Chapter 32 #2
Stefano shook his head. “Ellan likes his welcoming parties. I’m not entering his city draped across your horse like I’m dying.” The fact that he spoke so brazenly against Harthon indicated just how unwell he was.
Harthon didn’t take offense, perhaps because he’d be just as stubborn. “You’ll topple off your own horse.”
“And if I ride on yours, vomiting all over, it won’t look good. If we’re coming up on a war, it’s more important than ever to show our strength,” Stefano argued weakly.
“Strength doesn’t matter if you’re dead,” I cut in, hands on my hips.
“We’re only minutes from the city. Send the healer out here. I won’t have to wait long.” He scooted himself against a tree trunk and rested his head on it.
When Harthon released a heavy sigh and stood, I wanted to smack him.
“Warriors get injured,” I reminded him. “No one will think less of us if they see him like this.”
Harthon shook his head. “Even if I agreed, Sixth Territory will be coming for us because they think we killed Aric. If we show up looking battle-weary and injured, it’ll make that story more credible.”
“But Stefano was injured in this Territory.”
“Saying that won’t make people believe it,” he asserted.
The whiz of flying steel ended our argument. My eyes snapped up to find the shaft of a dagger wobbling in a distant tree trunk. We traced its path to Stefano, who lowered his good arm.
“If I can hit a target like that,” he nodded to the tree, “then I can survive long enough for the healer to get here, and I can take care of any squirrels that try to eat me.”
I gritted my teeth as the three men looked at me expectantly. Domus forbid someone try to care for his health, because he wasn’t the immortal warrior they all thought themselves to be.
“You and I will be wrapped up talking to Ellan,” I tried.
“That’s why Joris is coming with us. He’ll get the healer here as quickly as possible.”
The mentioned man addressed me. “We’ll also get there quicker on our own than we would with Stefano,” Joris pointed out, clapping the shoulder of Stefano’s good arm before standing. “I agree this is the best course of action.”
Stefano delivered the killing blow when he languidly chirped, “The longer you stand here arguing, the longer it’ll take for me to get the help I need. I’d get going if I were you.”
Skies, I hated this. Pointing a finger at him, I threatened, “You’d better be fine when the healer gets here.”
“Yes, Lady magvis,” he snarked.
His witty response did nothing to assuage my concern.
And I was not alone in worrying about him.
The moment we were on horseback, Harthon had us racing through the woods.
It didn’t take long for Botton to rise ahead, greeting us with its weathered stone walls that parted only for the dirt path.
Clearly expecting us, Edmund, Ellan’s second-in-command, emerged from the open gate with two soldiers behind him.
“Welcome, Princeps Harthon,” he greeted as we came close, bowing his head in respect. “I’ve been sent to escort you in.”
Harthon didn’t bother with formalities. “Our man needs a healer. Find one, and Joris here will take him.”
Edmund was quick to respond. “Of course. Let’s not waste time.” He wheeled his horse around and addressed the men with him. “Get the healer. I’ll bring them in.”
They took off in a slow trot as we followed Edmund closer to the walls.
“While he didn’t say so, I’m certain Princeps Ellan apologizes for the understated welcome. He’s been terribly preoccupied.”
Understated was one way to put it. The last time we’d entered these walls, trumpets and lines of people had greeted us. It’d been obnoxious. But from what I could see beyond the walls, all that laid ahead was an empty, dusty road.
In our worried urgency, I hadn’t noticed the relative quiet until now. With the city’s entrance still twenty paces away, the tempo of our horse’s hooves gradually slowed, an unspoken communication passing between Harthon, Joris, and me.
Because we knew this kind of quiet.
It was the kind we’d just experienced in First Territory and Centralis.
In First, that stillness had been a result of the Horrads. In Centralis, the Domus. It was the kind of quiet that was forced, produced by some outside influence. And the more it settled, the louder it became. The back of my neck pricked with the need to flee.
The warning came too late.
