Chapter 57
A GOOD PLAN
FELíNE SAT ATOP A HANDSOME sorrel gelding wearing buff-colored breeches, a hunter green blouse with billowing sleeves and embellished cuffs that contrasted beautifully against her horse’s bright bronzy coat, and a cream corset vest with pearl buttons.
Her hair had been styled in a twisting half-updo, secured by a jeweled clasp shaped like an autumn tree shedding citrine and amber leaves into her wealth of dark waves.
The clothes had been a gift from Kal; she hadn’t asked where he’d gotten them.
Beulah’s eldest daughter, Pheryn, had crafted and given her the hair pin.
Felíne’s spine was straight, shoulders pulled back, and gloved hands gently resting her reins against red withers.
She looked every bit a princess of Ilistaar.
So much so that no one would guess she was a writhing bundle of nervous energy, a pitiful excuse for a horsewoman, and felt like clawing her way out of her own skin.
A concealed dagger had been sheathed along her leather-clad calf in case anything went wrong—Daybreak was deemed too ostentatious for her ensemble—and a sheen of sweat coated her palms and the back of her neck.
Something would go wrong. Felíne could feel it. Someone would get hurt. Or one of the archers would make a miscalculation. Or—
“Take a breath, Kitty, love. You look about to faint.”
Felíne glanced over to where Adder sat astride his own mount—a bay mare with one blue eye and white socks. The two of them waited just inside the shaded tree line, still fully concealed from any onlookers outside the forest’s boundary.
“This is a mistake.”
Adder clucked his tongue. “Have a little faith, love. It’s a good plan.”
It was a good plan. Reliable Meressian scouts reported that King Domitan had arrived with a modest host, less than a quarter of his main army by their estimations.
This told Kal that the king hadn’t come to make battle.
He’d ventured beyond the safety of the capital’s city walls for one thing: Felíne.
Domitan’s envoy conveyed his king’s proposal of an even trade—one Cinah Creed, unharmed, in exchange for the Prima of Asteros, equally unmolested.
No tricks. No exchange of blows. As Meress’s Battle Master, Kal had received the missive directly.
Felíne was to ride out of Stillwater Wood into the open southwestern plain, meet her father and Cinah, and then the King of Asteros would release his captive, turn around in possession of his daughter, and peacefully return to the capital.
Felíne didn’t buy it. Sagely, neither did Kal.
Instead, when Felíne reached a designated spot several horse-lengths short of halfway, Kal’s best archer would fire a flaming bolt into a hidden cache of explosives, a preexisting component of Stillwater Wood’s border defenses, which had been routinely inspected for efficacy just a few nights prior.
The bolt would ignite the plain in a fiery line, effectively cutting Domitan off from his men.
Felíne would flee back into the safety of the wood—as her horse had been trained—Kal would take the king alive—per Felíne’s specific request—and Adder would ride out to aid Cinah.
The Meressian militia would handle any Asterosian soldiers who managed to brave the flames in attempts to reach their king.
By the time the blaze burned to a smolder, the Meressians would be safely ensconced once more within the depths of the forest, and the Asterosian army would be relieved of their ruler, left to scurry back to their last remaining monarch.
As Adder said, it was a good plan. So why was Felíne’s every instinct screaming at her to abandon this folly?
Kal emerged from between the trees, and her worried thoughts evaporated like desert mist, breath catching in her throat.
He was resplendent sitting astride his bronze-plated battle steed, a midnight warrior, black head to toe in defiance of the clear autumn morning.
Kal wore a long-sleeved tunic tucked into riding leathers and oiled boots.
A leather-armored vest protected his chest, flanks, and the tops of his thighs.
His shoulders were covered by segmented plates that extended down over his muscled upper arms, allowing for full range of motion.
A stiff collar guarded his otherwise vulnerable throat.
He wore no helm. Battle Master Kaine wanted his enemy to know his face.
And what a face it was. Obsidian warpaint had been smeared in a thick band over the lower half of Kal’s forehead, eyes, and the bridge of his nose.
His full lips were set in a grim line, unshaved jaw clenching.
His hair had been freshly shorn, sides cut close to his skull in a burst around each ear.
