He swung around, unfiltered rage filling his expression. “You!” he roared, swinging out a fist. “You damn bastard.” I ducked even as he demanded, “Where the hell did you go?”
“I felt Vienne in distress,” I said simply, lifting my hands in peace when he looked as if he may swing again. “So I had to check on the ladies. And it’s a good thing I did. More Far Shore men than we originally thought had stolen inside the keep when they kidnapped Anniston. But they’re all dead now. What happened here? Why is no one out on the field, still fighting?”
“Because the battle’s over,” Brentley boomed. “It ended almost as soon as you ran off. Most of them fled, but the few who stayed were rounded up and chained to be dealt with later, just as you instructed.”
I nodded, beyond impressed by what had been done without me.
Brentley didn’t seem so pleased with his own accomplishments, though. He continued to glare as if I’d betrayed him.
“What the hell is your problem then?” I demanded, growing annoyed when he stalked toward me to push me in the chest.
“My problem is that you left,” he roared. “If you’d just fucking stayed, Caulder might not have been wounded.”
My mouth fell open. “Wounded? How bad?”
His anger drained away as sorrow filled him. “Fatally,” he finished in a choked voice.
“Caulder?” Nicolette said in a small voice as she came up behind us and heard the report.
“What! Where?” Yasmin shrieked, hurrying past me and Brentley to streak into the dining hall.
When a scream followed from within, Vienne took Anniston from Nicolette’s arms so the young princess could hurry in to see her brother as well.
Allera moved to her husband’s side and took his hand. He pulled her closer even as he stepped toward me and narrowed his eyes. “Make sure the family has some privacy,” he muttered with a glance toward everyone crowded in the corridor. “To say goodbye.”
I gulped but nodded. From inside the dining hall, Nicolette called, “Brentley, hurry! He’s asking for you.”
Brentley turned from me so he and Allera could rush into the room with Vienne following behind.
I drew in a breath and turned to the worried soldiers and servants. I told them about the dead bodies littered around the castle and sent them off to clean up the messes. To the rest who remained, I said, “The royal family requests privacy at this time. If you’d all go wait in the entrance hall until further instructions…”
Nodding, they trudged away, some of them with tears in their eyes.
Once they were gone, I stepped quietly into the dining hall. They’d laid Caulder out on one end of the L-shaped banquet table as if he were to be his own last meal.
Brentley, Allera, and Nicolette hovered at his left side while Yasmin, Soren, and Vienne with little Anniston gathered to his right, almost as they did every night for the royal dinner.
Nicolette wept into Allera’s arms while Caulder turned his face toward his brother as he spoke. All the while, his wife buried her nose into the crook of the king’s neck, sobbing as her husband petted her hair gently with grey, blood-stained fingers. A solemn Soren and Vienne stood regretfully behind her.
I moved closer, spotting the stain steadily growing in the cloth covering his chest. Damn. A lung shot. They were probably filling with blood and suffocating him to death this very moment. His face was turning blue, his lips swollen as he gasped blood-laced words in halting jerks.
“Your throne…now…Brother.” He paused to cough, spitting up a mouthful of red froth with a gurgling sound.
“No.” Brentley shook his head. “I don’t want to be king. It was you. Always you. Stay, Caulder. You were meant for this. Not me.”
“Can’t,” Caulder gasped before his gaze slid slowly my way.
When our gazes met, he lifted his hand weakly and curled his fingers, beckoning me forward. Brentley looked up, and then backed away so I could take his spot at the king’s side.
I eased past both Allera and Nicolette, touching both their backs in comfort before kneeling next to the king.
“Your Majesty?”
“Behind,” he struggled to say, motioning his hand toward his neck, like maybe he was pointing to something over his shoulder. “From behind.” He shook his head slowly. “Never turned…back…enemy.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of his words when his eyelashes fluttered and he turned his face in toward his wife’s hair. “Yasmin,” he breathed out with his last breath, his eyes losing their light as he died.