All at once, that silence broke in a shuffle of movement as Fifth Territory soldiers, garbed in the awful orange Ellan loved so much, swarmed from the city walls behind Edmund, bows in their hands strung tight with arrows ready to fly.
They formed a line across the walls, their arrows aimed at us.
These are our allies. The thought filtered in from some distant place in my muddled mind.
Harthon didn’t suffer from the same confusion. His expression was cold as steel.
“I do sincerely hope,” he ground out, “that you and Ellan are craving your own deaths today.”
His threat was for them, but it still hit me like a slap, cutting through my confusion as he made the sudden turn of events starkly clear.
These were our allies.
And they were ambushing us.
But why? Ellan was Ellan. Obsessed with Harthon, too narrow-minded and inexperienced to ever hold his own, too preoccupied with riches and wealth to make political moves.
Ahead, Edmund spun to face us, shoulders settling with a swagger I hadn’t noticed before. “Ellan is not fearing his death at the moment, and neither am I.”
Harthon took in the perimeter of soldiers, sizing them up. I knew what he was thinking: we were on horseback while they were on foot. We could make a break for it. We only had to outrun their arrows. But we couldn’t outrun all thirty of them. One of us would fall, if not all of us.
I saw the moment Harthon set aside thoughts of escape. A muscle in his jaw snapped as he traced the line of archers.
His eyes collided with mine, a severe glint to them.
This was not good.
Not at all.
“You may as well come closer,” Edmund taunted. “We all know you cannot leave.”
There’d always been something about him that didn’t quite sit right. His watchfulness, his silent observation—it had always struck me as strange.
Now it was far more than an innocent oddity.
The soldiers tightened their bow strings, every step they took to corral us tying new knots in my abdomen.
Those knots unraveled and bottomed out when Edmund added, “Though we don’t need all three of you.”
The moment I understood his implication, I jerked to the side, reaching for Joris. “Don’t—”
My panicked yell was for nothing.
The arrow was already buried in his forehead when the sound came out. He didn’t even have the chance to flinch.
Shock wrapped around my throat as his body keened sideways before slipping off the horse. He landed in a motionless heap.
Joris…Joris was dead. His family, his children, his newborn…Oh, skies.
Tears burned my eyes as I numbly looked from the empty bow and the stone-faced soldier behind it to Edmund. His hand was raised in silent order, but his face wore a bored expression, as if ordering deaths were some kind of chore.
It was then that a new horror slammed through my shock.
We’d just told Edmund about Stefano.
He was next.
Run, Stefano. Run, I screamed in my head, like there was some way for him to hear me. But even if he could, would it matter? He could hardly sit upright. He wouldn’t be able to run from armed men, even if he uncovered their intentions in time.
Harthon’s regal face burned red with anger.
“Your Princeps is a slow-witted fool for ordering whatever this is,” he growled, every word a menacing threat.
“And you’re a slow-witted fool for listening to him.
I hope you’re enjoying the feeling of your limbs attached to your body, because I’m going to rip them off and stuff them down your little throat. ”
A smart man would have withered. Remembered they wanted to live. Fallen to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
Edmund, however, smirked.
This was a soldier who’d only ever been cordial and agreeable. His blonde hair, polite smile, and smaller stature had always made him seem the furthest thing from a threat. But the way his lips cruelly hitched was natural, like this had always laid beneath his pleasant mask.
It chilled me to the bone.
“You’re correct that Ellan was a slow-witted fool,” he said.
The hatred in his voice was palpable, but then it was irrelevant, because one word reverberated through my entire body.
Was.
Ellan was.
“But he is no longer the Princeps I take orders from,” he purred.
My lungs shriveled. Blood froze in my veins.
And then I stopped feeling my limbs, my soul aching to be somewhere else—anywhere else—as my mind landed on the one possibility that made sense. A possibility I’d intentionally shoved from my thoughts, because if it was true, it was the end.
His next statement, delivered with a gluttonously smug satisfaction, confirmed the only reality worse than what we’d found inside the Domus.
“I answer to Princeps Koerlyn. And he’s very excited to see you.”