Chapter 24
HARK
His muscles tore beneath his fighting leathers as he swung the blade again and again.
He had long cherished the burn that wielding a sword curated, the salty drip, drip, drip off his forehead as his body moved with a lethal grace.
Steel clanged around him, a private cacophony of promised violence as his lungs ached with the strain of the practised movement.
None of it was enough to drown out the ever-circling thoughts of where she was.
‘Steady, Stappen, you’re going to hurt yourself,’ Seb panted as he met the arc of Hark’s blade.
Hark grunted, tossing the hair plastered with sweat to his forehead. ‘Then it will be my own fault.’
Seb hissed as Hark’s blade nicked the side of his arm, a line of crimson already welling between the cut fabric of his tunic.
The sight of it was enough to send Hark’s blade clattering to the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, raking a hand through his hair.
‘I know you miss her – we all do,’ Seb said, sheathing the blade at his waist and clapping an arm around Hark’s shoulders.
Hark leant into it, the solidity a bolstering thing that steeled the aching part inside of him.
He did miss Arla. More than anything. More than he would have thought possible.
She had taken the most necessary parts of him and kept them for herself.
She had wriggled her way beneath his skin and fused her soul to his.
Truly, he felt lost without her.
He’d seen it in his friends too, the impact Arla had made on them – on the entirety of Claret Hall and Flambriar itself – in such a short space of time.
As if she had been a part of them from the very beginning.
Without her here now it was as though Flambriar’s heart was missing, like something was irrevocably gone from this place of magic.
A fluttering had begun in his stomach from the moment she’d left, like the wings of a hummingbird taking flight.
‘She’ll be back soon,’ Hark said, bolstering himself against the ache in his heart. ‘And with the answers she needs so the kingdoms will stand strong again. Flambriar will be strong.’
‘I know. And she’ll probably be giving Malarye hell as we speak.’
Laughter burst from Hark’s throat. ‘We’ll be lucky not to have a new enemy once she returns.’ But even through the laughter, he couldn’t muster amusement – not really. Not without her.
And with that anger still festering in her heart? He knew he would defend that to the ends of the earth, too. To him she was perfect, and he’d spend his life making sure she knew that.
Even if she sparked war with Malarye.
Hark spent the rest of the day in the city, mingling with the people, offering aid where he could, just as Arla wanted him to.
Now that he was beginning to know these people, to get used to the smiles and the way they congregated around him upon his arrival in the town, it was becoming easier to lead them. Just as she’d said it would be.
He wanted nothing more than for Arla to rule at his side. To be a queen. To claim her birthright and lead these people as the gods had wanted. It was all wishful bullshit.
Arla didn’t want to be in charge of this kingdom any more than she wanted to be caged inside Claret Hall.
He’d seen her impatience on the days when her routine suffocated her, and he had noted the instant decision to go to Malarye.
She hadn’t mulled it over, hadn’t discussed it with him.
Arla had seen the chance to escape for a little while and clung onto it as if it were a wild beast ready to flee if she took too long to slay it.
‘If you can start thinking of ways to boost the number of soldiers we employ rather than what Arla Dragonhart looks like beneath the leather of her uniform, we might be able to make it to dinner before Kase guts us,’ Jaz groaned, slamming an armful of parchment onto the mahogany table beside Hark.
Hark tried to ignore the heat in his cheeks as he met Jaz’s gaze and was relieved to find his friend’s eyes glittering with shadows of amusement. Yes, Arla Dragonhart had made her mark.
‘Sorry,’ Hark said as he sighed. He seemed to be saying it a lot recently, but he couldn’t take his gods-damned mind off her and—‘The soldiers, right. We need to boost their numbers.’
Jaz shot him an incredulous look, rolling his eyes before drawling, ‘We have enough for one flank of an army, but the rest of the mages are too young or too old or we need them to run the city.’
Of course. Hark had thought they might run into this little problem.
They had created a new kingdom and filled it with people who had been persecuted for years. There simply weren’t enough of them to build an army. And they would need one if Hark knew his father – and fuck, did he know him.
Despite Arla’s insistence that Elrod wouldn’t dare touch the mages again and wouldn’t approach them here, Hark shared his father’s determined, unyielding streak. He knew his father was planning something while Hark and these people hid away here in the mountains.
There would be war. He didn’t know when or how or where, but Elrod would come for what had been taken from him, and Flambriar needed to be ready when he did.
‘We can only do what we can, Jaz,’ he said. ‘Our numbers will grow the longer we’re here, and you’re forgetting we have another army still sleeping beneath Castle Grey.’
Jaz frowned, frustration inking itself into the lines of his face. ‘We can’t rely on dragons that Arla says will come. They haven’t so far, what’s to say they can still fly? They’ve been there almost a century, Hark. We need numbers, non-flying numbers.’
Hark loved Jaz like a brother, had always found him to possess a unique combination of being constantly pissed off with him and finding amusement in him at the same time, but fucking gods he was insistent.
‘Jaz, the numbers will grow, I know they will. In the meantime, we make sure the soldiers we have are fit and ready to fight.’
‘That’s all well and good, but—’
The sound that echoed through the corridors chilled his very blood.
He was out the door in an instant, Jaz on his heels, cloak flapping around him as Hark took in the picture before him.
He noticed the blood first. Or rather, the trail of it that was smeared all across the vast stone floor.
Then he took in the colour of the uniform worn by the man held between two of his own soldiers, and physically recoiled.