The queen sobbed and shook her head. “No. No! You can’t leave me. NO!” She sat up, wiping at the tears that were streaming down her face. When she glanced at me, she gasped. “Maybe I can save him, like you saved Vienne, and she saved you. Yes. He has to be my one true love.”
No one stopped her as she pressed her mouth frantically to Caulder’s, but no one expected the kiss to work either.
“No,” she ordered, kissing him again, harder this time. “This isn’t fair. He was my one true love. Caulder, damn you, come back to me.”
Her desperation as she pressed her mouth to her dead husband’s over and over again filled my chest with a raw pain. I had to glance away, only to catch the gaze of Vienne across the table, tears streaming down her cheeks. She nodded, letting me know she felt just as horrible.
Next to me, Brentley wrapped his arms around both Allera and Nicolette as the three wept together.
Soren was the only one who stepped forward to gently take Yasmin’s shoulders in his hands. “My queen,” he said. “It’s over. He’s gone.”
“No,” she growled, shoving him away, only to sob and fling herself into his arms, where she let him pull her away from Caulder. “He can’t be gone. He just can’t be.”
As Soren held her, I returned my attention to Vienne, frowning thoughtfully as I contemplated Caulder’s last words to me.
She tipped her head to the side questioningly and mouthed, “What?”
I shook my own head slowly and shifted my gaze to the dead king.
From behind.
Never turned my back…to the…enemy?
Dear God.
Realizing what he might’ve meant, I surged forward and tore open the cloth covering his chest.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Brentley pulled away from Nicolette and Allera to grip my arm and tug me back.
“I want to see the wound,” I explained, pointing to the bloody mess I’d just revealed. “He was trying to tell me something. Warn me. He said, ‘from behind,’ and then swore he hadn’t turned his back to the enemy.”
Brentley’s eyes flared wide as he gaped incredulously at his brother’s body, “You don’t think…?”
He couldn’t seem to voice the question, so I wiped away the blood from the stab wound to reveal the cut. Once I measured it against the length of my thumb, I glanced at my brother-in-law. “Help me roll him over.”
He nodded, and we worked together to ease Caulder’s body onto his side and then stomach.
“What the devil are you two doing?” Soren asked, finally noticing what we were about.
I cast him a hard glance and returned to my work, ripping away enough cloth to find the back wound.
“Here,” Brentley said when it was discovered. Together, we wiped until I could measure this cut as well. All the while, I cursed myself for being an idiot, upset I hadn’t taken the time to cover Caulder in armor from head to toe like the rest of the soldiers. What the hell had I been thinking? He was the fucking king! I was such a damn fool.
When I finished measuring the length of his back wound, Brentley cursed and stepped back, hanging his head.
“What?” Vienne asked, easing closer. “What did you find?”
I glanced at her, shaking my head sadly. “He was killed from behind,” I explained. “Stabbed in the back. And not only that, but it’s a sword wound. I don’t remember any Far Shore soldiers on that field actually using a sword.”
&
nbsp; “You’re right.” Brentley nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t either. But there were some spears. Could it be a—”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Those would go all the way through, so the entrance and exit wounds would be comparable in size. A sword has to stop when it reaches the hilt and then come back out, making the entrance wound larger than the exit. Plus, he said he didn’t put his back to the enemy. So I think he was trying to say he knew he’d been betrayed.” I glanced toward Brentley, then Allera, and finally, Nicolette apologetically. “A Donnellean killed him.”
Brentley shook his head insistently and backed another step away, refusing to believe it. “A traitor?” He pressed his hand to his brow and glanced worriedly at his wife and then back to me. “You think it was whoever helped the Far Shore soldiers into the castle to kidnap Anniston in the first place? The bearer of dark magic?”
I nodded. “Probably, yes.”
“But, no.”
At those words, I whirled to Vienne, who’d spoken as she shook her head. “No,” she said again, frowning out her confusion. “That’s impossible. I just figured out who betrayed us to Far Shore.” She looked baffled until suddenly, her eyes cleared with realization. “Unless there are two traitors.”
