Redemption

  “Do you think war is wrong?” she whispered into the stillness.

  No answer.

  She knew Robert must be asleep.

  After the altercation, they had both returned to their roles among the soldiers for the rest of the day. Then he had arrived at her shoulder at dusk, refusing to let her spend another night among the wounded. As if sleeping away from the dying could prevent her from seeing them.

  Hiding within this tent was pointless. She pushed back her blanket.

  And felt his hand clasp her wrist. “You didn’t kill them.” His voice was firm.

  “I’m the leader,” she whispered, rising to sit. “Any loss that happens in this revolution is my fault.”

  “You don’t get to do that.” He sat up beside her. “You don’t get to proclaim the belief that all of us are capable of making our own choices and then take all the guilt for yourself.”

  Her guilt was more than a symptom of being raised a self-centered princess. She had hidden her doubts. Her fears. If she had admitted them, perhaps no one would have followed her into this graveyard.

  He continued, “I chose to be here. Lord Lester’s men and Valerian’s and the Oracle’s and the frontiersmen. We all chose, Aurelia. You don’t get to accept the responsibility for us.”

  “Do you think war is wrong?” she repeated. This, she realized, was the real reason she had not discussed strategy with His Lordship. She could not think about strategy when the larger question was all consuming.

  Robert pulled his hand away. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  Which was such hypocrisy, telling her he had made his own choice and now denying his right to an opinion. She slid forward, out of his grasp. “If it doesn’t matter what you think—what everyone thinks—then what are we doing here? I thought you believed in this mission.”

  “I …” He failed to confirm her statement.

  Had she misinterpreted his feelings this whole time? And if she had, what else had she misread? “I know Lord Lester is humoring me,” Aurelia said, “that he thinks my vision of freedom in Tyralt is that of a child.”

  “He wouldn’t have followed a child into—”

  “And Valerian.” She stood. “He believes Melony is an aberration—that everything would be fine in this country if I became queen instead of her.”

  “I’m not certain Valerian still—”

  “But you! I thought at least you agreed with me.” She spun, prepared to look down on him. But he was already standing. Close. His arms reached to hold her. She broke away from him and out of the tent.

  A chill swept her flesh, despite her leather leggings and the blouse hanging to her hips. The night was cold. Cold and black, except for a bare handful of stars and the smoldering remnants of a dying campfire. Her bare feet curled on the hardened road, and her gaze swept the area. Vacant. Darkness had formed a fragile shelter from all horrors beyond.

  “I believe in freedom, Aurelia.” Robert’s voice came from behind her.

  She hugged her chest. “Then how can you say your opinion doesn’t matter?”

  “I think war is wrong.”

  So it was not that he believed his opinion did not matter. But that he disagreed with the revolution as a whole.

  “I think anything,” he continued, “that can result in this much death … is wrong. And war between our own people. That has to be ultimately wrong.”

  Why hadn’t he voted against her? Her eyes refused to adjust to the darkness. She had thought, in the midst of battle, that she had begun to see. But she had never pictured half the details of its aftermath. “I know,” she whispered, then gripped her head in her arms. Why couldn’t I find another way?

  Robert’s hand ran softly along her back. “Aurelia, I can’t lie and say I believe in war. How can something like this ever be right? But what other choices were there?”

  “Was exile really worse?”

  “Yes.” His hand stilled, his voice tight. “Occupation by Anthone could have been much worse. He did not care about any of the people of Tyralt.”

  She lowered her arms, then let her head fall back, her gaze searching desperately for stars. “And how has my caring about them done Daria or Thomas or the rest of these men any good?”

  “It hasn’t … yet.” Robert’s voice drifted as he moved away. “Do you want the truth?”

  Of course. But her mind wavered. Daria’s assault today had ripped through Aurelia’s chest, leaving her bleeding inside without cessation. If Robert’s truth was as harsh as Daria’s, Aurelia was not certain she could bear the agony. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “The revolution would have come with or without you.”

  Her eyes flew toward his voice. His form now crouched over the campfire. His head lowered as he added wood to the dying embers and continued to speak. “The first time I heard talk about revolution, my parents and I had just arrived on the frontier. We’d stopped at a fort, and a couple boys there were spouting off about overthrowing the king. I thought they were insane. Got my face rubbed in the dirt for saying so. When I told my father what they had said, I expected him to be angry. I mean … our family. Vantauge. We support the crown. But he didn’t say anything. And I started to realize I was wrong.”

  Robert stirred the embers, coaxing them back into flames as he talked. “After that, I didn’t fight. Kept my mouth shut and started to listen. The men—the ones who spoke with my father—they had stories. I didn’t believe what those men said about the king. None of them had ever met him. But the law. Some of them had had real experiences with the law, and I started to think, or maybe to understand, why people in the rest of Tyralt might want to go north. And why, once they got there, they wouldn’t feel any loyalty toward the crown. Of course, I believed I knew better. Because I knew you.”

  And here I am destroying the country you thought I would save. She approached him slowly as he continued to speak.

