Chapter Thirty-Three
Dante
“All doors must be barricaded by nightfall each day, no exceptions. Windows will be removed and filled in. Candles will not be permitted within the library. No more than four members of the House will be allowed among the books at any given time. They may be removed one at a time by formal written request. These measures are to remain in place indefinitely.”
— Internal Communication Recovered from the House of Harlowe
“Not bad, Viper,” the only one of Rainier’s riders who'd ever spoken to me was saying as she wiped the blood from her sword onto the moss beneath her boots. With a wink, she turned to Roman. “Guess we got back just in time.”
Ksenia and Phantom chose that moment to land directly in front of us.
Ksenia leapt artfully from the beast’s back as Phantom snarled and paced away.
I watched the creature in wonder. I’d never seen him so out of sorts.
It was almost as though the beast understood what had occurred here. It was almost as if he mourned.
“Prima and the leaders are safe,” Ksenia reported. “No sign of Rainier but some of the camp warriors said they saw him heading deep into the forest. He may still be there.”
“Casualties?” Roman asked, ever the strategic Captain, as he sheathed his own bloodied sword.
“Mostly common folk,” Ksenia said with a sigh. “Or so it appears from the…bodies near the cave and the river. Some tried to make it back. I don’t know how far they might have led the enemy.”
One of Rainier’s riders cursed at that.
“Viper,” Roman’s cold voice spoke. “The weapon.”
I peered down at the sword in my hands. Roman had informed me, the moment we’d reached the river, that I wouldn’t be allowed a weapon when we entered Archí.
It wouldn’t do for Prima to see a Victor entering her holy land with a sword in hand.
He’d allowed me to keep it for my own defense when we’d seen the invasion but that time had passed.
Now he waited with his hand on his own sword, tense and anticipating a fight.
Ksenia was eyeing me from where she stood a few paces away, arms crossed and daggers within reach.
Rainier’s riders were still nearby as well, armed and adrenaline rushing from battle.
I sighed but handed back the sword, trying hard not to look at the blood staining my arms, my chest, my legs. Everywhere.
I'd killed them. More of them. Recruits, boys, men I'd trained with, men I'd scouted with, men I'd shared bunks and bread with. I turned away, sickened by the corpses piled around us.
“You fought well,” Roman said quietly.
I could only nod in response, not looking him directly in the eye.
Instead, I approached my horse, stepped into the stirrups, and mounted.
I held my hands in front of me and settled into the saddle silently.
Roman gaped at me, mouth open in surprise, before slowly binding my hands, a precaution he’d never taken before but Rainier had been all over him to do since he joined us.
I dropped them to my sides once he was finished, closing my eyes and resigning myself to the fate I’d known I was riding toward all along.
I was tired of deciding what was right and what was wrong.
Let Adrian decide. Let Adrian be my judge. I couldn’t. Not anymore.
“Rainier!” one of the riders exclaimed.
I looked up to see the man himself emerge from the tree line opposite the river, two riders and three Zver following close behind him. His jaw was set firm as he approached.
“Did you find her?” another rider asked before he could reach us.
“I did,” he replied, though he wasn’t smiling about it. “As did Chassina.”
A rider swore. Chassina. Another hero of legend and Rainier's own partner if memory served.
So she'd made the same choice I had. She'd pushed Rainier to his death and was now chasing Third Ring girls around some godsforsaken forest. I restrained the urge to roll my eyes. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
“Where is she?” Ksenia asked, stepping forward with concern. “Did they take her?”
“She’s safe,” Rainier said, his eyes meeting Roman’s. “She’s with the General.”
“Then she’s anything but safe!” Roman exploded, striding suddenly toward his horse.
“Captain—”
“We should go. Now.”
“Prima trusts him.”
“Then she’s a fool. We sent her a warning about him. We—”
“Yes. Your twenty-six-year-old prince who's spent his life behind a wall wrote to warn her of the dangers of her General who's been at her side for five hundred years. I’m sure you can imagine which of them she's inclined to believe.”