Then she turned to look directly at her sister who was still nestled in the arms of her husband.
Chapter 39
Vienne
Twenty Minutes Earlier
“Well, while the boys are outside having all the fun and we’re trapped in here during the battle, is there at least some safe room we can go to?” Allera asked, pacing the Blue Chambers impatiently.
“Whatever for?” Yasmin asked with a laugh. “Don’t you have any faith in your darling brother to keep us safe?”
“He’s not the one I’m worried about,” Allera muttered under her breath. Then she spun to me, revealing all her vexation as she begged, “Vienne?”
I sighed, readjusted the sleeping Anniston in my arms—whom I couldn’t seem to part with after she’d been returned to me—and said, “We could always go down to the wine—”
But Yasmin sharply bit out, “No! We have no reason to hide. The men have everything well in hand, I’m sure. Besides, I hate the wine cellar. It’s so dank and cold down there. I wish to stay up here where I can see what’s happening.”
“If you want to actually see the battle,” Allera bit out irritably, “then why aren’t we up in the East Salon, watching through all that nifty wall of clear rock that’s caused this damn war in the first place?”
“Because the chairs are more comfortable in here,” Yasmin answered loftily, lifting her chin in proud arrogance as she seated herself in the royal, blue-padded, high-back chair of honor where Caulder usually sat.
“Well, I can’t see shit from this window,” Nicolette reported, spinning away from it in a huff. She was the only one who’d actually been trying to watch the battle. “And if I can’t see Brentley, Caulder, Soren, or Urban from here, then I’m not staying.”
“I’m with you,” Allera agreed, flashing forward to take Nicolette’s hand. “Let’s you and I watch the fight from the East Salon.”
But again, Yasmin spoke with biting authority. “No. We all stay in here.”
Her tone brooked no room for argument, which of course, set both Allera and Nicolette in with arguing.
“But that’s insane!” Nicolette cried. “Why do we have to stay with you?”
Allera exchanged a suspicious frown with me before she slowly turned back to the queen. “If we’re perfectly safe, as you insist, then yes, Nicolette has a brilliant point. Why must we stay together?”
“Because…” Yasmin started, only to scowl at us with no ready excuse to back her decision. Then she muttered, “I wish to stay in here. And I want the company.” She waved a servant forward to pour her a cup of tea. “Everyone sit and drink with me.”
“Vienne can stay to keep you company,” Nicolette offered.
I shot the young princess an aggravated scowl.
Like I wanted to be stuck in here alone with Yasmin to suffer through one of her vain little moods as she went on and on about how inconvenienced this dreadfully dull war was making her day.
“Everyone stays,” Yasmin insisted again.
But she’d no sooner spoken the proclamation than a commotion rose from the main entrance of the room, where the guard stationed there was being set upon by two bare-chested ruffians, one wielding a spear while the other swung a battle axe.
At first, I could only blink because it was such a peculiar sight to behold. The Donnelly man, garbed in full metal armor with a stately crest of all black with a diagonal blue line striped through the center, looked quite civilized and cultured next to the men who wore nothing but leather skirts and sandals. It didn’t seem to matter how they dressed, however, when it was one sword against a savage spear and battle axe.
Before the other two Donnelly guards who’d been stationed at the other doorways could reach their comrade, he’d been cut down and killed, which left all three doorways free for two more savages to stream inside.
Nicolette screamed and surged toward me, clutching my arm for safety, while Allera appeared at my other side, backing into me as she faced out, as if she were trying to protect me.
“Excuse me!” Yasmin cried in outrage, surging to her feet from her chair to demand, “What the devil is the meaning of this?”
Meanwhile, the four primitive-looking intruders finished off the last two Donnelly guards in short order. Thinking fast, I thrust Anniston into Allera’s arms, making the babe squawk out her displeasure.
“Take her,” I begged desperately, peering into the eyes of Urban’s sister. “Treat her as if she were your own.”
