Chapter 40 Aldric
Chapter forty
Aldric
The night at the roadside inn had been long—colder than it should’ve been. But perhaps that was because he had spent it posted outside Sera’s door, listening to the quiet rise and fall of her breath through the thin wall.
Then a full day’s ride.
Then the gates of Goldreach at last.
Now, the dungeon.
Jaw clenched, hand braced against the rough-hewn stone wall, Aldric carefully navigated the narrow steps leading down into the bowels of his kirei’s palace.
The air was damp and choked with torch smoke.
Calix’s silhouette descended before him, silently leading the way further into the black.
The clank of Coreto’s chains sounded just behind him, where Rakon kept a firm grip on the bound duke.
Victory should have tasted sweeter than this.
But it didn’t.
“Where is my son?” Coreto abruptly asked, his voice echoing eerily in the silence.
If only Sera had let him gag the man.
“Elsewhere,” he rasped, “but alive.”
At least he had been able to talk his wife into that much. Separate cells in the dungeon. Unaware of the other’s whereabouts. Guarded only by men Sir Arkwright named as those he trusted most.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Coreto was too dangerous to be left alive.
Unease coiled low in his gut as they finally reached the bottom of the stairs, and Calix continued onward, passing rows of empty cells. His second twirled a heavy iron ring of keys around his finger as he went, whistling.
“Hurry up,” Rakon rumbled.
Behind him, boots scuffed against stone, as if the duke had stumbled.
“What a wonderful lap dog you make,” Coreto seethed, like a viper spitting venom from the shadows. “Doing everything your queen commands you to do.”
Aldric’s jaw flexed. Lap dog.
It was as if the duke knew how many times he had replayed that very moment in his mind since yesterday—the sound of his own voice saying as my queen commands, far too easily, far too naturally.
He’d meant it to be a threat. A performance. Sera thought him to be her pet bogeyman. The world might as well think it, too.
So why had it felt…true?
His hands curled into fists. Without glancing back at the prisoner, without dignifying the other man’s taunt with a response, he marched on, only pausing when he stood before the cell at the very end of the corridor.
Calix slid the key into the lock and shoved the iron door open. The hinges groaned. Dampness clung to the air, thick with the scent of rust and wet stone.
Aldric stepped aside and jerked his chin toward the dark opening. “Inside,” he growled.
When Coreto didn’t move of his own accord, Rakon pushed the duke across the threshold and straight into the opposite wall. With a grunt, the duke caught himself against the hard stone and shot him a baleful look.
He ignored that look.
“Shackle him,” he commanded Calix instead; his second-in-command hurried to comply.
“Oh, how flattering,” Coreto mocked him further as Calix slapped the heavy cuffs affixed to the far wall around his ankles and wrists. “The dreaded Crow of Drakmor, ordering me to be chained. Am I truly so great a threat to the realm?”
Aldric met the duke’s gaze, unblinking. After a moment’s pause, he glanced to Rakon instead. “Gag him.”
Coreto balked, some of his seemingly ever-present smugness finally dissipating.
“You cannot gag me. I am a member of the peerage.” When Rakon ignored him and pulled a filthy rag from his jerkin—the very one he used to clean his boots—the duke blanched further.
“The queen forbids you from gagging me,” he desperately reminded.
In response to that, Aldric could only shrug. “I suppose I’m not a very good lap dog, after all.”
A single curse slipped from Coreto’s lips before Rakon shoved the rag into his mouth, gagging him.
Aldric fought the urge to entertain a satisfied smirk at the other man’s expense. Gloating wasn’t his way. He wasn’t his brother, Edmund. But it felt good to remind the duke that he wasn’t completely wound around Sera’s fingers.
Keep telling yourself that. Maybe it’ll become true.
“Father?” a voice called from just outside the cell. Kyn.
Calix stepped back out into the corridor first, cracking a smile. “Look at that! Soft hands himself made his way down into the dungeons. Careful now, or you might step on a rat.”
Aldric soon followed, Rakon not far behind. “What is it, Kyn?”
Kyn took the time to shoot Calix an unamused look before handing over a folded letter addressed to him: Aldric. He knew without asking who it was from. His wife. He brushed his thumb over the swooping curves of his name penned upon the paper. He would know her writing anywhere.
And she was the only person who called him Aldric.
He hated how a part of him was starting to prefer it to the Crow.
Calix craned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the letter. Playfully, he let loose with a warbling whistle in imitation of Leif from the other day.
The whistle to warn of encroaching danger.
Aldric shot his half-Kunishi Son a withering look. “Shut it, Calix.”
A strange heat warmed the back of his neck as he shuffled off by several steps to open his letter and read it in peace.
Aldric, his kirei wrote, I had hoped you would join me this evening in my quarters for a celebration.
The very words made his heart seize. In her quarters? Alone?
But of course not. He should have known better. Why would Sera wish to see him alone? Fool, he cursed inwardly. As if she would ever…
Bring your men, the letter continued. The ones you trust most. Because I had hoped that you might trust me enough now…that you would consider bringing You-Know-Who, too.
Reyla. His kirei wished to include Reyla in the festivities. Clearly, Sera trusted him, inviting him and his most loyal men into her private quarters.
She merely hoped he trusted her.
But if she was truly offering him her trust, then he could no longer deny her the knowledge of why she shouldn’t trust him at all.
That thought slithered through his gut, adding to the unease already resting heavy there. It carved out a place just beneath his ribs, making his chest ache. No more secrets. That was what he had promised.
“Boss?” Rakon asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“Lock the duke’s cell,” Aldric commanded, his throat thick.
Carefully folding Sera’s letter, he tucked it beneath his jerkin.
Next to his heart. That letter was nothing more than a mere piece of paper, and yet it seemed heavier than an anchor seeking to weigh him down—heavier than the truth he had kept buried for weeks.
Because he knew what he had to do now.
He finally had to tell Sera what truly happened that night with the assassin.
He had to tell her everything.