Chapter 11 #2
Theodoric’s grip tightened around his knife.
“You’d kill me?” Amaris looked to Theodoric, her voice cracking like she was some pubescent teen.
“My son will do what he must to protect Luana Bay. If that means ridding Magoria of a murderer, then so be it,” the duke raged.
His son? Luana Bay? Magoria? A tightness in her chest overcame her breaths, as if a rubber band squeezed around her, taking every bit of life from her soul. Where the hell am I?
“Who are you?” Amaris was certain she was about to discover the biggest disaster of her life.
“If I give you the common courtesy of answering your question, will you answer mine?” he asked, and she nodded. “I’m Randolf Fastrada, Duke of Luana.”
“Amaris Carter.” She held strong against the fear she grappled with and pulled from Alan’s grasp to hold her own head high.
Keeping the bite from her words was going to prove difficult, but she stifled the rage settling beneath.
It was routine, throwing up her mask to prevent a fight.
She released a breath and allowed her mask to settle over her features. It would keep her alive for now.
“I was informed you were found at the scene of Lord Freville’s brutal murder,” the duke said.
“I didn’t kill him,” Amaris began. “It was dark, and I fell—”
The duke raised his hand, and Amaris pursed her lips. If she followed along, maybe she could get out of it. He shifted on his throne, eyeing the sandy-haired man behind him. “Chief Bennet.”
“Lord Freville’s blood taints your hands,” Bennet began, descending the dais.
Amaris fought an eye roll for his dramatic display but immediately reminded herself she wasn’t in a dream. She’d been kidnapped, and these people were dangerous.
“You were covered in it as you leered over his body, watching us and waiting to kill us next.”
“I tripped,” Amaris cut in. “I couldn’t see a thing.”
“Liar!” Bennet snapped.
Amaris recoiled against his intimidation as he took a last daunting step and kneeled before her. “Please,” she begged, feeling her mask slipping away. “I want to go home.” She didn’t care about their fight or whether Derek would be drunk or sober. She wanted him, his protection.
She stiffened as Bennet’s hand reached for her face, but Alan was behind her, holding her shoulder still.
“What a beautiful mark,” he whispered only to her, the tip of his finger dragging down her cheek.
Her hand twitched as he slid his finger over the cut from Derek’s ring, forever etched into her mind. No, it was an accident.
A dull ache spread across her skin as he pinched her cheeks and shifted her face to examine the cut and what felt like a bruise.
She tore her face from his grasp and her mask slipped.
“Don’t touch me.” Fiery hatred swarmed her skin, prickling along the surface, but she forced it down again as Bennet sneered.
She would only make matters worse for herself, but every muscle in her body wanted to fight. It was what Viv would want her to do.
“You’re going to tell us why you’re here and why you killed a member of noble birth,” Bennet said, “before I slit your throat here and now.”
The duke coughed, and Bennet’s grip tightened around his dagger. Bennet stood and took up a stance beside Theodoric with his knife still firmly clutched in his hand and a vein bulging in his forehead.
Amaris returned her attention to the duke, who said, “I would like to hear your side of the story—how you came to Luana and how you came upon Lord Freville.”
Amaris couldn’t piece together the situation in her head, let alone explain it to anyone else. “I…” The words hung in the back of her throat as Bennet’s eyes homed in. “I’m not sure what happened. One minute I was home and…”
The blue stars. Her mind emptied.
The duke cleared his throat, pulling Amaris back into the torch-lit throne room, encasing them in dark and looming shadows.
“I couldn’t see a thing.” She would contemplate the celestial anomalies later. “I stumbled on him, like you all did.”
Theodoric raised an inquisitive eye at her before wincing and gripping the bridge of his nose. Amaris narrowed in on the squinting of his features and the clenching of his fist, but she quickly shifted her attention to the duke. “I couldn’t kill anyone.”
“You were covered in his blood and have the injuries of a fresh fight. No one else was in those woods,” Bennet snapped.
“I ran away.”
She immediately wanted to suck the words back in. She was expecting them to be a lie, but the cringe inside her when she told even the tiniest of lies was absent. She had run away. She’d run out on Derek.
“Where were you running from?” the duke asked. “From what my soldiers describe, there wasn’t a city or village for miles.”
Every thought evaporated. Theodoric had asked her who she was running from in those woods, and she’d almost said the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it now. It was an accident. Derek didn’t mean to hit her, and she shouldn’t have run out on him.
“Where were you running from?” The duke’s voice carried through the room, silencing the even breaths of everyone around her.
Gainesville was on the tip of her tongue. Would they believe her? Theodoric had spouted all sorts of places Amaris had never heard of, and he didn’t seem to recognize it when she told him the other night. What if it didn’t exist to them?
Panicking, she looked to Theodoric, but he didn’t acknowledge her as his eyes pinned to the floor, and he gave his head a slight shake.
The duke raised a suspicious brow. “Are you a slave?”
“What?”
“If you’re not a slave and you claim you weren’t the one behind this attack, we will need proof of your innocence.”
Amaris tried to keep her focus on the duke, but Theodoric continued to pull her gaze as he rubbed the back of his neck, and his chest moved at a swift pace.
