Skye
The logs in the fireplace had long burned to embers when Xander called it a night. My eyes functioned no more. The text and drawings of the books I combed through turned to a blurred mess as our friends bid us goodnight. Xander’s and Rioden’s murmurs near the doorway drew me from my fruitless search. I’d found nothing of worth tonight.
“How do we protect our soldiers from something as indefensible as smoke?” Xander asked, his voice low.
“You are saying you believe the smoke is what possesses them?”
“His magic has to be wrapped into it. You saw the depictions from Valeyah. You heard Helena’s story of The Falling. Those aves died after colliding with smoke.”
Tilting my head away, my eyes strained to watch their conversation without being seen. The steady pace of my heart quickened.
Xander rubbed the back of his neck. “Ri, if we meet him on the battlefield, how do we know he won’t take control of our entire army before we lift a sword?”
The book I held slipped from my fingers and off my lap.
“Milady, may I escort you to your chamber?” Thomas’s question covered my gasp as he swooped in and caught the book mid-air before it hit the floor. I’d forgotten he remained in the room.
The scar above his brow wrinkled with concern as he placed the book on the table and offered me his arm. Xander and Rioden tensed, their words quieting as their heads swung our way.
Xander’s lips formed a straight line before he spoke. “You should get some rest. I will check on you when I come up.”
I blinked, still dazed. My fingers wrapped around Thomas’s forearm and used him as leverage to help me to my feet. I’d hunched over books for so long, my muscles protested the movement. Blood rushed to my lower extremities as I hobbled toward the exit.
We stopped before Xander. “You two need sleep as well,” I reminded them. My hand itched to touch the growth of beard covering his jaw, but I withheld the affection I longed to show.
“Soon.” His gaze held a double meaning. He would come to my room when he was done with Rioden. Frustration at having to hide our relationship from people who surely sensed our feelings nudged at my side like an elbow. It made no sense, but we did it anyway. And as much as it pained me, I left them to their discussion.
Thomas and I walked the corridor toward the stairs, my mind fixated on Xander’s conversation with Rioden. We couldn’t fight some magic-filled smoke monster. We needed to cut down the source. Lost in my thoughts it took me a moment to comprehend the complete silence. I lifted my gaze. The halls were empty.
“Why are there no guards?” I asked.
“Xander cut back.” My grip tightened on Thomas’s arm and he looked down at me. “The castle is secure, milady. We maintain guards on your wing, but our presence is no longer needed throughout the castle.”
“You’re that secure in the wards?”
“The leader of your army is.” His tone chided. My hand dropped from his arm and landed on my hip as I stopped in the middle of the corridor.
Thomas raised his hands in defense. “I beg your pardon.”
That was our shtick; Thomas tested my patience with overreaching comments and I glared at him, putting him in his place until he apologized. It was one of the things I liked about him. Why I trusted him. He spoke to me like an equal, not like his Queen.
Xander would not reduce the security around Montibello if he didn’t trust in our safety. The fae’s wards kept magic from breaching the castle. The formidable presence we maintained outside the walls would spot a large-scale attack in plenty of time to warn us. If a smaller band of attackers made it by our soldiers in the field, they still needed to breach our gates. The steep cliffs, trenches, and moats surrounding Montibello made that virtually impossible. The lone weakness I’d detected in my time here was the water. The Sea of Doran offered a way in to Montibello, but that meant boats of a scale not in existence in this realm. Plus, our sentries would spot invaders before they reached the water gate.
We resumed walking, both deep in our own thoughts, judging by Thomas’s heavy sigh.
“Is something wrong?” I asked when he sighed a second time.
“I cannot help wondering why my mother came to Tyalbrook.” The Valeyah-born Guardian scratched his chin and met my gaze. “Why would a kingdom hidden for hundreds of years send a woman and child to the place they hid from? What information did she bring the King?”
“That’s a good question. Why did you come with her? Did she not intend to return to Valeyah?” I added to his questions. “Is there no one left here who might know?”
He squared his shoulders but kept walking. Each step he took echoed in the vacant corridor until he slowed, then paused altogether.
“There is one.” I remained passive, and his dark gaze swept over my face. “Your Majesty, I would ask your understanding.”
His formality was unnecessary. “Thomas, I hold the secret of your birth, you should know you have my understanding.”
“Of course.” He gave me a small nod. “There is a man in Ridgecrest. We stayed with him when we first arrived in Montibello. After my mother was killed, I was sent to the orphanage.”
I did not ask for the man’s name. It was clear that was what Thomas meant when he asked for understanding. He would not give me a name.
“And you think he may know something?” I asked.