Intricately shaved designs adorned each temple and extended toward the longer curling strands that grew in a tangled line from his forehead to his nape.
Onyx eyes found Felíne and flared with stygian fire.
Sig snorted and tossed his proud head, setting the flame emblazoned over his forelock dancing. Kal pulled him up alongside Felíne’s gentler mount.
“Green.”
Felíne tilted her head. “I beg your pardon?”
Kal’s gaze raked over her. “When the world is finished going to hell and duty no longer demands our attention, I’m throwing a ball and gowning you in green. Verdigris, jade, veridian, sage. The shade doesn’t matter. Green is your color.”
Felíne felt her face flush.
Kal and Adder exchanged a nod of greeting, and then Kal’s attention returned to her. “You’re ready.”
It wasn’t a question. If he’d asked, she would have certainly said no. But stated as he did, the words steeled her with an improbable fraction of confidence.
Kal nodded. “It’s time.” He touched his heels to Sig’s sides, urging the stallion forward. Then he twisted in the saddle. “You look nothing like a princess of Asteros, Kitty. You look like a queen of Ilistaar.”
Felíne traced the terrible, beautiful lines of his face. Memorized them. “And you, Kalevar Kaine, look like a demon come to collect his due.”
Kal’s stony visage split with a devil’s grin. He let his gaze linger on her for another breath, then clucked to Sig and rode off into the forest.
“Give ‘em hell, mate,” Adder murmured.
They sat under the canopy of trees for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the wind sigh through the boughs, rustling the leaves, and watching the strengthening morning light bathe the forest floor, coaxing tiny woodland creatures from their burrows.
The soft warbling of a distant songbird had Adder cocking his head toward the sound.
Thundercloud eyes landed on her. “That’s your signal, love. Domitan’s in the field.”
Felíne swallowed and nodded, throat suddenly too tight to speak.
“We’ll be right behind you.”
She squeezed her calves. The sorrel stepped forward.
You’re ready, she thought, mentally chanting Kal’s assurance. You can do this.
Felíne’s gelding broke through the line of demarcation that marked the boundary of Stillwater Wood, gaze trained ahead. Somewhere behind her, Kal tracked her progress, waiting for her to reach that invisible point in the field, his archer at the ready.
Ahead, a lone rider on a massive black charger waited.
She gripped the reins tighter, fighting the tremor in her stiff fingers.
Her father. The King of Asteros. Even from this distance, she could discern his rigid posture, the arrogant tilt of his head.
Felíne couldn’t yet make out fine detail, but she wagered he wore his ever-present elitist expression, surveying his yet invisible foes with perpetual disdain.
The king might have been the only other rider on the field, but he was not alone. A rope was tied to his pommel, the other end fastened about the neck of a tall, dark-skinned man who stood near the warhorse’s shoulder.
Cinah Creed. Kal’s friend. The man who’d helped to shelter Kal as a boy after Felíne’s parents had slaughtered his. The man whom Santhe said had sacrificed dignity and personal freedom to help his friends. And her father had dragged him by a leash onto the field like a scolded hound.
Every thud of her horse’s hooves reverberated through Felíne’s skeleton. Closer. Closer still.
Another tremor wracked her frame. Nerves? Anger? Shame? She couldn’t tell.
Five more paces. Felíne spied the outlier sapling that marked her destination, its skinny green branches bowing to the gust that swept through the open plain. The lower half of Felíne’s unpinned hair whipped over her shoulders and into her face.
Finally, she gathered the sorrel’s reins closer and eased to a halt. The swaying of the browning grass was the only sound. Felíne counted her heartbeats.
Then her father spoke.
“Prima.”
Prima. Never daughter. Never my blood, my joy, or my treasure. Just Prima. She’d heard the title of her birthright a thousand times. So why did the coldness of that one word suddenly rip into her with frigid claws?
“Domitan,” she replied with an apathy that surprised her. He’d never really felt like what she imagined a father should, and she no longer believed he deserved the title of king.
The king glared across the distance down his proud aquiline nose, taking her measure the way one might assess livestock for purchase. “I trust you have retained your purity.”
Felíne clenched the reins. The gelding pawed the ground, sensing her stiffen with offense. For all her father knew, she could have spent these past weeks suffering mistreatment and abuse. “If I haven’t?”
