24. Chapter 24
Logan
Morngate’s green and yellow flags stretched for miles along our border. Their numbers were terrifying, uncountable and bleeding into the forest behind them. Many more hid in the belly of trees—hundreds and thousands of heartbeats overlapping each other.
Though our numbers were only half that of the human armies, we could easily tear through them with our bare teeth.
But there’d be no victory out of this war.
Only slaughter. And I refused to lead men into a bloodbath orchestrated purely for the fun of a filthy tyrant who sought entertainment in the suffering of many.
Arthur and Henry walked behind me as we crossed what would be the battlefield. Human soldiers tensed with each step we took into Morngate territory, cautiously watching us with their hands wrapped around their weapons.
“This is a long fucking shot, Logan,” Henry muttered as King Ignatius’s soldiers raised their rifles, pointing them in our direction just as we reached the king’s tent.
If I had any chance at getting back to my wife in time, this had to end here without a single weapon raised at one another.
The old human king sat there alone in his cold iron armour, in front of a chess game and a glass of liquor. His hair and thick beard were already grey, his skin marked by the sun and age. His voice was hoarse, unforgiving, as he said, “You could have sent an emissary.”
I sat across from him on the table. “So could you.”
His sunken green eyes finally raised from the chess game, meeting mine. “I wanted to see who would have succeeded Ulric had I allowed him the chance.”
“My father is Edmund Duncan,” I told him, moving the bishop to take his knight. “Ulric is just the man who killed him. I am just the son of the man he killed. And I am the man who killed him.”
He lightly scoffed, making his move on the board. “As far as I know, Ulric is still alive.”
“Not when I left the palace last night,” I told him, positioning my rook in the direct line of his queen. “You know I’ve been poisoning him for years. I’ve let your spies tell you as much.”
He quietly studied me. “You think you’ve played me?
” he mused, running his fingers through his beard as he studied my moves.
“You think your ploys against Ulric have subdued my anger and kept me from attacking Mortdale? Maybe I was waiting for the right moment when he was weak and feeble from his own son’s cruelty. ”
“Maybe. But it delayed you long enough.” I took the pawn he’d moved. “And I’m not his son. My father was Edmund Duncan.”
His rook took one of my pawns. “Yet here we are.” He studied me for a moment. “So, Mortdale is without a king.”
“Mortdale has a queen.”
His eyes disappeared under his wrinkled frown. “I hear his daughter, Princess Luella, is sick.”
“She’s dead,” I sighed, moving my bishop to take one of his pawns. “Her older sister—a royal guard officer who has been training under my command—has succeeded him. It was voted by the parliament just before we were called here by you.”
Audrey and I had not met by pure coincidence.
Immediately after Heath died, I had tracked down as many of Ulric’s bastards as I could find, already aware of Ulric’s plans for me.
Audrey was the daughter of a palace maid, one of many of Ulric’s victims. She was a woman twice the man I was.
Thrice the man Ulric could have ever been.
Not only was she finely educated, but she was a master of war and politics.
I’d taught her to fight, to strategise, to keep herself alive.
She would be the best queen Mortdale had ever had.
And I would be there to see her become just that.
As I’d given the parliament my word in exchange for their support in electing Audrey and booting the exarch back to the holy walls to do what he did best—pray to unyielding Saints.
The old human king sat in silence for a long while. “I take it that Ulric had very little say in it.”
“I can stretch a threat a very long fucking way.”
The last gift the cosmic entities had gifted me was those last breaths Ulric had held onto—he’d stayed alive long enough for me to break the news. That a woman would succeed him. A half witch, nonetheless.
“Vampires and their politics will always fascinate me.” With a sigh, he tipped over his king, resigning the game.
“There will be no surrender today. My army will kill yours tonight whether that is by force or not. You should understand I am here for vengeance. This will be the last thing I do before I die. It is time I die; I’ve been alone for some time now. ”
“What happened to your daughter was—”
“Slaughter. A massacre that’s gone too long unavenged.”
“Not by the hands of vampires. My people had nothing to do with her death. There is no record of her passing through our borders, Ignatius. You know Ulric was lying; I know you’ve always known that.”
He took a long gulp of his liquor and set the glass down with a heavy thud. “I’ve read your letters. I know what you claim.”
I put a document on the table. “We might have no record of her passing though Mortdale, but I did manage to find proof of passage through Greyvale. She was killed almost near your borders, Ignatius. She was nowhere near Mortdale at the time. Ulric lied.”
