CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Crown for a Hostage
SERAPHINE
Lucian locked me in his rooms.
I escaped through the window.
Some relationships develop slowly.
Ours had apparently advanced to mutual kidnapping prevention.
The old quarry lay five miles beyond the western gate, carved into a hillside abandoned after the stone ran black. Snow covered the upper ledges. Torchlight flickered below.
I reached it before midnight.
Elias waited beside a ruined crane.
Princess Nyra sat bound to a chair ten paces away.
She was twenty-four, dark-haired like Lucian, with silver eyes and a split lip. She looked furious rather than afraid.
“Finally,” she said when she saw me. “Can you tell your brother his hospitality is appalling?”
Elias glared at her.
I almost liked her immediately.
“Let her go,” I said.
“When Lucian abdicates.”
“He isn’t here.”
Elias’s gaze sharpened. “He sent you?”
“He locked me in his bedroom.”
Nyra made a choking sound that might have been laughter.
“This is not funny,” Elias snapped.
“No,” I said. “It’s insane.”
He stepped closer. “Seven people died in the market because Malrec framed us. The city is ready to turn against the crown. We have one chance.”
“You didn’t bomb the market?”
His face twisted. “You believed that?”
“I needed to hear you say it.”
“I would burn the throne. Not children.”
Relief came with no comfort.
“Then help us expose Malrec.”
“Help him?” Elias pointed toward the capital. “The king who wears Aldric’s blood?”
“Lucian is not his father.”
“You sound like his queen.”
“Careful.”
Something moved on the ridge above us.
My wolf noticed before I did.
“Down!” I shouted.
Arrows fell.
Elias tackled Nyra’s chair sideways.
I rolled behind a stone block.
Black-clad figures poured from the upper ledges.
Not rebels.
Temple blades.
Malrec’s soldiers.
Elias swore.
“You were followed.”
“I came alone.”
“No, she didn’t,” Lucian said from the darkness.
He stepped from behind a pillar with Darius and four guards.
I stared at him.
“You followed me?”
“You escaped through a window.”
“You locked me in a room.”
“Perhaps postpone the domestic argument,” Darius suggested as another volley struck the stone above his head.
Lucian shifted.
His black Lycan form exploded through the night.
Chaos followed.
I cut Nyra’s ropes while Elias fought beside us with twin short swords. Darius held the lower path.
Temple blades descended from three sides.
Their eyes were wrong.
White.
Moonrot.
“They’re dosed!” I shouted.
One slammed into Elias hard enough to send him against the crane.
I drove a knife through the attacker’s shoulder.
He barely noticed.
Lucian tore through two more, but even he slowed when a crescent blade cut across his flank.
Nyra grabbed a fallen sword.
“I have had a terrible evening,” she said and stabbed a man in the thigh.
Darius laughed like a lunatic.
Then the quarry lights went blue.
A figure stood on the highest ledge.
Malrec.
His white robes snapped in the wind.
“You see?” his voice carried down. “Crowned blood and Moonmarked blood together. Always disorder.”
Lucian shifted back, blood running along his side.
“You poisoned your own temple guards.”
“Sacrifice preserves sacred order.”
Elias went very still beside me.
Malrec looked at him.
“The Raven. Your father had the same talent for standing on the wrong side of history.”
Elias’s face drained.
“What did you say?”
Malrec smiled.
Then he lifted one hand.
The quarry wall exploded.
Stone crashed down between us.
When the dust cleared, Malrec was gone.
So were half his soldiers.
Elias stood staring at the empty ledge.
Lucian approached him slowly.
“Your father?” Elias asked me.
“Our father,” I said.
His eyes stayed on Lucian. “What does he know?”
“Not enough,” Lucian said. “But if Malrec knew him, there are records.”
Elias laughed bitterly. “And now the king offers truth.”
“I’m offering nothing,” Lucian replied. “I’m telling you the enemy we share has just tried to kill my sister, your sister, and you in one night.”
Nyra brushed quarry dust from her coat. “He also ruined my boots.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What? I liked these.”
Elias stared for another second, then lowered his sword.
“Temporary truce,” he said.
Lucian nodded. “Temporary.”
I looked between them.
My mate and my brother.
Two men carrying different pieces of the same old hatred.
For the first time, neither was trying to kill the other.