“I have not spoken to him in years, but he is the only one I know who knew my mother. If she met with anyone else it was while I slept. We arrived mere days before McClintock attacked. She did not have time to do much.” His head lowered as he rubbed a hand over his face.
“With your permission, I will ride to Ridgecrest tomorrow and seek him out?” he asked.
Refusal was my first inclination. Thomas hadn’t left my side in weeks. He was safe behind the castle walls. My fear of losing those around me was relentless. Panic threatened my airways. I breathed deeply and slowly. Thomas eyed me.
“We haven’t asked my mother about Valeyah. Every time I consider asking her—” I pressed my palm to my chest and trailed off. I forced another deep breath.
“If she knew something, she would have spoken.”
“What if it doesn’t matter? Maybe we’re wasting our time worrying about it?”
“Maybe.” He touched my elbow, propelling me forward once again. “If those renderings were correct and Valeyah faced the same … thing and it nearly destroyed them, there must be something we can learn from it. Plus, Valeyah is our true homeland.”
A bitter cold crept through the corridor and I rubbed my upper arms. “Has anyone told you how astute you are?”
He tossed his head back and laughed. The light sound was such a juxtaposition from the dark, scarred Guardian. My cheeks warmed as he laughed at me. I lifted my skirts, my foot taking a step forward again when his arm blocked my way.
“Wait. Did you hear—” His question died as his head snapped toward the shadowy corridor to our left.
Immediately, my fingers curled around the etched hilt of the dagger tucked in the velvet pleats at my waist. Thomas’s concentrated face was familiar. Tensed stance, hooded eyes, lips that moved silently as he worked something out in his head. His Guardian senses were on high alert. I tensed as he assessed the dim corridor.
He scowled. “No, there is nothing. I thought—”
A faint scream cut him off.
He pulled his sword in one swift motion. Then a second mumbled shout, decidedly feminine in tone, echoed through the corridor. Our attention snapped to the left simultaneously. The sound was muted but it was there.
“Stay behind me.” Thomas grabbed my arm and pushed me back. He looked beyond my head, down the long hall in the direction we came from. We were too far from the cabinet room to yell, and his tense features made it clear he would not send me back alone. He would not ignore what we heard either. He was too honorable.
“Your Majesty?” he asked with uncertainty.
I flashed the dagger I gripped tightly. “I am fine.”
With a last glance at me, we moved forward. Thomas held his sword arm in front and his other arm behind, keeping me at a cautious distance. Shadows covered the corridor to our left. We passed a door and paused. A flicker of recognition hit as my mind registered where we were. The dungeon hallway. The door to the stairway was open. I glanced over my shoulder at the empty hall, then back to the doorway before us. The clang of metal from below ground rose.
Thomas reached for me as he withdrew from the opening I’d once snuck down. “I must escort you back to Xander.”
Another feminine wail greeted us and every hair on my body stood. “That’s my mother.” I raced for the dark stairs.
“Wait!” Thomas’s shout followed me. “I cannot—”
“You will not order me about Thomas.”
The main castle corridors were lit by lanterns at each intersection, but the dungeon was pitch black. Barely ten steps down my shoes slipped on a narrow step as my dress caught between my legs and beneath my toes. The momentum of the stumble buckled my knees and threw me against the inner wall of the spiral staircase with a muffled cry. The jolt forced my dagger from my fist, and the metal clanged down into the dark abyss. My cheek scraped against the rough stones as my head bounced into the wall.
Thomas’s boots hit the step behind me. His strong arm circled my waist and drew me back against his chest. “You are going to kill yourself on these steps, milady. Allow me to go first.”
His contact was a breach of etiquette, but I sagged into his chest nevertheless. My head swam from the collision.
“That was my mother.” I clawed at his arm locked around my midsection. “McClintock is down there.”
His forearm jerked upward, the pressure enough to force the air from my lungs without harming me. “I know,” he hissed, picking me up effortlessly and setting me on the steps behind him. “Hold onto my back and follow me carefully. I need my sword, and I cannot worry about you falling to your death.”
My fight broke at his words. He wasn’t trying to stop me from descending, he was merely trying to keep me safe while doing so. “Thank you.”
The muted shuffle of our careful steps and hollow breaths filled the staircase. We moved painstakingly slow, tiptoeing our way down. I would push the man out of my way if I thought he’d let me pass. A metallic ting and scrape stopped us, and Thomas grunted. His body shifted in front of me and something ground against the stones.
“Your dagger, milady.” Thomas’s hand found my fingers and gingerly guided them to the weapon I’d dropped. “Can you secure it until we are down?”
I nodded and dared a whispered “yes” since he couldn’t see me.
