Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
The court is in uproar.
We barely managed to slip our way inside, for Belladonna—the new ruler of the court—has guards stationed at every door.
Particularly mine and Keir’s.
“This could be a problem,” I whisper, as Falion and I watch from the shadows. “I made a deal with Belladonna. Right now, I’m the only one who knows she wanted your lord and master dead.”
And if Belladonna is cleaning up the court, then she’ll most likely be interested in tidying up any other sort of loose ends she can find.
Falion sighs. “This way then. I need to check on Alaric anyway. And you need me to look at that knife wound.”
“It’s fine.” No one has ever offered to look at my wounds, beyond Soraya. I don’t know how I feel about that. “You don’t think Belladonna will be trying to ensure Mistmark doesn’t breathe another day? There might be some confusion about whether she’s married to him or not….”
“There’s no confusion. The court is aware he survived and has since found himself hand fasted to an assassin.
He thinks it’s amusing,” Falion grumbles.
“One thing you will learn is that Alaric thinks a dozen paces ahead. He’s already accounted for Belladonna.
And there’s a reason she didn’t dare try and kill him herself. ”
I thought that had something to do with not daring to thwart Malechus, but maybe I was wrong.
I shoot one last look at Keir’s door. The box and the horn is hidden. And Belladonna won’t dare confront him. But I still haven’t seen him. I know he’ll be watching over Soraya. I know they’ll both be safe, but I can’t help wondering what’s going through Keir’s head.
I didn’t have a chance to talk it through with him.
The last time he saw me, he’d just realized the depths of my betrayal….
“Are you going to stand there like a lovesick puppy forever?” Falion growls. “It’s a little embarrassing.”
So much for brotherly love. I glare at him. “It’s a good thing you’re so powerful, otherwise I’m fairly certain there’d be no reason for Mistmark to keep you around.”
“Oh, there’s a reason.” He stalks into the shadows and vanishes. “Now are you coming or not?”
* * *
I sink into an enormous armchair across from the Lord of Mistmark, nursing a cup of warmed tea that Falion brewed. My shoulder is bandaged, and Falion cleansed a half-dozen other minor wounds he found on me. The tea is filled with herbs, but there’s nothing that strikes me as poisonous or drugging.
Falion sees me inhaling the fumes and raises a brow.
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have used my knife. I could have buried you in the forest and then I wouldn’t have to drag your body out of the heart of the court, where hundreds of assholes are simply looking for a reason to tear my lord down.
It would have been considerably easier.”
“What he means,” the Lord of Mistmark says, examining me with the most amused expression I’ve ever seen him wear, “is that we don’t intend to harm you.”
The two males share a look.
Mistmark seems to have recovered from his poisoning well, though he doesn’t bother to shift off the sofa, and I can smell something restorative in his drink. Dark shadows haunt the circles beneath his eyes, however, and he’s not as well put-together as he usually is.
I’m fairly certain his mouth is stained a vicious pink, as if he couldn’t quite manage to remove all the lip paint Soraya was wearing.
So much has happened in the space of an afternoon.
“So,” Mistmark muses. “You’re Falion’s little sister.”
“So….” I draw my knees up under the blanket Falion gave me. “You’re my sister’s husband.”
If anything, the tension in the room grows thick. Falion turns to put his teapot away, and Mistmark rests his hand over his mouth and leans on it. Rings glitter on his fingers.
“It seems that way,” he finally says.
“You don’t appear to be as unhappy about that fact as either Falion or Soraya,” I point out.
Mistmark runs his tongue over his upper teeth. “Let us just say that… I have long believed my path was going to cross your sister’s again one day. Indeed, while it was a shock to realize it was actually while I was kissing my new bride, I’ve been expecting her.”
He has? My fingers itch. “Just what did happen between you all those years ago, Mistmark?”
“Alaric,” he says in a warm voice. “And nothing happened. She tried to kill me. She failed, much to her disapproval.”
I stare at him. Alaric has the best card playing face I’ve ever seen. “Strange…. That’s not what she says.”
