Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
AUDREY
We are only conquered when we believe ourselves to be.
—Isolde
24th Day of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
La’Angi Keep
The rage was like a storm inside of me, stealing my air, whipping it from my lungs.
The smell of his fragrance still clung to my skin as the reek of his burning flesh filled my head.
Get. Him. Out. I pressed my fingers to my skull and held in the scream purely so he didn’t have the satisfaction of hearing it.
I sucked in air and clung to the sure knowledge that his own willingly offered and utterly senseless Blood Oath could very well immolate his flesh.
I’d scrub the burn marks off the rug myself if it came to it.
I hurled my blanket onto my bed. My muscles, muscles unhappy from sleeping on the ground, send agony spearing into my back.
He.
Hadn’t.
Even.
Been.
Good.
The scream was in my chest, pounding at my heart like waves at the cliffs below. I knew I’d survive those waves.
I knew they’d never abate.
I went to the bath and emptied it, pulling the stopper so hard the chain shuddered in its moorings.
The buckets I hauled up made my body weep.
I should’ve left the asshole to sleep on the rug by himself like a dog.
A slobbering, useless, pathetic hound. All I’d wanted was to get out of my head for one night.
One night. He didn’t even have the grace to give me that.
“Fuck you, Luca.” I hissed as I snatched up a bucket, flinging the water into the tub so hard it splashed back onto me.
The worst part wasn’t that he’d betrayed me.
The worst part was I’d let him.
I turned to get another bucket and my eyes fell on a tub to the side, full of water and Isolde’s dress.
It was covered in blood.
Ice swept through me, chasing away the rage.
The bucket fell from my hands. I’d seen her, below.
She was okay. The steps gave way before me.
I was back in the common room that reeked of burning flesh and charred hair, and she was clinging to the wall, gasping like she’d been stabbed.
Her eyes were bloodshot. I grabbed her without thinking.
She flinched with a guttural cry of pain. She shrank.
I dropped her like a hot coal, stepping back, the world whirling around me. She wasn’t wounded. Not that I could see. She was shaking. One hand came up to ward me off.
I fell back another step and realized my heart was roaring like a steppe cat in my chest. “Isolde,” I said, but her name became a plea.
“La’Angi,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “La’Angi. Autumn. Audrey’s tower.”
“You’re with me,” I said, seizing onto the strategy she’d offered us both. “My tower. Common room. It’s autumn. Tourney time.”
“Tourney.” The word shook.
“Autumn,” I offered again. “My tower. Yours, too. Tourney.” She nodded jerkily.
Lost, I sought desperately for anything else I could do, but bit back the words.
She wasn’t bleeding, not now, but she was pale as death, with big dark marks beneath her eyes.
“Our tower,” I said, gently. “It’s autumn.
They’ve brought in the harvest. We’ve apples a-plenty. You’re in La’Angi.”
She nodded and made a weak flicking motion with her hand. “I know. I’m fine.”
She was so far from fine that I couldn’t possibly quantify it. “Can you come upstairs with me?” I asked her.
She nodded, her jaw set. She didn’t move. She was shaking.
“Can I take your arm up the steps?” I asked her.
I heard her swallow. She nodded, then stopped and shook her head.
“I’m going to walk with you,” I said, putting my hands flat on my thighs because I didn’t know where else they should go. The movement made me remember the way we drummed when things were bad.
I took up the movements myself, on my own limbs, tapping my hands quickly.
Her head hung. She rocked from side to side.
Her free hand flexed, rhythmically. Mimicking her movements, I rocked as well.
From foot to foot, I shifted my weight. I drew in big, deep breaths to fill my lungs and held them there, the hope and promise of that air, then let it go with all the fear and rage that didn’t serve me.
At first, I thought it was my imagination that she was following me. Breathing with me. The watch called the hour and I didn’t care. Her breathing was levelling out. Her movements became less jerky and more rhythmic. Her head slowly raised.
“I need to sleep,” she said, her voice thin.
“Can I help you upstairs?”
She reached out and put an arm around my shoulders. I wrapped my hand around her belt to take as much of her weight as I could.
I could’ve carried her up the stairs without pausing. I could’ve done it running. That wasn’t battle-energy, it was because she was of a fine, wiry build. I’d only seen her as fragile once before, when she’d been dying of plague.
Dying of plague…yet here she was, strong. I got her to her bed and folded her into the covers. “Thanking you,” she said, seeming to shrink into the blankets. There was dried blood rimming the inside of her nose.
I hesitated, thinking of the dress, of the fine red lines in the white of her eyes and the way she shook. “Are you hurt?” I asked her, easing the covers up higher.
“It’s…an old hurt,” she said, closing her eyes and turning her face away. “Thanking you, Audrey. I thought I had it under control.”
The words were almost lost to the background sounds of the city that crept into the quiet edges of the room, so soft were they.
