CHAPTER XVI #6
“Much more amiable than you,” the King replies coolly.
“Of course,” the blonde chuckles again. “He was never made for this kind of life.”
Starc shrugs the thought away. “The things we do for our blood.”
Hmm.
There’s actual love behind those words.
“And your own blood?” I look at him curiously.
The man shakes his head, lips pulling up in a smile. “I hold no false hope as to what happens to me here, Lady Alexis. Nor should you.”
“You will not leave Dankworth alive,” I agree.
“No, I won’t. Will it be by your hand, then? Have you come tonight to finish the job?”
He looks genuinely alight at the prospect.
“Not tonight, no,” I take a knee in front of him, shaking my head solemnly. “Tonight I’ve come to end your brother.”
Starc visibly stills, his features slowly fading into the Discerni indifference as a cold anger takes hold of him.
“I captured you,” he replies, voice low and forceful in reminder. “I snaked that wood around your wrists and colored them a lovely red if I remember correctly.”
“You did,” I reply in approval, “you were forward in your pursuits. Thank you. But if there’s anything most I hate in this Old World, it’s a coward. And you don’t strike me as that type of man. You brother, however…”
I sigh as Starc narrows his eyes.
“He seems like that kind of man. He cowered behind your strength. Even cries in the night for his blood to come save him. You should hear those screams…”
“You lie,” Starc reaches his handless arms towards me, chains pulling him back into the ground.
I smile at him in cool detachment. I do.
But he doesn’t need to know that.
“Your life is already forfeit,” I tell him, “though I wonder what could be done to save your brother’s?”
I turn slowly in my crouch to look back at Keane, brows raised in mock question as he stares heavily at Starc.
“The man offers nothing,” the King replies. “We’d be best to continue on with our night.”
I grimace in mock sadness, nodding my head before I look back at the Discerni.
“We’ll wrap the body before we bring it to you.”
Starc remains deathly silent in his hold, eyeing me in a new hatred as I take a stand. I turn back to Keane, feeling Stormfall spread his wings at my back as I move towards him, hoping the man doesn’t call my bluff.
Keane reaches for my hand, gripping it tight as he pulls me forward and back to the door. His fingers just barely reach for the handle when Starc spits on the ground behind us.
“Callous…”
Keane pauses and turns slowly back around.
“I’ll give you Callous.”
My hand digs heavy into the King’s. Of course Starc is familiar with the Argents.
“Upon safe return of my brother to La Cour,” he continues as I turn to look at him as well, “I will give you the man who recruited me.”
Keane squeezes my hand before dropping it. He takes a hard step forward, eyes narrowing on the Discerni.
“I will leave him in the forests surrounding Dankworth with a canteen and dagger, nothing more.”
“And your men?” Starc laughs.
“Will not follow,” the King shakes his head.
A part of me hopes Keane is lying, but another part of me knows to my core that this is an agreement being settled between two men and their word. Starc sees my genuine scowl and nods his head slowly, settling down on his legs as he heaves another heavy sigh.
“The man resides deep in the castle of Airea and is well-guarded by his own men. He’s missing an eye, replaced with a glass ball of pure white marble.
He takes a young Discerni woman to bed nearly every night, one of the newest of its court.
A girl by the name of Bell, hair as silver as the light that shines from the moons. ”
I shift in my stance behind Keane. Did Troy know of this obvious feature on the Discerni man when we met with him back in Alston? He said he was aware of Callous, but has he never met him personally?
Starc lifts his head in heavy hatred, spitting out his next words. “Find the girl and you’ll find him.”
Keane eyes the man for a long moment before nodding his head. “Your brother will be released tonight while the city sleeps.”
The King turns around swiftly, hand coming to my shoulder as he urges me back to the door. I stay firmly in place, my glance meeting the blonde Discerni’s as he turns his piercing gaze on me.
“I’m curious,” I narrow my eyes on him, shrugging a shoulder casually, “but where did you plan to take me if all had ended right?”
Starc’s lips pull up, his grin finding its amusement once again.
“Gauthier wants you personally, Queen to Be.”
I rode with Keane that night, escorting Mal through the back-alley roads of Dankworth with Holis and Canon at our sides.