And there it is.
A slight narrowing of his merciless blue eyes. He lasts twenty seconds. “What did she say about the situation?”
“Oh, it’s a ‘situation’ now, is it?” I set my cup down with a smile. “My sister doesn’t say much at all. Which is more telling than anything she might actually mention. But I’ll trade you an answer for an answer.”
“What sort of answer?” His curiosity is definitely winning now.
“An answer to whatever sort of question you would like to ask. And likewise.”
“Don’t,” Falion warns him.
But Mistmark smiles. “Fine. I’ll play. But I’m going first…. And I will have the truth from you, little wraith.”
“I will answer as truthfully as I may.”
He sinks back onto the sofa, considering his cup.
“Your sister has tried to kill me thrice now. The first two times she failed. Badly. But today, she would have succeeded. I was poisoned, and there was nothing Falion could do to try and save me.” He leans forward.
“But she saved me. She poisoned me and then she gave me the antidote. Why?”
Because I’m fairly certain she’s half in love with you…
. “Belladonna had cursed me. She wanted the marriage to fail, and unless I killed you before today was done, I was going to die.” I tell him about our little heist. “You were the perfect distraction, but if there’s one thing we are ever taught, it’s not to let the situation get too messy.
If you’d died, it was quite clear Falion would be intent upon exacting his revenge, and we already had Malechus and Belladonna to worry about. ”
“Not to mention the Crown Prince of the Forbidden Court,” Falion mutters.
“I wasn’t entirely certain Ruhle was in play,” I say with a shrug. “I also had no particular desire to see you dead. I just needed Belladonna to think you were.”
He seems slightly disappointed with the response.
“But that is me,” I add gently. “If my sister wanted you dead, then you would be dead.” And then, because I’ve always been a romantic at heart, I add, “Three years ago, my sister was sent to kill you. I have to presume it’s because my father knew you had the horn and wanted it.
I don’t know why she didn’t kill you. I don’t know how she failed, or what occurred between you, but I do know this.
” My voice hardens. “My father doesn’t tolerate failure.
You get one chance, and your punishment is severe.
When my sister returned home from your court, she knelt before him and told him she’d failed.
Just that. She gave no explanation. She gave no excuses.
She did not beg for mercy. And so he locked her away in a windowless, lightless, frigid cell for four months.
She was given just enough food and water to survive at irregular intervals.
No one spoke to her. No one touched her.
She had not a single blanket with her, and she’s terrified of the dark.
“But she accepted that punishment without a single complaint.” I sip from my tea, cooling now.
“It always surprised me, because Soraya is selfish and argumentative. I’ve never seen her deal before Father like that before.
But then… sometimes I’d wonder if she did it because she was trying to protect someone else—someone she needed to convince Father not to kill. ”
There’s trouble in his eyes, and I don’t think he knows what to believe. But there’s also something thoughtful there too. “She’s afraid of the dark?”
It’s not the concept I would have thought him to focus upon.
I shrug. “I was born within my father’s court, but Soraya was not.
Her mother managed to escape him when she was heavily pregnant, and she spent five years in hiding, before his wraithen scouts finally tracked them down.
They killed Sora’s mother right in front of her and locked her in a chest for weeks on end until they’d smuggled her back into our lands.
” It’s not my story to tell, but…. “She suffers from nightmares sometimes. Her entire life changed in a single day, and while she forged armor around her heart and grew calluses on her soul, she still prefers to have a light burning in the night.”
Mistmark considers my words. And then he nods. “More than what I asked, and I’m grateful for it. I will try to reply in kind.”
“There have been a few questions plaguing me about this entire situation. At first I wondered why you agreed to marry Belladonna, but it soon became clear Malechus was blackmailing you. He wanted the horn, and he forced you into a corner in which you would marry his cousin and yield it to him as a bridal tithe.” It’s the one question that’s always bothered me.
“Why? What was he holding over your head?”
Mistmark sighs. “Your sister.”