It felt suspiciously like progress.
* * *
The rebels kept their oldest safehouse beneath a riverside bathhouse.
Elias seemed proud of this.
I found it ridiculous until I learned the hot-water pipes masked body heat from temple tracking wards.
“Fine,” I told him. “One clever thing.”
He grinned. “I have twelve years of clever things.”
“Most of them are probably crimes.”
“Depends who writes the law.”
Lucian, walking behind us, said, “Usually me.”
Elias glanced back. “For now.”
The truce held.
Barely.
The safehouse consisted of three underground rooms connected by a tunnel to the river wall. Twenty rebels slept on blankets along the floor. Several stood when Lucian entered.
One reached for a weapon.
Elias raised a hand.
“He’s under my protection.”
Lucian looked amused. “How comforting.”
I elbowed him.
The rebels stared at their king.
Not with reverence.
Some with hatred.
One young woman stepped forward.
“My mother died in your labor camp.”
Lucian’s expression tightened. “Which camp?”
“East Quarry.”
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
He lowered his eyes.
“My father’s camp. I closed it two years after I became king.”
“Two years too late.”
“Yes.”
She seemed unprepared for agreement.
Lucian continued. “If you give Darius her name, I will find the records and return any wages or property seized from your family.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“No. But if it was taken, it belongs to you.”
The room changed slightly.
Not forgiveness.
I was learning how often change began before forgiveness.
Mira appeared from the back room and nearly tackled me.
“You disappeared into the capital with the king.”
“I sent messages.”
“You sent three messages. One said alive. One said complicated. The third contained only a drawing of a knife.”
“It was descriptive.”
She looked at Lucian.
“You.”
He inclined his head.
“If she dies, I poison you.”
“Noted.”
“If you hurt her—”
“She has already explained several versions of my death.”
Mira blinked.
Then she looked at me.
“I hate that I almost like him.”
“Get in line.”
That night, while Elias and Lucian argued over maps, Mira changed the bandage on my arm.
“You slept with him,” she said.
I nearly fell off the stool.
“No.”
“Not yet, then.”
“Mira.”
“You smell different around him.”
“That is the bond.”
“The bond does not make you look at someone like you’re trying to decide whether to kiss him or stab him.”
“I am often deciding that.”
She tied the bandage.
“Do you trust him?”
The question landed more heavily than teasing.
“I trust him in some things.”
“Which things?”
“To keep his word when he gives it carefully. To protect civilians before his pride. To do something unpleasant if he thinks the kingdom needs it.”
“That last one worries me.”
“Me too.”
“And with you?”
I looked across the room.
Lucian listened while Elias spoke, really listened, though every line of his body said he disagreed.
“He asks,” I said.
Mira’s face softened.
She understood what that meant to me.
The mate bond had terrified me because every old story described it as inevitable. The male claims. The female yields. The moon decides.
Lucian asked.
Are you sure?
May I?
Do you want me here?
Small questions.
Huge difference.
Mira followed my gaze.
“Your father would hate him.”
I laughed.
“Probably.”
“He hated kings.”
“He hated tax collectors more.”
“True.”
Her smile faded.
“He would also want you alive.”
“I know.”
“Whatever happens with the bond, do not turn survival into another duty.”
I looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you spent twelve years living because your father told you to. At some point, Sera, you get to live because you want to.”
The words followed me long after she went to sleep.
Near dawn, I found Lucian alone by the river tunnel.
He had removed his coat and rolled his sleeves. For once, he looked less like a king than a tired man hiding from everyone’s expectations.
I sat beside him.
“What did Elias want?”
“To raid three temple warehouses.”
“And?”
“I agreed to one.”
I stared. “You compromised with my brother?”
“Do not tell anyone.”
“Your reputation will never recover.”
He looked at the black river beyond the grate.
“Do you ever wish we had met differently?”
I considered.
“If we met at a market, I probably would have thought you arrogant.”
“I am arrogant.”
“Yes. But I would not have had a knife at your throat within five minutes.”
“Disappointing.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder.
“Yes,” I said after a while. “I wish we had been given something easier.”
He took my hand.
“But?”
“But easier people might not have believed each other when it mattered.”
He kissed my knuckles.
For a few quiet minutes beneath the river, king and rebel’s sister shared a silence that did not need solving.