t want to be near me, and that was sensible.
Right now, I didn’t want to be near me, either.
But that damned gleam in Luca’s eye haunted me.
I heard Isolde leave, drew in a deep breath, and strode into Audrey’s space.
She was dressed for the day in the light purple dress with the yellow ribbons. She’d worn that the day we’d almost been caught in the stables. I knew exactly how it looked gathered up around her hips.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, and if those words made nausea roll in my belly, who could blame me?
“I’m a little busy,” she said. The ice in those words was entirely understandable. “If it’s important, keep it brief.”
My oath probably ought to have taken me, after what I’d done to her heart.
“Luca isn’t what you think,” I said. But when she looked up, there was annoyance on her face. “You can’t trust him, Audrey.”
“I’m accustomed to not being able to trust the men around me.” She dipped her quill in the pot as if she hadn’t just sunk a knife into my chest. “Is that all?”
I’d laid awake, thinking of the loyalty I owed to the rebels’ cause, and what I owed to her. At the end of the day, though, I didn’t care about any of that.
I cared about this woman.
“He’s part of a rebellion,” I said. The words sounded strange to my ears. You can tell. I drew in a deep breath and didn’t try to read her responses. “He’s planning regicide. He’ll marry you, kill your father, and use you to control the east.”
Color flooded her cheeks. “Wow,” she breathed. “I thought I was nothing but your charge, and here you are, playing a spy.”
I didn’t dare look at the smoldering violence in my heart. But I could feel it there now, with her reminder, with her disbelief. “It’s why we were here, last year. We were going to support him.”
“To kill my father and marry me?” she asked, new-found venom in her words.
I hated it. I hated it, but I knew it was needed.
“Not to compete, of course. It’s none of your business who I trust and who I don’t, Chay.
Not anymore.” The note of finality in that made the ground open up beneath me. “Get out.”
I tried to breathe. “Audrey—”
“No.” She tossed down the quill, standing with so much violence the chair scraped back.
Relief rushed through me at the sound while at the same time, my heart broke.
Take the warning and then defend yourself.
But her eyes, those bewitching whiskey eyes, burned.
“No, you don’t get to come in here, tugging me hither and fro.
That man’s sworn a blood oath to me, Chay, same as you.
I know what sort of leech he is. You, though—you keep surprising me. Get. Out.”
She’d come around. The blood hammered in my temples.
She was hurting right now, but she’d see what I said made sense.
It was the truth, total and unadorned. “The blood oath won’t trigger unless he knows he’s doing harm to you.
It’s perception-based.” Which is why I’d been able to lose myself in her, before I’d known.
Even were it not for the oath, I wouldn’t do it now. No matter how much I wanted to hold her, to feel those tight muscles softening for me as the tension of the day drained, I wouldn’t.
She deserved more.
She deserved peace.
“I’m not doing this.” She strode toward the door, her long legs kicking up the layers of fabric, making it swirl around her favorite boots like waves against the shore.
She yanked open the door. “I do not have time for you,” she said, enunciating each word clearly. “I do not wish to speak to you. Leave.”
There were tears in my throat. If I shed them, she’d soften.
I couldn’t let her soften.
If she tried to touch me, by the One, I didn’t know if I could resist.
“He’s manipulating you.”
“Last night was the first time he hasn’t manipulated me,” she said. There were tears in her eyes, but not of grief. “Because I’m a fool for the dreams you all dangle in front of me. I’m not dreaming now, sir.”
As a tear spilled over her cheek, there wasn’t a force in the kingdom that could’ve made me turn my back on her—no matter that her chest rose and fell, no matter that her hand was fisted by her side and those tear-filled eyes spat fury at me.
That rage was a balm from the terrified, shrunken woman I’d browbeat days ago.
I wished I could tell her to always bite and never cower.
“What else do you want?” she demanded, her hands going to her head. “What else must you ruin?”
The blow hit home. I swallowed down bile.
The lock turned in the door.
For a moment, I thought it was Isolde returning. I pictured the dozen ways she’d kill me for those tears on her charge’s cheeks.
But it was Thomas who stepped in, tabard crisp and eyes sharp.
He froze when he saw us, his eyes going between Audrey and I. Then he closed the door behind him.
Before she could order me out again, before she could ask him to get me, I managed to unstick my own feet.
I’d done enough damage.
“Thomas, pack your bags,” she said, her voice shaking. “The two of you are going to your lands. I need reconnaissance and you need to check on your family.”
I felt my muscles jerk. She was sending me away.
“My lady, that’s—”
“NOW.” The word boomed and broke.
There was no arguing. I had nothing left to give.
I bowed, pressing my fist to the center of my chest where my heart thundered. While it beat, I’d do as she bid.
She turned, fleeing up the stairs, sobbing.
Thomas and I stood, listening to her screams of rage muffled by whatever bedclothes she’d buried her face in. I couldn’t breathe.
The pain.
I’d known she’d loved me. How couldn’t I have felt the seeds of it from that very first night, when she’d turned so fearlessly to me? When she’d looked at me with all that hope and warmth?
“Pack,” Thomas said, not unkindly. “Give her time, lad. After everything you’ve done, it isn’t too much for her to ask, is it?”
It wasn’t.
I scrubbed the tears that burned my cheeks. “Can you tell Isolde?” I asked him, shakily.
“I can,” he said, holding out a hand, letting it rest on my shoulder as I passed him by. “How about you go ready our horses? I’ll get it all sorted.”
I tried to breathe, but the tears were there, choking me. Above us, she kept wailing. Filling the tower with her fury. It was morphing, though. It was becoming grief.
“Come on, lad,” he said, gently, squeezing my shoulder. “A couple of horses will get us there fast. We’ll be home in no time.”
I nodded, swallowing away the tears best I could, and turned to follow her very sensible orders.