The king’s lip curled. “Then this retrieval will have been in vain. What value has a soiled maiden? Bloodline notwithstanding, the Goddess requires a chaste Prima.”
She recoiled. Retrieval. As though he’d come to collect a heifer that had carelessly wandered from the herd. “Fear not, King of Asteros, your daughter remains untouched.”
He grunted. “Your mother’s mender will ascertain as much. Come.”
Felíne didn’t move. “Your bargain.”
Domitan’s eyes lit with ire. He jerked at the rope’s tie on his saddle and tossed his end to the ground. Cinah staggered forward, hands bound in front of him.
Please don’t miss, Felíne prayed silently to Kal’s archer. She tapped her heels, and her gelding stepped forward past the sapling tree.
A whistling pierced the air. Domitan’s head snapped to his left, where a single flaming arrow buried itself into a rough patch of ground. Felíne flinched, ducking her head away, bracing for the explosion.
One breath. Two.
Nothing happened.
A second arrow joined the first.
Again, nothing.
Fear, cold and consuming, lanced through her. A terrible sound filled the impossible silence. One that rattled Felíne’s courage and snuffed out what little optimism she held. Laughter. King Domitan threw his head back and laughed.
“Do your captors take me for a fool, Prima? Did they think I wouldn’t discover their trap?
That I haven’t had men watching the forest boundary for days?
” He leaned forward in his saddle and bellowed at the woodland behind her.
At the enemy he knew waited beyond his sight.
“Idiots! Cowards! You’re all dead men!” The king hefted a horn to his lips and blew.
The bugle hadn’t yet died when men wearing Asterosian armor burst from camouflaged trapdoors throughout the field.
The clamor of battle-hungry shurii disrupted the tranquil landscape as fifty-odd men flooded the plain, evacuating a line of hidden pits where the Meressian explosives and fuel stores had been.
One soldier surfaced not two feet from Felíne’s horse, shouting like a madman. The sorrel gelding reared. Felíne yelped. She grabbed a fistful of mane with one hand and the saddle with the other. The reins fell from her grasp in her desperation to remain seated.
Farther down the field, Felíne spied a flash of bronze as a phantom figure charged from the tree line, but her horse sidestepped violently, and she lost her focus.
A war cry rent the air.
Kal.
Another whistle and a thick-shafted arrow pierced the ground several feet in front of her, missing Cinah Creed by inches.
More arrows joined the first, seeking the king’s men.
Grunts and cries created a chorus of pain as several soldiers fell.
Not enough. Domitan blew his horn again.
The king’s archers hoisted coated boltheads.
A cluster of indigo flames rose in the air, the ignited projectiles of a dozen longbows pointing skyward.
Felíne’s stomach plummeted. Something was wrong with those flames. She groped desperately for her reins.
Cinah dropped to his knees and gripped the shaft of the arrow at his feet, yanking it free.
The longbows loosed their flaming arrows toward Stillwater Wood. Domitan followed their trajectory with wicked delight.
Cinah rose, twisted, and plunged the barbed bolt into the king’s warhorse. The animal screamed and lashed out with deadly hooves, striking Cinah in the chest. He fell. Domitan yelled in outrage as he attempted to control his panicked steed.
The flaming arrows of Asteros finally fell, just outside Stillwater Wood’s boundary.
The Meressian explosives detonated with a ground-shattering boom.
Felíne screamed as a line of violet-blue fire erupted, ripping across the forest border where she and Adder had waited beneath the denser canopy.
It blazed in a violent torrent farther up where she’d seen Kal ride into the clearing.
Where Beaumont Stonehaugh and the other Meressian militia had been readying to take the field. Penn was there. Santhe, too.
Felíne could only gape in horror as the roar of an unnatural wildfire blazed a hellish path into the wooded sanctuary where she was meant to retreat. She hadn’t regained her reins. She couldn’t give her frightened horse any direction.
It didn’t matter.
The sorrel gelding did exactly what he’d been trained to do—he ran away from the fire. Away from Kal. Away from her friends. Away from Meress and Stillwater Wood.
Her horse galloped for the far plain, carrying her to the ridge on the western horizon and straight toward the remainder of King Domitan’s army.