The stairway didn’t seem as long the last time I snuck my way down to see McClintock. Lack of light made it as though we were descending into the depths of Hell. Maybe we were. Thomas stopped moving and my toes searched for the edge of the last step, sighing when I reached flat ground. At the same moment the quickened pace of boots hitting the stone floor sounded from above us.
“Have you been here before?” I asked Thomas.
“Not to these cells, no.”
“I know you will not let me go first, but the halls are narrow enough. We can stay to the wall and I’ll direct you.”
Thomas shifted, his hand grasped at my stomach and moved to my hip, before his fingers found mine. “I beg your pardon, milady,” he said gruffly.
“Now isn’t the time to worry about being proper. Go left,” I ordered. The metal of his sword pinged against the stone as we hurried. “We follow the curve of the hall. There is a door at the end. I don’t have a key.”
Ahead of us, a dim glow lit the way and Thomas picked up speed.
“We won’t need a key,” he said with a hushed tone as we rounded the corner. I peeked around his shoulder. The door to the cell room was open wide, a half-burned lantern abandoned in the middle of the floor.
The vise that was Thomas’s hand tightened around my fingers as we stepped through the dungeon’s doorway. His broad shoulders obstructed my view, but my nose twitched at the scent of urine and sweat. The stuffy air suffocated me while still being damp and chilly. Thomas released my hand and picked up the lantern. The flame flickered on the stone walls, floor, and ceiling.
He gasped. “Milady?” His tone was soft and careful. It wasn’t me he spoke to.
With one hand gripped on the leather belt Thomas wore at his waist, I stepped to his side and saw what he saw. My eyes registered the space in quick succession: the upended wooden stool in the center of the room, the open cell door, the bedding strewn about, the dark puddle that crept across the floor and glistened in the light of the flame, Mother on her knees, her hands stained, her eyes wide. And next to her—McClintock.
A scream lodged in my throat as his dead eyes stared back.
A stampede charged down the dungeon stairs, but my vision was locked on what was before me. My mouth formed soundless words. Thomas moved first. After transferring the lantern from the floor to the hook by the cell door, he kicked at the floor. My gaze followed his booted foot, my eyes trailing the short sword—one I recognized from Nickoli’s room—as it skittered toward the wall and left a dark liquid trail in its wake.
“Skye? Kerra?” Xander’s voice echoed from far away. No. I blinked several times in succession. Not far away. Everything rushed around me making me feel as though my ears were stuffed with cotton.
“Your Majesty?” Thomas asked. “Are you hurt?”
My head shook before I deduced he wasn’t speaking to me. I groaned and refocused on the macabre scene in McClintock’s cell.
A sword from Nickoli’s room.
Thick, murky puddles.
Mother’s stricken face and shaking hands.
The world tilted.
“Skye!” Xander shouted. The stampede quieted as more men crowded into the cell room and came to a stop. “Hey, are you all right?” Cold hands gripped my face with the bruising need to touch me. The raw skin from my brush with the wall stung as he cupped my cheek.
“Skye?” Xander spoke softly this time. He rarely used my given name when in the presence of others. The intimacy in his voice and firm touch rescued me from the brink of shock. Each breath I took was a shaky gasp as I struggled to comprehend what had happened. My cheek met Xander’s chest before I could ask.
He murmured words my fuzzy head couldn’t decipher. Rioden’s stalking frame came into view as he crossed behind Xander. His deep voice filled the space, but his words made no more sense in my jumbled mind than Xander’s.
“Skye, please?” Xander’s warm breath tickled my ear as his hands rubbed up and down my spine.
The bubble burst and the sounds of the dungeon returned: male voices, soft sniffles, the drip, drip, drip, of the water off the ceiling. I wet my lips. “Yeah,” I finally said, my fingers fisted his tunic as I clung to him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
His arms wound tighter, flattening me against his body until we were one. I closed my eyes with a shuddering breath.
“Cillian?” Xander spoke against my hair. “I will be right back, I promise,” he said before he handed me over to Cillian who wrapped his arm around my shoulders and mumbled a soft ‘I have you.’
Grateful for this support, I leaned into Cillian’s side and watched Xander. He rubbed his jaw and surveyed the cell before he stepped over McClintock’s legs and crouched beside my mother.
His hands held her pale face the same way he held mine. “Kerra?”
“He took everything from me,” she said. She sounded different. Her normally breezy tone had a defiant edge.
“Are you hurt?” Xander asked.
Her bloodied hands gripped Xander’s forearms, leaving stains on his tan tunic. “He killed Philip. He taunted me. He refused to tell me.” Her voice gained strength with each sentence.
“The blood Kerra, are you hurt?” Xander repeated with more force. He held her arm out, studying it.