  “I didn’t realize,” he said, “until my return to the palace, that the system, the government—it wouldn’t let you lead. Your sister took over because she could. Because your father allowed it, but more because the system was flawed. Based on control. And the people of Tyralt aren’t going to allow themselves to be controlled forever.”

  Aurelia had learned, during her expedition, about the people’s dissatisfaction with the crown. But what he was telling her about himself—that was new. “You’re saying,” she whispered, lowering herself to the ground at his side. “That you’ve anticipated a revolution ever since we left the palace?”

  He added a scrap of wood to the fire. Then another. And another.

  At last he turned to face her, his blue eyes black orbs in the growing firelight. “I’m saying I believe in the mission, Aurelia. And if I had voted, I would have voted to head south.”

  Relief washed through her.

  “I was afraid,” he whispered. “To make that choice.”

  “I was afraid too,” she admitted. “I am afraid.” Suddenly all the doubts and fears that had been trapped within her poured out: her concerns from the very beginning of their journey, her inadequacy during the battle on the frontier, her questions about the decisions she had made as they had traveled across the Gate. Her failure to share her distrust of her sister’s sanity with the rest of the council. “I don’t know if we can win,” she whispered. “I believe … I believe in this mission. I believe the people of our nation deserve to be free. But the cost … all these men … their families … their children. I’m not sure I’m brave enough for this, Robert.”

  “You are when the future of Tyralt is at stake.” He clasped her shoulders. “People see that in you. Your heart. Your passion. That you love this country more than anything. Your sister is correct about one thing, Aurelia. You are the greatest threat to her power.”

  “I could never have been queen, Robert.”

  “You would have been a great queen.” His right hand lifted and caressed the side of her face in a long, slow arc. No one else had ever looked at h
er that way. She had thought, when he had retreated from her after she’d named him the head of her army, that perhaps she had at last forfeited her claim on his heart. Yet here he was, with her. Still.

  “No,” she breathed. “I could never have fallen in love with anyone but you.”

  The caress froze. “What?”

  She ducked away from his intensity. “I used to believe maybe I could compromise, for the kingdom, that I could—”

  The hand on her shoulder tightened. “Aurelia.”

  “But you—” She looked up, tears blurring her vision. She didn’t need her eyesight to see him. Could see all the moments when he had slipped through the barriers of her heart. His first kiss, by the waterfall. She had fled—startled—but he had found her. Waited. Then their first real kiss, in the barn on the frontier. Months later. Robert and his impossible patience! Anyone else would have left her. Or pressured her. Or used her. But not him—this boy who had been too afraid, until now, to cast a vote, and yet had rushed into battle to save the entire revolution. This man who had taken her hand—helped her climb the Gate, find her country, survive exile. And return home. “I love you, Robert.”

  His kiss stormed over her. Passion, craving, desire. Her heart pounded in its attempt to explode from her chest. Robert’s strength had always been different from hers—beating way down deep in his soul where she could never go. Or she had thought she could never go. But tonight that strength blazed in his eyes. It flamed through his skin, from his hands to her face, from his face to her hands. She kissed him back. And together they shared the blame for the incineration of the entire world.

  Chapter Eighteen

  VILLAINESS—SCENE III

  Palace Ballroom, Tyralt City

  The knife sailed from Melony’s hand and struck the target. Dead center.

  She had forgone the illusion of feminine frivolity on the day she toured the Central Plaza. Now she plucked the weapon from its mark and paced backward ten paces, five more than for her previous throw. Her vision of the vast ballroom with its polished floors, sculpted ceiling, and wide windows narrowed until she saw only the target. Three rings. Anything beyond that was a miss.

  Like her attempts to control her Head General.

  She hurled the knife again. And again it struck the center.

  No applause. Isolation was often hard to procure, but today the entire court had averted her practice.

  Except, of course, for Henry. The graying, stooped figure, all but invisible within a sunbeam, was easy to forget. More than once she had glanced up after a quarrel with her mother or a general or Tyralt-help-her a grasping city leader to notice that her father’s adviser—her own by default—remained in the room. Seated and waiting for Melony’s permission to leave. Or her next order. In this case, her response to the recent message from her Head General. Unlike whom, Henry Vantauge was actually useful. His new messenger doves had ensured she would not have to wait weeks for reports of the campaign.

  Though the word she had received was unacceptable. Your Majesty, we have been forced to retreat.

  Melony plucked the knife again from the target’s center and strode back. Fifteen paces. How was defeat even possible?! How could the greatest army on the coast lose a battle? To a bunch of untrained volunteers.

  Thunk! The knife dug a nasty hole in the ballroom wall. Someone would have to repaint.

  She considered another line of the general’s message. Regrettably Your Majesty’s tactics were not productive.

  How dare he blame her tactics!

  She would have to arrange for his granddaughter to have an accident, perhaps a crushed hand to deter the girl from inflicting others with the family gift for correspondence.

  Melony started toward the knife, then slowed. Of course, the accident would have to be managed with tact. Better to avoid any rumors of dissent within her court.

