Chapter 25
Dinner had been a quiet affair. A bowl of steaming venison stew and fried potatoes delivered by a male servant who looked at her with an apt keenness.
The rooms she had been appointed were dark and warm, and not a single window to satisfy the assassin within her.
Though she supposed the palace was indeed built into the side of a cliff and had anyone decided to give themselves chronic blisters by carving windows, she would only be looking into a wall of rock anyway.
There was a fireplace, at least, and even though Malarye was certainly warmer than Flambriar, Arla was glad of the flames in this shadowy, hidden-away room.
The bed was grand and piled with furs and woollen blankets that had seen better days, but for once, she didn’t mind the simplicity of it all.
Arla had grown accustomed to the luxury at Castle Grey, and she was treated like a queen in Flambriar, too.
Malarye’s simplicity presented a change, and it put her in the perfect mindset for spying.
No one had come to speak with her last night after she left Thara resting in a clearing of the forest just beyond the cliffs, and for that she was glad.
She had fallen asleep holding tightly to her bond with Thara, refusing to let go of it for fear that Thara was hurt and hiding it from her.
She was certain her dragon had lulled her to sleep through their connection, breathing soft clouds through the bond that filled Arla’s mind and lured her into sweet oblivion.
The bond was the first thing Arla reached for when she woke up.
‘You’ve become awfully clingy, Dragonhart. Perhaps a blunt force to the head might knock some independence back into you.’
Arla yawned, stretching her limbs then braiding her mane of hair into something that looked a little less like a bird’s nest.
‘Perhaps answers to why on earth they’ve called me here might have a better effect.’
‘Then may I suggest you get up and start demanding answers like we both know you’re capable of doing?’
Arla smiled to herself, already reacquainting herself with Arla Reinhart, King’s Assassin.
She was more than capable of demanding answers, and if she could just forget what her blood represented – what kingdom she represented – she would have no qualms about manipulating and lying to get the answers she needed.
And if not, there was always sheer force.
‘Better.’
The hallways inside Malarye’s palace were as gloomy as Arla’s rooms. Low torchlight gave the passageways an eerie feel, and it was not at all what Arla had expected. The palace was clean, and she could smell food somewhere, but nothing about the place screamed royalty or luxury.
Perhaps Queen Mara liked it that way. She certainly was not as straight forward as Arla had first thought, and to kill her husband? Well, there was definitely more to the queen than her soft smile and welcoming demeanour.
It didn’t take long for Arla to find a hall with high windows that looked out over the sea.
The space was as big as the entire ground floor of Castle Grey, and dotted throughout the space were small desks carved from rock with dozens of palace staff and advisors scurrying through the place like mice.
At one end of the room, behind a desk of similar plainness, sat Mara, wearing a very ordinary pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
The queen spoke to any and all who approached her, signing parchment after parchment and scribbling down notes from advisors who whispered in her ear.
This was a working queen. One who had foregone everything royal life had to offer and had jumped headfirst into what it meant to rule.
Her people orbited round her like she was their own personal sun with a pull to her stronger than any other force, and the people all smiled and laughed as they worked.
A pang of jealousy tarnished the back of Arla’s throat.
Flambriar would never work like this. Its people were too wary, and Hark was too stubborn to realise he needed to be a leader and shape the role according to his values.
But he’d been trying, hadn’t he? He’d promised to step up and look after the people whilst Arla was gone.
‘You know the answer. We should have killed him when we had the chance.’
Ire threatened to drown Arla, and it took every ounce of restraint not to scream back down the bond.
‘The goal was to rescue Hark. I swore it on my sword that I would go back and kill his father.’
She had sworn it, but she wasn’t na?ve enough to think she would ever be able to sneak into Larkire again, let alone kill the king who sat on its throne.
She wondered, briefly, what Orson was up to.
Was Hadalyn’s ambassador still smoothing things over between Hadalyn and Kastonia or had the scheming rat truly betrayed his king and switched sides?
‘Ah, Arla, good morning.’ Mara’s voice echoed through the vast space, capturing the attention of everyone in the room before they quickly averted their eyes and continued with what they had been doing before.