He would have preferred to see the scarlet of his father’s army, not a uniform as black as night that had been seared into his memory months ago.
The soldier now crumpled at his feet wore the uniform of the camp at the northern border. A man who had been complicit in his father’s scheme to capture and sacrifice the mages.
He groaned at Hark’s feet, earning himself a solid kick to the side from one of Flambriar’s soldiers. Hark wanted him to do it again. Again. Again.
Arla would have revelled in it.
But he had vowed not to rule as his father had done, and that meant he wouldn’t use violence as a tool. So, going against every gut instinct, he raised a hand to halt the soldier currently breaking the guard’s ribs.
‘Where did you find him?’ His voice was a faraway thing, an echo through his mind as he struggled to keep a lid on the anger that begged to erupt from him.
A group of soldiers had followed the procession into Claret Hall – the entire team Hark had sent scouting this evening. It was one of them who stepped forwards, a woman with deep brown skin and a scar running through her brow.
‘He was at the top of the valley, watching the city. A spy, no doubt.’
Hark had thought as much. ‘Take him to the dungeons, I’ll deal with him there. For now I want you to return to scout the mountains. Every inch of them. If anyone is found they’re to be killed on sight.’
At that, the man at his feet cried out. Hark didn’t have it in him to tell his soldiers not to further injure the soldier as they hauled him down to the lower levels of the hall, deep within the mountain.
Hark was already following, the clip of his boots on the flagstones drowned out by the shuffling of soldiers making their way back out into the mountains.
‘No one in the city is to know of this. I will not worry them over what we don’t yet know. If anyone asks, it was a training exercise.’
He was met with solemn eyes and the sharp jerk of chins.
‘Gods fucking help us.’
There was a small shard of his heart that felt sorry for the man in the dungeons when he finally made his way down there.
That small shard was quickly shattered when the man spat at Hark’s feet. Blood swirled into the glob of saliva that reflected the light of the torches. He should have asked Seb to do this – the gods knew he might have more control.
‘This will be simple,’ he began, his voice accented with the authority of a king. ‘You will tell me why you were in those mountains, where the rest of your unit is, and what your king has planned.’
‘And if I don’t?’ the man hacked, his face contorting as the shackles bolted into the wall chafed his wrists.
Flambriar had not been built to keep its enemies alive for long.
The dungeon itself was well lit and clean; dry and warm, though not uncomfortably so.
It was magic that filled these chambers, the weight of it heavy beneath thousands of tonnes of rock.
It kept clean air winding through the place despite its location within a literal mountain.
Hark suspected it was the most well-guarded prison, should anyone ever try to escape.
He half wanted the man to try it when he lunged at Hark, spitting the foulest names the gods had created. Arla would be impressed.
Hark laughed then – a dark, twisted sound – as he crouched to the man’s level. He thought he recognised him. He’d spent so many years living in Larkire Palace he’d have been a fool not to notice the most loyal of his father’s soldiers. The name Bain was familiar.
‘If you don’t, death will be a kinder fate than what we can do to you. Don’t forget, you imprisoned and tortured the very mages who reside here. I don’t imagine there is a limit on the pain their magic can inflict.’
Bain had the sense to gulp before attempting to steel himself. Hark admired it in a way, though the man’s stubbornness was going to get him killed quicker.
‘My soldiers are in the mountains scouting your unit, and they will kill every single one of them. Do not mistake me when I say I will do terrible things to keep this kingdom safe. Maybe I should start with you.’
Hark didn’t let himself think as he stuck a thin-bladed dagger into Bain’s left pectoral. He didn’t let himself process the anguished scream that reverberated through the dungeon. He thought he heard his guards laugh.
‘Fuck you, prince. And fuck that blonde whore. You should hear the things men say about her… The things they want to do to that jumped-up bitch—’
There was a clatter as two of Bain’s teeth hit the rock wall and fell to the floor.
Hark looked down at his fist, as if it had moved without him being aware of it.
As it happened, it was actually Sebastian who flexed his knuckles, his eyes wide and his face twisted into something capable of a violence Bain had no business withstanding.
Hark hadn’t even heard Seb approach.
‘Speak of her again and I’ll force those teeth down your fucking throat.’
‘Come to protect your master like the dog you are?’ Bain spat blood through his remaining teeth and Hark grabbed his friend’s sleeve to stop his fist reacquainting itself with the prisoner’s jaw.
‘You’d know all about dogs, Bain. Loyal as one till the minute of your death.’
Ah.
There was a personal hatred between Seb and the man before them.
It was all coming back to Hark now. It was something that went back to when Seb’s sister had been alive.
Bain had driven her out of Larkire and spread such malicious lies that Lexi had been scared to speak to a man again.
That was the thing about Bain, his ego had always been too large, and when a woman had the nerve to deny him something … he had always been a vicious male.
‘Laugh while you can. He’ll burn this place to the ground. Your precious whore with it and those kids of your sister’s—’
The blade was deep inside Bain’s heart before he could finish speaking, the gush of blood spilling over Hark’s hand a welcome warmth as he twisted the blade and watched the life blink out of the soldier’s eye.
‘Fucking prick,’ Seb said with a growl, and when Hark turned to face him he wasn’t surprised to see those familiar shadows had returned to Seb’s eyes. His sister had meant more to him than anything ever could, and he disappeared into himself often when he was reminded of the pain of her death.
Hark had no time to dwell on what he’d just done.
‘Let’s join the others. I want the whole mountain range scouted before sunrise.’
Seb nodded silently, anger and pain etched on his face.