His harsh eyes dropped from mine to the document on the table. “You’d do this to a dying man. You’d lie to a dying man?”
“I’d do worse things to a dying man. But you’re not dying. The alpha is trying to locate her burial site. If you cooperate with him instead of initiating this useless war, it would happen thrice as fast.”
He shot to his feet, anger boiling beneath his skin as he grabbed me by the collar before immediately pulling back, staring wide-eyed at my chest.
He pointed a shaky finger at Willow’s necklace around my neck. “That…that belonged to my daughter.”
I clutched the white stone in my fist. “It belongs to my wife.”
He shook his head. “That exact stone was passed to my daughter by her late mother. It was a mourning gift.” He reached a shaky hand in my direction. “May I?”
When I didn’t move, he added, “There is an inscription at the back. Sorrow—”
“Is a white dove,” I finished, and his eyes went wide. “The necklace was left to my wife by her human mother.”
“And your wife is—”
“Her name is Willow Rose Duncan. A Meridian witch.”
The old king stumbled a few steps back until he dropped back on his seat, clutching the back of his head.
“Impossible. Agnes sent news that Eudoria’s child had died.
Killed by vampires along with her brother.
She corroborated Ulric's claims. I had no reason not to believe either. She wrote to me that her corpse had been unrecognisable and had buried my granddaughter in Meridian. She let me visit the grave.”
Saints. My eyes widened. Agnes had substantiated Ulric’s lies about vampires being the ones to have killed his daughter? I quickly shook my head, trying to focus on what he’d just told me about my wife. “Agnes’s brother?”
He nodded. “Roderic Briar was married to my Eudoria. The child would have been Agnes’s niece.” His hands and voice shook as he stared at me wide-eyed. “And you’re saying…you’re saying the child who gave you that necklace is alive?” His thin, wrinkled mouth trembled. “Willow, was it not?”
I nodded, still trying to process the fact that Agnes was Willow’s blood relative.
He stood, pacing the tent while tears settled in the corners of his hollow eyes. “It seems there will be no war today, after all.”
He sat on the rock at the edge of the battlefield, watching our armies lay at rest side by side. His shaking fingers rolled over my wife’s whitelock.
A pale tear rolled down his sunburnt face. “It is impossible. Why would she do this? Why wouldn’t she tell me the child is alive?”
“To bring us here. Initiate this war. Why eliminate us herself when we could do it for her? Willow has also figured Agnes was to be blamed for the Madness that has been plaguing my kind for years now. Something else that she’d stirred around to make us blame you for.”
He shook his head. “What is she even planning?”
“Whatever it is, it would have started here. With both human and vampire blood spilled.”
A plan so well thought I’d not even considered entertaining it. The manner of execution would have been brilliant if she’d not made one mistake—handing Willow over to me.
“And she married her to you?”
“I didn’t give Agnes a choice,” I said, slinging the whitelock around my neck again. “I chose Willow myself.”
He seemed stunned by the revelation, his sunken eyes bouncing between mine for several minutes. “I’d like to meet her. I have to meet her.”
My body and mind recognised a threat—it couldn’t help but tense at his words. “She’s everything you stand against. What happens when you meet her? Will you brand her like you do to everyone of her kind? Will you call her a heretic, treat her as such?”
His old eyes filled with dread—regret, too, it seemed, because they lowered to the gravelly ground.
“I always blamed Roderic for what happened to my Eudoria. A heretic…a warlock is cursed, I’d told her back then.
Touched by the devil, I told her when she revealed to me she was in love with him.
I warned her to be careful, that nothing good would come from it.
I thought it would make the pain a little smaller if I blamed Roderic’s kind for robbing me of my daughter’s love.
She chose to be with him. And I never quite accepted that.
That she’d pick him over her own family.
Her mother died from grief not long after.
I lost two of the people I loved most in such a short span, I didn’t even give myself time to think before I raised those banners. ”
“It seems they were both running away from Meridian,” I told him. “They were coming back to you.”
He shook his lowered head in defeat. His heartbreak was loud despite the quiet sorrow in his voice.
“If only I had known he was bringing her to me. I’d have resented Roderic a little less.
” Inhaling a deep breath, he raked a long look over our armies.
“It won’t change what I have done to her kind.
I don’t want to ask for her forgiveness, I just want to see her. Consider it a dying man’s wish.”
The urge to hide her as fast as I could from the world was grave. “She’s spent all her life thinking she was alone. I would do anything for her to know she’s never been alone in this world. You can see her,” I said, standing.