Arla moved as if her legs were stuck in treacle, a wariness in her blood that thought better of bringing out the swagger of King’s Assassin. Her boots made soft thuds on the flagstones as she told herself to get a grip.
‘Your Majesty,’ she said, nodding her head in a practised movement. She wouldn’t bow, not now she was a dragonhart. She would bow to no king – or queen.
‘I trust you slept well?’ Mara asked, hastily scrawling her signature on a formal-looking document an advisor swiped across the table.
‘Well enough, thank you.’
The queen beamed, the light of her smile brightening her eyes in this lowly lit place. ‘I’m glad to hear it. I thought you might like to have a tour of the city. You’ve travelled all this way and it would be a shame not to explore, no?’
Arla’s tongue felt heavy. She was missing something.
Though she hadn’t seen the queen on her first visit to Malarye with Cyrus, she would have expected Mara to at least acknowledge Arla’s time here, even though she spent it in a small inn close to that rocky beach.
Mara was keeping something back, playing Arla with sweet smiles and the pretence that her queendom was open for Arla to discover its secrets.
She highly doubted that.
‘I’d love to see more. My last visit was fleeting, to say the least.’
It wasn’t surprise that flickered in Mara’s eyes at Arla’s words, but understanding: that there was no game Arla would not partake in; that Mara was evenly matched in the young opponent who had arrived on the back of a dragon. Something thrilled in Arla’s blood at the prospect.
‘Indeed. I’ll have my daughter show you around. She was especially disappointed to have missed your arrival,’ Mara said, her eyes boldly meeting Arla’s.
Arla ran her tongue over her teeth. ‘I was surprised, Your Majesty, not to have met the princess already. It is her invite I have taken up, after all.’
Arla didn’t believe for one moment that the princess would have written that letter herself, but if the queen wished to share only half-truths and keep cryptic her motivations for inviting Arla to her country then so be it. She would play the game. For now.
Mara offered no explanation for why the princess couldn’t meet with Arla until the afternoon, but it gave Arla the opportunity to find Thara in the sprawling forest beyond the cliffs.
She looked a darn sight better than she had when Arla had left her yesterday evening.
Where her scales had begun to dull on their arduous journey to the continent, after a night of rest the dragon almost shone beneath the shafts of sunlight poking through the boughs of branches above them.
‘You scared me yesterday,’ Arla said slowly, a hand tracing the sleekness of Thara’s scales as the pair of them wandered through the trees. It was a testament to how vast the forest was that Thara walked beside Arla, only occasionally having to duck her enormous head.
‘You forget I have lived many lives before this one. I was around when the gods were warring, Dragonhart. I tell you I have had worse things pierce my skin.’
Arla forgot sometimes exactly how old Thara was – and the life and world and people that the dragon had known before her. Gods, she’d spent nearly a hundred years asleep!
‘I often forget that they warred. What started it?’ Arla said, forgoing the bond.
Thara was right, she was relying on it too much, craving it like a soft blanket.
She shouldn’t forget that she had a voice.
But a war between gods…? The impact must have been catastrophic.
It had been enough to send the dragons to sleep after all…
‘The gods have warred many times – over fates and lovers and the one who fell.’
‘What do you mean?’
Thara was silent for a moment, the only sound the combined crunch of leaves and fallen branches beneath their feet. When the dragon’s voice finally filled Arla’s mind, there was a sombreness that sent a chill skittering down her spine.
‘Not all gods are good, Dragonhart. Power can be a fickle thing, never enough once you have tasted it. There is one who always wanted more, one who would use dark, forbidden magic to achieve it. There is a reason the gods look down upon the Kastonian king and the blood magic he has tried to conduct. It damned one who ruled before him. They won’t suffer a repeat of it. ’
Arla’s chest felt too tight. There was so much she didn’t know. So much history that should have been inked in her blood but … she had spent her life denying it. Spent her life denying the existence of gods and magic, and she had never taken the time to learn.
‘You won’t find any of this in your books. Dark magic and its consequences are not documented for a reason, and the fallen one has been erased from the minds of any who ever knew of his deeds.’