Proof? Amaris didn’t have any evidence. She was still proving to herself what the hell happened. The room began to shrink in on her. “I don’t have anything.”
A murmur went through the crowd, but the duke didn’t silence them. Amaris studied his stony face, not a single bit of emotion crossing his features.
“As you are unable to provide evidence to the accusations against you—”
“Wait—”
“Do not interrupt me!” the duke roared.
Bennet’s eyes flared with excitement, but there wasn’t rage in Theodoric’s gaze. He didn’t even appear to be listening anymore.
“I will have no choice—”
“What about what happened in the river?”
The crowd silenced. The tapping of the duke’s ringed finger was the only sound emanating through the throne room. Her one stupid act of pure instinct could possibly be her only mercy.
“I saved him.”
Theodoric’s face snapped up to meet hers, finally pulled back into the conversation, but his face was draining of color. Amaris kept a hesitant eye on him.
“What do you mean you saved him?” the duke asked, but the slight flicker of anger within his features wasn’t aimed at her but at Theodoric.
“His horse bucked him off into the river. I’m the one who jumped in and got his head out of the water.
” Amaris bit back against the words she wanted to fling at the duke and forced herself to be reasonable.
If she continued to fight back, she would end up spending the rest of her life locked in that cell.
“Would a murderer have rescued your son, jumped into a dangerous river, risked their own life?”
Theodoric stiffened as she hooked him. He gripped the hilt of his dagger and opened his lips as if to say something, but he closed them.
The duke stroked his beard, pulling at the edges. “How did you come to possess such talents?”
“I’m trained,” Amaris uttered. Likely no one here would know what a paramedic was either.
“You’re a mystique then?”
Gris had asked her that. Was that their version of a medical professional?
The duke leaned forward, interlacing his hands as he rested them upon his knees. His white eye glared at her like it was reading her thoughts.
“I’m trained in the medical field well enough to know your son has a severe concussion and has been struggling with a headache ever since the incident.”
Theodoric’s stoic expression broke with the widening of his eyes. The duke turned sharply to him, but Theodoric trained his focus on Amaris.
“How do you know that?” he asked, his words coming out quick with his breaths.
“As I said, well-versed in the medical field.” Amaris sharpened her eyes, attempting to give him that soul-piercing glare his father was immaculate at.
“Is anyone able to corroborate Miss Carter’s story?” the duke shouted.
Gris hadn’t told them about the river or that Amaris had given up multiple opportunities to escape. She scanned the crowd, but Gris was nowhere to be seen.
“She’s lying,” Bennet snapped. “Gris pulled him from the river.”
Amaris glared at Theodoric, begging him to remember something and stand up for her, but his cheeks were stark white, and he widened his stance. Is he going to faint? Amaris tried to stand and lunge for him, but Alan slammed against her shoulders and forced her back to the ground.
“Captain,” the duke barked, “can you attest to any of this?”
Theodoric jerked his gaze from his father, back to Amaris, but his eyes were wide, and his chest heaved.
He rapidly blinked as his fingers released the hold on his dagger and twitched.
Her gut tightened. He staggered and reached for his head.
She struggled once more to run toward him, but she was too late. Theodoric collapsed.
A gasp hung over the crowd, but Amaris was out of Alan’s reach and kneeling over Theodoric before the duke was out of his seat.
She dropped her cheek to his face and slipped her finger over his pulse.
Thankfully, he was breathing, and his heart was beating.
A crowd gathered behind her and a hand gripped her wrist.
“Step back!” Bennet seethed.
“Let her,” the duke ordered, kneeling on Theodoric’s other side.
Amaris didn’t stop to question him. She opened Theodoric’s eyes and checked his pupils, but neither of them seemed larger than the other.
Her hands brushed the sides of his face, but he didn’t feel feverish.
Why had he passed out? She fussed with the tie around his collar, opening the top of his shirt.
Maybe his concussion was worse than she expected.
She reached for his wrist to check his heart rate, but her hand felt a warm substance.
Blood seeped from small crescent moons in his palm and stained his fingernails red.
What if it’s not the concussion? She rubbed her knuckles into his sternum.
He needed a hospital, or at least more than whatever a mystique was, but what if a hospital didn’t exist?
Theodoric grimaced and squirmed beneath her hand. His eyes fluttered open, and Amaris sank back on her heels. His stunned gaze jumped to the faces crowded around him as he pushed up to his elbows.
The duke settled his hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Theodoric ripped his arm from his father’s touch, and he stood. He swayed for a moment, and Amaris gripped his arm to steady him. His eyes bore into her, and she quickly pulled back.
The chatter of the room stilled as Theodoric headed toward the main doors.
“I have a proposition,” the duke announced, and Theodoric stopped short. “You can prove your innocence as Luana Bay’s mystique.”
How would that prove anything? “But I’m innocent!”
“That is still to be seen,” the duke roared.
“You’ll remain here and provide care as you have my son to the people of Luana.
In time, you will either prove your allegiance, and therefore innocence, or”—the word was a threat in itself—“if you prove to be a murderer…well, I have no problem with my son spilling your blood on this very floor.”
Amaris swallowed. His threat was almost like a promise that, one day, he would personally fulfill. It filled her with dread. The doors slammed open and startled her as Theodoric stormed into the hall, fuming.