I remained crouched beside her bed as her breathing settled and the tension drained from her limbs.
I ran back over what I’d seen of her as I’d tried not to scream so furiously at Luca I could have shredded him with the noise alone.
She’d been distressed. Deeply, horrifically distressed. She’d flinched from me.
I stood. She came awake with a gasp and a start, jolting upright and reaching for a knife I knew she’d wear strapped to her chest when she was in her chosen garb.
“Just Audrey,” I told her, using my name deliberately rather than hoping she could recognize my voice. “La’Angi, autumn.”
She blinked at me. Her lips were bloodless. “Sorry,” she said. The word from her lips sank between my ribs and into my heart. “Sorry, ’Rey,” she said, rolling onto one side and sinking back down.
I ached to lift the covers up over her shoulder but didn’t dare. Instead, I walked out, hoping she heard my steps. I closed the door, better to let her rest.
I had a tourney to attend. I wanted to tell them all to light the entire thing on fire. An effigy for my rage. A pyre for her grief.
The water in the bottom of the bath was cold. I grabbed a cloth and sponged the worst of the stickiness from my skin as I ran through all the options coldly.
She’d been about when I’d been with Elnyta.
Sex wasn’t distressing to her. She spoke of it the same way she spoke of violence; pragmatically.
She’d heard me shout plenty, and she’d heard Luca whine before too.
His oath had clearly been burning him, but she’d stood beside me near pyres before, so it wasn’t the reek of burning flesh.
She’d clearly experienced physical trauma, but I trusted her to tell me if there was something that could be done.
I didn’t think it was linked to her distress.
What horrendous combination had pried apart her armor and ripped the thick bandages off of old wounds, I couldn’t identify.
But I was confident it was linked to Luca.
Which meant I was to blame, as it was me who’d let him in.
He’d sold me false hope. I thought I’d been simply renting it for one night. I thought I’d been savvy, just taking what I wanted. I thought I’d been safe.
I wasn’t the only one I could hurt.
The dress I wore was for renewal. If I stayed, they’d come looking, hammering at the door and jolting Isolde awake. If I stayed, she’d be embarrassed.
I thought of the way I’d grabbed for her and paced my room, kicking myself. Why hadn’t I tapped with her earlier? Why hadn’t I seen her distress? Why hadn’t I shoved my well-inked quill into Luca’s eye when he’d first walked back into La’Angi?
“M’lady?”
The call from below came from Thomas’ familiar voice. “Just Thomas,” I said, hoping Isolde would hear it and be soothed if she’d been jolted from her rest. On the way, I grabbed my wrap.
I hated leaving her. I hated it. But if I left, none would disturb her.
It wasn’t just Thomas, but Kaelson, too, looking well-starched and neatly groomed. “Is all well, m’lady?” Thomas asked me, which was a remarkably polite enquiry given that my rooms smelled like a funeral pyre without the comforting scent of woodsmoke.
“Wonderous,” I told them, striding toward the door. “If Lord Luca comes near me—” I bit off the order I wanted to give.
I’d deal with it myself if it came to it.
“Mistress Isolde is resting, I take it?” Kaelson asked, as Thomas closed the tower up behind us.
In my mind she jolted awake. The knife between my ribs twisted.
Luca.
“Did she tell you what the poison was?” Kaelson asked me, his gaze intent. “She said little to me.”
I started. “Poison?”
His expression grew guarded. “Was she well?”
“No.” I led them along the corridors. The watch called the hour again.
I lengthened my stride. Damned if I’d make a scene by being late.
“This morning was complicated. She didn’t mention the poison.
” She did mention an old hurt. I knew I was correct in assuming the distress was separate to whatever had happened. “Tell me.”
“She was carried into my office at thirteen cries, my lady,” Kaelson told me crisply. “She reported having been poisoned and presented with significant bleeding. She reported having taken the right antivenom and knowing the source of the poison. I followed her instructions, my lady.”
“Thanking you.” Whomever had poisoned Isolde was not going to see the sun rise tomorrow. I stepped into the bailey and the sun shone cheerfully above. “Did she tell you who was responsible?”
“She did, my lady,” Kaelson said.
Storm nickered as they brought her out. I looked over at Kaelson, feeling those waves of fury crashing against my foundations.
“And will you tell me, Captain?” I asked him, bitingly.
He stared straight ahead. “It might be best coming from Mistress Isolde, my lady.”
I drew in a slow, deep breath. “Kael,” I said, quietly, “I have had a long morning. Who was it?”
He looked down. “The Raa’shi lord, m’lady,” he said softly.
Whatever else he said was lost to the buzzing of a million bees in my head.
I climbed into the saddle with nary a thought, my hand white-knuckled on the pommel.
He’d been fucking me badly and poisoning her effectively, all in one evening.
If he wasn’t dead, he was about to be.
Once that was sorted, I needed to spend some time taking a long, hard look in the looking glass.