I didn’t agree with Keane holding true to his word to someone who was not deserving of it but it wasn’t my decision.
Whatever bind that held the two men to eachother was now coming to fruition, even if I had my own doubts to the validity of Starc’s words.
Mal was in far better shape than his brother.
His gaze was frightful when Canon escorted him out of the small room that Bryson was guarding in the castle.
Had I somehow found my way past those Warrior guards to confront the Woodlands Discerni, I would have only been greeted with one of the brothers, as Keane had moved Starc down to the lower prison the first night after the attack.
The woods were quiet when we moved into them, Canon lifting the burlap sack over the Discerni’s head before he pulled him down from his horse.
Keane quietly dismounted Ash, walking over to the blonde who was now shaking, his eyes frantically looking to the forest for an escape not knowing that he was about to be given one.
“This has been arranged on behalf of your brother,” the King scowls at the man, moving forward with a green agate blade in his hand. Mal flinches as the dagger darts up quickly between his wrists, cutting through the ropes that bind him.
Keane pushes a canteen into the man’s hands, staring at him hard as Mal looks at the King in confusion.
“You’re going to make your way to La Cour,” he continues steadily, “and deliver a message to my grandfather…”
Canon steps forward with a dull blade, offering it to the shaking man.
“Your grandfather?” Mal’s voice is steeped in confusion, eyeing the blade that’s turned towards him.
“The man you know by the name of Gauthier,” Keane nods, grabbing the hilt from Canon before he places it calmly in the man’s hand.
Mal’s eyes go wide, fingers wrapping around the weapon as he stares at the King.
“Tell him that if he wants Lady Alexis he’ll need to come to Gaumond himself to get her. Tell him that I wait patiently for his arrival and will even grant him amnesty through the gates…”
“Tell him,” he glares at the trembling man in front of him, “that any more attempts on her life that do not come personally from his own hands will end with heads delivered in bags at his feet. I request his audience. In a fortnight and seven days. Make sure he gets the message.”
The blonde Discerni nods frantically, head turning to the woods around him.
“And Mal,” Keane continues coldly, eyes following the man as he takes a hesitant step towards the dark trees. “Make your peace with your brother. He will not live to see tomorrow’s sunset.”
We slept in today, forgoing our group’s training and the breakfast that followed.
Keane wrote to both of his brothers the moment we got back to the room, tasking Troy with escorting Gauthier to the Kingdom’s capitol should the man brave leaving his court.
Desmond was to forgo his pursuit of their grandfather and instead focus all of his efforts on Callous and Alanna’s brother, Joshua, the last of the group of Argents that we needed to take out.
I asked him carefully when we returned from Starc’s cell if Troy had shared the information of Callous’ distinctive features with Keane and Desmond. The King was slow to reply with a shake of his head, his brows deepening to the thought.
Keane’s strong hands were on my body the full morning, running up my legs and waist under the sheets, holding me to him.
He vowed never to hide me from his questioning again, but I had to stop him quick in those words.
It took a lot to admit, but no matter how much pain I wanted Starc to endure, I didn’t know if I could have sat through what Keane delivered over the last few days. He had completely disfigured the man.
He told me that he had taken both of his hands the first night after he saw what his summoning did to me in the hopes that the man would bleed out.
His words were steady, testing me, watching to see my reaction when I nodded in agreement with the sentiment, truly not having a problem if the man died that same day.
I didn’t take fault to his violence at all, just didn’t know if I’d be able to watch everything that came after.
Keane tensed for a moment at my side, eyes looking at me like he wanted to ask that question again, the same one that greeted me on the road in Fumagalli.
I had to pull myself up on his chest, to stare into those brown eyes that watched me carefully, wondering how much, if at all, I feared him.
But no dread or terror greeted me as I lay on top of him, nor would it ever.
I knew what kind of a man Keane was and knew that he was nothing like Starc.
He took no pleasure in the pain that he pulled forth.
I was, however, ready to move on from everything here.
Dankworth was doing well in its rebuild and all I could do now was yearn for Gaumond.
Everything in Woodlands has been hard since our arrival and I just needed a break, yet something deep in my core told me that no break would come, even in the Warrior capitol.
That we were only just experiencing the beginning.