Roman’s jaw clenched.
“He insulted my court,” Roman spat. “He insulted my prince.”
“Mortals are far too easily offended. Especially the royal ones,” Rainier said, waving the Captain off dismissively. “You hold far too many grudges for such short lifespans.”
Roman turned red.
“I will not treat with her if he’s around,” Roman threatened.
“Captain,” Ksenia gasped.
“I don’t care whether you do or you don’t,” Rainier said, mounting his Zver. “My job is to take you to her. Nothing more.”
Then he was airborne, his riders rising to follow a moment later.
Ksenia remained behind long enough to shake her head disapprovingly at the Captain before she mounted her own beast and took to the skies as well.
I watched Roman as they went, wondering if I was about to see a man throw away his country’s best chance of an alliance for some old disagreement with the ally’s General.
It didn’t take long for the Captain to snap his reins and mutter a command for me to follow.
So he was going to take the high road then. How inconvenient.
We heard the wailing when we were still in the forest. I closed my eyes and muttered a prayer when we passed the first mourner, rocking back and forth on her knees, sobbing for the slain little boy she held in her arms. I realized then who I was praying to and stopped. Instead, I looked away.
But there were more.
Mourning mothers and grieving fathers. Sobbing sisters and stunned brothers.
Men and women with arms stained bloody from carrying the dead stared at me with cold, dead eyes as I rode past, my chains clinking against the side of my horse.
I realized why an instant later. I was still wearing my Pavosian leathers and, chained as I was in a procession led by Rainier and his riders, I appeared to be an enemy captured.
I wanted to tell them I wasn’t. I wanted to scream out that I hadn’t been the one butchering their kin or raiding their sacred celebrations.
I wanted to beg them to believe me when I told them I wasn't their enemy. But wasn’t I?
I hadn’t been welcomed into their camp. I hadn’t been legitimized by the humans.
What was I if not still a soldier of Pavos?
I stared down at my own bloody hands. Had I killed my own then?
That should bother me more.
“Rainier,” someone called out.
I looked up to see a brown-skinned woman in shining armor approach.
Her thick black hair was braided down her shoulder in a simple but practical plait and her face was painted with some ghoulish crimson that looked like blood but wasn’t.
It flowed from her eyes down her neck where it met with real blood spattered upon her by her enemies.
Her eyes were blazing as she took me in, mouth set in a sneer at the sight of my chains.
“Put him with the others.” She jerked her chin to two warriors who stepped forward to do as she commanded.
“No, Prima,” Rainier said, stepping in front of them. “He wasn’t part of the assault on the cave.”
“I don’t care who he is. He’s one of them. He belongs with them.”
“He’s not our Captive to take.”
She stopped at that, eyes snapping up to mine as Rainier and his men stepped aside. When her gaze fell to Roman and Ksenia before me, her tension only increased.
“I see,” she said slowly, then nodded to each of them in greeting. “Captain. Spy.”
“Prima,” they both intoned, bowing respectfully.
The action only made her lips curl in disgust.
I decided right then I liked my ancestor. Even if she had just been trying to send me to whatever passed for a dungeon in this place.
“This is Dante of House Viper,” Ksenia announced. “I presume you’ve heard of him?”
Her gaze narrowed.
“The newest Victor,” she said, appraising. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”
She raised a brow as she eyed the chains around my wrists.
“Or maybe not,” she muttered.
“Is she here?” Roman spat suddenly. “Is she with him?”
Ksenia shot him a look of warning. Obviously, the captain wasn’t gifted in the art of diplomacy. Prima’s eyes narrowed as she turned to Roman.
“She's mourning,” she snapped. “Much like the rest of my camp.
A fact which I would advise you to remember for as long as you remain here, Captain.
My people have suffered a great many losses on one of our most sacred occasions.
We're not in the mood to be condescended to by Wall-hiders such as yourself.”
I checked the urge to laugh at that. Wall-hiders.