So far my theory is correct. Ruhle must have approached the prince in order to set this entire thing up—but I don’t know what Malechus thought he’d gain from the arrangement. The horn, clearly, but what did he intend to do with my brother when Ruhle came for it?
“You know what Soraya is.”
“I do.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
Mistmark strokes his thumb over his cup. “I’m the guardian of Mistmark, and the castle is a repository of information. While I wasn’t yet born when the Court of Shadows was cursed, I’ve read everything about it that I could get my hands on.”
Was that before or after you met my sister? “My father believes the curse can be broken.”
Falion pauses at that, his mouth thinning.
But Mistmark stays him with a hand. “It’s possible, yes. You would need an enormous amount of power to do so.”
“How much power?” It’s something I’ve given thought to several times of late. “My father believes it would require something like the cauldron. Or a dragon’s heart.”
Mistmark chews on his nail. “Both would definitely break the spell.” He looks a little pained. “Both could tear apart the world while you’re at it. You speak of taking a war hammer and using it to shell peas.” His eyes narrow upon me. “But the cauldron is lost, and there are no more dragons.”
I sink back a little. “Of course not. Hence my question. I wanted to know if there was anything else that could do it.”
Mistmark watches me. “Of course. You’ll forgive me if I cannot answer such a question from memory. I would be willing to open the library at Mistmark to you, if you sought an answer.”
“Thank you.” I can’t help fighting a yawn.
“Tired?” Mistmark asks.
Falion tops up my cup. “Do you need somewhere to stay for the night?”
Mistmark shoots him a quizzical look.
“What?” Falion asks blandly.
“I’m just trying to work out what you’re plotting,” he tells his friend. “That was… generous.”
Falion scowls. “She’s my sister.”
“And I’m your friend.” Mistmark leans back in his chair, his arms crossing. “Do you remember when you threw me out into the mud and told me to find my own fucking bed?”
“You were drunk.” Heat climbs up Falion’s throat. “And you snore like a wounded bear.”
“Precisely my point. I was in a precarious state of mind and you made me sleep in a barn. Anyone could have slit my throat.”
“I set a shadow to watch over you.”
Mistmark shoots me an amused look. “There is one thing you should know about your brother, my lady. Don’t ever trust him when he’s trying to be polite. He’s up to something.”
Falion throws his hands in the air.
I don’t know what to make of this good-natured play. “I’d begun to realize that. He looks slightly constipated whenever he tries to smile.”
Mistmark coughs a laugh into his hand, his blue eyes twinkling as he glances to see his friend’s reaction.
“Cauldron’s icy kiss,” Falion says. “You two are as bad as each other. Fine.” He glares at me. “I tried to be kind. Sleep in the hallway. Crawl back to Keir’s bed. I don’t care. Just don’t come sniveling to me when he casts you out.”
Yanking his cloak over his shoulder, he slams the door as he stalks through it.
“He’s out of sorts,” Mistmark explains, stretching his arm along the back of his sofa and watching the door with an affectionate look.
“Your appearance in his life is very confusing for him.” His gaze softens.
“He’s spent years hoping his mother was still alive.
And now he knows what happened to her. He won’t ever say it, but he doesn’t like surprises. He doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“He offered to train me.”
It startles a laugh out of him. “Did he?”
I sink back into the sofa. I’m so fucking tired. Every inch of me feels like I’m covered in bruises, but it’s the one painted across my heart that hurts the most. I’ve been avoiding Keir ever since I returned to the court, but I can still hear our last argument.
“What now?”
Now? It’s an explosive question. The last time I saw Keir, he’d just discovered the depths of my betrayal. I drain the rest of my tea in a single gulp. “Now I have to go beard the dragon in its den.”
“You’re going back?” His smile is kind, even as his eyes remain watchful. It’s a reminder. Mistmark is still sounding me out.
Falion isn’t the only one I cannot quite trust.
I push out of the chair. “Someone has to go see if your bride is still alive.”
“Oh, she’s alive.” He swirls the rest of his drink, staring into it. “At least until I get my hands on her.”