“What…?” Realizing what I intended, she immediately shook her head. “Vienne, no!” she begged. “You can’t. Urban…”
“The queen can’t fall,” I said in a steady voice I didn’t feel. Inside, everything shook with absolute terror. “If the queen falls, then the king isn’t far behind. And if the king falls…”
“Checkmate,” she whispered, her eyes filling with understanding tears.
Holding my gaze, she pulled Anniston’s forehead up to her mouth so she could kiss the babe, her way of telling me she’d take over mothering my child if I no longer could.
I nodded my thanks. “And tell him I love him,” I whispered before spinning away to rush to my sister.
When I ripped her tiara off without preamble and shoved it onto my own head, she cried out her shock. “Vienne! What’re you—”
“Shh,” I hissed, pushing her toward Allera, Nicolette, and a single cowering maid servant. Then I took her place, standing in front of the throne chair. “I’m saving your life. Trust me.”
The four intruders turned their attention my way.
One man grinned a golden-toothed smile and advanced slowly as he swept his gaze over me and then toward Yasmin, the maid, Allera, and then Nicolette. “Well, look at all these lovely, young skirts we got in here. What pretty little titties you each must have, but alas, I don’t got the time to go sampling. We’re only here for the queen.”
I lifted my chin and stepped forward. “How did you get in?”
Proud of how queenly regal I sounded and that my voice didn’t shake, I narrowed my eyes on the men, demanding answers with my cold, hard stare as I hoped to stall them until I could think up a plan to save us all.
Gold-tooth merely grinned. “Same way my friends who took that baby got in.” He tipped his head toward Anniston who was crying fitfully. “Though it looks as though they failed their task since the brat’s still alive.”
So, they must be from Far Shore as well.
Nodding once, I admitted, “They did. As you will fail as well, I’m afraid.”
The four of them facing off against us laughed. “Is that so?” one of Gold-tooth’s friends asked as he grinned and licked the blood from the Donnelly soldiers off the tip of his spear. “And whi
ch one of you is going to stop us?”
Grinning crudely at Nicolette, he took a step in her direction, making her whimper and leap closer to Allera.
I held up a hand, not sure what else to do. “I will,” I said. “You mentioned you only wanted the queen. So, then take me. Leave everyone else in the room alone.”
Gold-tooth paused. “We were told to kill the others.”
I lifted a single eyebrow. “Well, I’m telling you not to.”
Guffawing, he mockingly bowed before me. “In that case, of course, Your Majesty. Whatever you wish.”
I nodded and stepped toward him. “Lead the way, then.”
They would’ve taken me, post haste, but Yasmin ruined it all by crying, “Wait, what? No! You think she’s the queen? She’s not the queen.” Leaping in front of me to block my path, she opened her arms wide and faced off with the Far Shore bandits. “I’m the only queen here.”
I blinked, frankly astonished my sister loved me enough to take my place. I’d been so sure she would simply let me die for her, but no, here she was, fighting to save me.
Flustered because I hadn’t planned for this scenario, I let out a nervous laugh. “Thank you, my love,” I told her, patting her arm before nudging her firmly back toward the other women. “I appreciate you trying to save me, but—”
“No,” Yasmin roared with vehemence as she glared at me and snagged her crown off my head, pulling hair with it. “She’s a lying bitch. I’m the queen.”
Suddenly, I wondered if this show had anything to do with my safety as much as it did her own vanity.
“Well, now…” Gold-tooth murmured, scratching his beard as he eyed both me and Yasmin. “I know one of you is surely a liar, but which one. Hmm?”
Allera handed my baby off to Nicolette and then stepped forward so she could gently take Yasmin’s arm and draw her back. “Come now, my lady,” she urged softly. “Let them take the queen. That is her wish.”
Yasmin only jerked away from her, glaring. “She’s not the fucking queen. I am.”
“No, she’s the queen,” Nicolette insisted as she pointed to me, her finger shaking and eyes filling with tears that streaked down her cheeks. When she mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” I could only smile and nod my head in gratitude.