That alone told me everything I needed to know about what these people thought of Prince Leo and his court.
Ksenia closed her eyes, clearly wishing this had turned out a bit better than it had, but I was hardly focusing on any of them at all.
Adrian was mourning, Prima said. Was that true?
Who had she lost? And what right did I have to even ask?
“I'll arrange a tent for the two of you,” Prima said, already striding away, clearly busy leading during a time of crisis for her people. “My descendent will stay with me. We don’t need word of his presence getting out now. They'll rip him apart before you properly have time to barter him away.”
“I would prefer if he stayed where I could keep an eye on him,” Roman called out to her.
“You're here to treat with us on behalf of your kingdom, are you not?” she asked in return, brow raised in challenge. “The first step toward peace is trust, Captain.”
***
Sometime later, I found myself sitting alone in Prima’s tent.
It was no bigger than any other. Nothing lavish.
No adornments save for the emerald snake banner flapping on a pole staked just outside the entrance.
The only luxury the leader of these people seemed to claim for herself was the luxury of privacy as she seemed to share her tent with no one.
Correspondences were left out in the open, spread on the wooden surface that seemed to function as both her dining table and writing desk.
Records of soldiers in her command, letters from what seemed to be other leaders, notes about supplies and weapons.
I didn’t bother reading any of them. It was a clear message, leaving them out like that.
They weren’t concerned about me surviving long enough to tell anyone what I might learn.
“Comfortable?” Prima asked as she entered her tent.
I didn’t have to look at her to hear the amusement in her tone. Something told me she liked seeing a Victor in chains. That didn’t make my position here any easier. So I didn't offer a response as she strode toward her desk before turning to face me.
She examined me from head to toe, gaze lingering on my chains for a moment before her eyes snapped up to mine.
“So this is what my noble house has become,” she said. “You're the best they have to offer.”
“No,” I told her, thinking of Bria and my mother and hordes of innocent cousins. “I'm not.”
She raised a brow.
“But I'm not the worst either,” I finished.
She raised her chin at that as if appraising me in a new way.
“You know why you’re here?” she asked after a moment, tearing her gaze from mine to peer down at some documents upon her table. She pulled out her chair and sat, already rifling through her work as I framed my answer.
“To be offered to my former partner for revenge in exchange for an alliance with the human cities,” I answered blandly.
Her eyes flicked up to mine.
“And you’re fine with this arrangement?” she asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“It isn’t my first choice,” I answered.
She snorted, corners of her lips quirking up into a smile.
“I can see why she liked you.”
I didn't have a response to that, but she didn't seem to need one.
She was silent for a time, flipping through pages and jotting down a note here or response there.
I waited quietly. There was nothing else I could do.
I was at their mercy, on their time schedule, and besides, what good would it do to demand my own death sooner?
“She’s not what I expected,” she said then and it was my turn to snort.
Me either, I thought bitterly.
“Sanctuary must have changed quite a bit since I left.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied simply.
She glanced up at me, her eyes narrowing when they met mine. But before either of us said another word, the sound of the tent flaps opening behind me interrupted us.
“Dante?”
Every muscle in my body locked on instinct as my heart stopped and my breath shuddered. Slowly, so slowly, I turned.
And there she was.
The light of the rising sun shone so brightly behind her I had to blink and squint against it as I wondered just how long I’d been standing here in chains.
Her long hazel hair was down and whipping around her face in the breeze blowing through the tent.
Her amber eyes locked on mine as her lips fell to form a perfect O.
She wasn’t alone. But I hardly noticed the giant with ice blue eyes glowering down at me or the vaguely familiar ebony female with thick, dark braids. I could only stare at Adrian as she took a step forward and, for a brief moment, I thought she might be happy to see me.
Then I saw the shadows. Leaking from her fingertips and swirling in the air around her, cloaking her body in living night. The familiar girl backed away, wide-eyed and braids swinging. The brute smirked, crossing his arms and settling in for the show. Then she spoke.
“I'll kill you!”
She lunged.