Her haunted gaze followed his movements. Her mouth twisted like this was the first time she’d seen the blood covering her skin. Twisting out of Xander’s grip, she shook her head. “No. I do not think so.” She swiped her hands on her skirts and recognition replaced her vacant stare the moment before a mewling cry burst from her mouth.
A weight pressed against my chest at her cries and I struggled against Cillian, longing to go to her. His arms were iron chains around my torso keeping me pressed against his hard body. “Give them a moment.”
“She’s my mother.” I jabbed at his ribs.
Xander lifted his head at my raised voice. His wrinkled forehead and tight lips when our gazes met killed my bravado. Mother’s face turned away and though I couldn’t hear her words, I saw her lips move. Xander refocused on her, but not before his pained eyes seared into my heart. Cillian stiffened at my back.
“Do not make him choose between you two right now,” Cillian whispered as he angled us sideways, taking away my line of sight. “Let him help her. Yes, she is your mother, but she does not want you to see her like that. Why do you think she has not looked you in the eye?”
If the fight hadn’t already left my body at the regret in Xander’s eyes, Cillian’s comment would have doused it. He was right. Xander was torn between us. His love for me versus the bond he’d formed with her. A fit of irrational jealousy clawed at me. Not at Xander’s tenderness with her, but at Cillian’s words. She didn’t want me—her daughter—to see her like this, but she was comfortable with Xander? Did she fear I would think differently of her?
The man who murdered my father and held my mother captive for years was dead. Whether by self-defense or calculated plot, I couldn’t fault her. McClintock tore her life apart. He caused her to lose her daughter. Both of them.
I gripped Cillian’s arms as he held onto me and strained my neck for a glimpse of the cell again.
McClintock’s body was covered by a blanket. Its edges saturated black where the fabric soaked the blood from the floor. Apart from Rioden and an unfamiliar guard who he whispered back and forth with, the cell block was empty of the men who’d rushed in behind Xander. When did they leave? I shook the useless musing away and watched Xander assist Mother to her feet. My stomach lurched at the sight of her crimson streaked hands marring his. Saliva filled my mouth. I was moments from losing my dinner. Swallowing hard, I concentrated on breathing through my nose. I’d never seen death like this. My concern for Nickoli the night the orphanage steward died kept me from lingering on the man and his wound. The blanket of night had masked the horror of the moment, protecting me. The Semvon Xander killed in the park were gruesome, yet they seemed fake. Their black tar blood inhuman. No, those deaths didn’t affect me, but seeing Mother’s blood-splattered dress, seeing the sword, and the lifeless eyes of the man who’d caused so much pain … My legs weakened.
“It will be all right.” Cillian supported my weight.
I lifted my chin high and breathed. In and out. In and out. This was nothing like what I would see when we went to battle. This was not the time for weakness.
Xander’s voice drew my attention. “Kerra?”
He stared at her with confusion, his arm at the small of her back as he tried ushering her from the cell, but she resisted. He urged her forward again and she leaned into his side, her lips moving frantically against the shell of his ear. I willed her to look my way, but her eyes remained downcast. Dread weighed heavily on my heart when Xander closed his eyes at her words. He scrubbed his hand over his face, his fingers leaving smears of red in their wake. When he finally looked my way, his eyes were grim.
“Cillian, would you escort the Queen to her room?”
The cell fell silent.
“Wait. What?” My shrill voice reverberated off the stones. Cillian cursed, the muscles in his arms flexing to keep hold of me as I jerked forward. “I’m not going anywhere until I have answers.”
Xander’s lips pursed, his blue eyes imploring me not to argue as he looked between us. She clung to his arm like a lost child. Her shoulders rounded and hunched, her dark hair curtaining her face from my view.
They were cutting me out? I suspected it the moment she started speaking and he closed his eyes, but I didn’t expect this. She didn’t want me here? The reality was a punch to the gut, sending tears to my eyes as Xander mouthed a subtle ‘please.’
The shudder of her slender body drew my gaze. Her face remained hidden, turned into Xander’s shoulder like she was ashamed. Whatever hurt clenched at my heart slipped away as I stared at her stained fingertips. I wouldn’t make him choose between us. She needed me not to be here and he needed me not to fight him. What I needed didn’t matter.
As though he sensed my surrender, Cillian released me, and with one final look at Xander and Mother, I left the cell block. We made our way back to my wing without speaking. My gaze flicked to Nickoli’s door at the end of the hall when we reached the door to my bedchamber. I stopped.
“Milady?”
“I’d like to be alone,” I said before I slipped into my room and slid to the floor, tears already streaking my cheeks.