  Again she swept forward. There was no dissent at court. Only among the rabble in the far reaches of her kingdom. And among those too ignorant to know better than to scrawl her sister’s name on the stones of the Central Plaza.

  Melony yanked the weapon from the wall and again paced backward, her mind returning to the general’s excuses. An unanticipated force of several thousand trained men.

  Trained how? She did not believe it. Not unless her sister really had lowered herself to marry the king of Anthone. But the rumors claimed otherwise. As did a cryptic note, passed to Melony by the Minthonian ambassador and signed with Edward’s royal seal, warning against anyone from Tyralt ever entering the Anthonian harbor.

  As if she had any need for that paltry excuse for a port.

  She had real goals. A plan. The scaffold. A whipping post. She knew who she would use to wield the whip. And she would hire an executioner from among the men on her estate at Midbury. Men who were loyal to her, not just the crown.

  But the plan hinged on the competence of the royal military. We shall regroup south of the forest.

  “Why would they retreat so far?” she snarled, thinking aloud.

  Her adviser’s response was muted. “I would assume, Your Majesty, because of the cannon.”

  Cannon. Yes. The guns should be in place now, and their power would ensure superiority. But that proof should never have been needed. Her sister’s forces in central Tyralt? The people would hear. They would talk.

  They already talked.

  Though not yet of the defeat.

  One thing about Henry. His messages were secure. He kept all the royal secrets.

  And she knew she could trust him. He had had ample opportunity to leave. Could have gone with his brother to the frontier. Or resigned after her father’s passing. Could have declined the ascension to become queen’s adviser.

  But of all the people in the palace, Henry Vantauge had as much reason as Melony to hate her sister.

  Because of his dead son.

  Melony wavered in her stance. Her defenses faltered, her mind skidding over fragments that had refused to mend. She could picture Chris, his subtle smirk as he pointed at the target. His eyebrows lifted, daring her to throw the knife. To prove she was more than a secondary princess. Chris had never been a pawn. He was the one who had secretly taught her to throw, had challenged her to defy her family’s limitations, had encouraged her to have faith in her own abilities.

  He had never asked her permission to die.

  She flung the weapon, striking the center again.

  She didn’t care about the rest of the Head General’s message. Had no interest in the number of lost wagons or supplies or men.

  She wanted her sister. Dead.

  And Chris’s death avenged.

  Nothing else mattered.

  “Henry,” Melony spoke calmly. “What would you advise?”

  “Your Majesty, never place in another’s hands the task you care about most.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE MEANING OF VICTORY

  Robert stood, frozen, within the protective shadow of the Asyan’s southern edge and stared ahead at the nearby slope. A wide backward curve less than a mile south of his current position. Forty bronze guns perched along that crest. Forty cannon. He could not see beyond those guns, but based on their number, there could be no fewer than ten thousand royal soldiers hidden behind that slope, all of them waiting for his men to emerge from the Asyan. And race beneath those open muzzles of death.

  His men. They had been marching south for the past two weeks, three and half having elapsed since the battle. Fresh scouts had headed out and returned to report to him every hour of that tense trek. And still he could not accustom himself to the idea that the revolutionary force, now waiting farther back amid the foliage, was compelled to obey his orders.

  Boots shuffled as the council members shifted around him. “Well, there it is.” His Lordship let out a heavy breath. “Head General knows we’re coming out of the forest here. He’s got the Asyan Ravine half a mile to our left. And if we tried to head west, we’d land on the wrong side of the March
River. They’d take us at the crossing. Road was built here for a reason.”

  “We need to curve southeast.” Aurelia’s hand pointed within Robert’s peripheral vision.

  The men arming those cannon aren’t likely to agree. His gaze took in the blurred open ground before the slope.

  The Oracle, his once-white robes now stained to match the shades of the forest, motioned toward an orchard southeast of the dangerous crest. Despite fallen numbers, his revered status among his own men had not changed. The very survival of the tribesmen as a force was a testament to his leadership. And his ability to see. “The trees there,” he referred to the orchard. “They have the space for us to ride.”

  “Not enough for a wagon,” Lord Lester argued.

  Or royal cannon. Robert’s gaze flew back to the arc of guns.

  A rustle came from his right. Valerian. “We might try a diversion,” the Heir murmured, “if we still had a cannon.”

  “Is there no way to stop their guns?” the Oracle questioned.

  Robert respected his willingness to ask. Clearly the desert leader had been educated in the language and politics of Tyralt, but he alone had never traveled to the capital. Cannon this size could never have traversed the Geordian.

  “We’ll have the men carry hammers and nails,” His Lordship answered. “To drill ’em into the cannon touchholes.”

  “And how are we ever to get close enough to spike those weapons?” Robert asked. “Run straight up that rise under direct fire?”

  Silence. He felt the weight of four pairs of eyes settle on him. He had not been prepared for silence. Had expected argument, at least from the Oracle and Lord Lester. The inevitable protest of men who had had their age and authority usurped by someone with no experience. Instead a cold chill with no relation to the shade threaded through his body, the realization that no one craved his position.

  At last His Lordship rested a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “You know, son, you can always follow the plan from before.”