A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Page 11

  “Thank you, Magnus,” Sera said.

  “Always, my queen.”

  “Come Victor,” Sera said.

  Laroche’s neck was rigid, face red. “What are you doing, majesty?”

  “Taking him to safety.” Sera took Victor to his room and washed him once the staff brought the disinfectant. He stood in the shower like a pillar, unmoving, weeping. Sera dried and dressed him, then cleaned herself and put on one of Victor’s night robes.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. His expression was vacant, and he seemed to look right through her.

  Victor wasn’t a good king—everyone knew his brother would have been better suited to the throne. But, just like now, the old king had trained his eldest son, taught him how to rule, and had horribly neglected Victor’s education. When Victor’s father and brother died at sea, there had been no one else to rule.

  Aelland suffered.

  Now, George would be king. There was no one else, and Aelland would suffer more.

  Unless… Sera studied Victor for a few breaths and fought down the revulsion settling on her skin. They still had time to make another heir. Sex with the man she regarded as an uncle might break her, but for Aelland, she’d let him touch her—let him do whatever he wanted to her—if only she could have a child to replace George.

  But how would she replace George? He’d put up one hell of a fight. Yet, she already knew what she’d do to remove that snake from the throne. She had a killer for a father. For Aelland, she’d kill him herself.

  How far you’ve fallen from the bright-eyed girl sent to become queen, Seraphine.

  She swallowed and rolled out her shoulders. Shit.

  Sera slipped off the robe. Silk sighed as it caressed her bare back and legs on the way to the carpet. She stepped towards Victor on light feet and pressed his elbows off his legs. A moment of understanding flashed in his eyes when she sat on his lap, took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  His lips were old, but the kiss was fiery, ageless. Victor caressed her skin, exploring, and groaned deep in his chest as he turned to press her down on the bed.

  Sera unbuttoned his shirt and helped him shrug out of it. Well-defined muscles rippled under mature skin, warm and scented with pinecones. She pulled him close to her. Willed him to understand her shudder as a result of pleasure rather than revulsion.

  He was her husband, and this was his right. He was her husband, and this was his right.

  Her fingertips ran over goosebumps on his skin. Sera kept her eyes shut and cleared her mind. She imagined what stars looked like, opening galaxies above her to discover.

  Victor pulled away and studied her. “You should know, I— Seraphine, I’ve been impotent for years. I’ve wanted this moment from the day you arrived here, all grown up, ready to be my wife.”

  He’d what?

  “The first time you woke and found an intruder in your room? It was me. I went often, to look at you. Watch you while you slept. I knew you didn’t feel the same, and I know you still don’t. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

  Everything blurred, her legs and shoulders shook, while her innards inflated. “You?”

  “Why now, Seraphine?”

  Her spit was thick and heavy, but she managed to speak. “We need a baby.”

  “I am an old fool.” He turned away from her. “Dress yourself.”

  A way out. She didn’t have to do this; she didn’t have to go through with it. She bit the inside of her cheek. For Aelland, she would. Sera rolled over him and kissed him again, working on removing his pants.

  He hesitated for only a heartbeat, then returned the kisses, caressed her—did everything that would have set her toes curling, had he been anyone else.

  She suffocated in his arms.

  Her body proved to be the cure for impotence, and he groaned her name as he peaked. Afterwards, he pulled her to his chest and fell asleep.

  She swallowed bile and closed her eyes.

  Let his seed find its way. Let once be enough.

  Chapter 14

  “Varda, wait!” Frank approached from the other end of the hall.

  Blizzard grunted and flopped down next to Varda. The thick, red blanket she’d draped around his shoulders slipped to the floor.

  She lowered her trunk and waited for Frank to catch up to her. The door was so close, she’d almost made it out of the castle without Frank noticing. What could he possibly want? Surely not to stop her from moving out?

  “When I heard your mother was moving, I thought nothing of it,” he said. “She’s never been my greatest fan. Now that the second Dvaran royal lady is leaving my castle, I wonder what it was that I did to warrant this?”

  Vendla had moved out immediately after Varda had told her about the passages in the walls. To keep Frank from suspecting what he now suspected, Varda had stayed. For all it meant.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s nothing, Frank. I just miss my people.”

  “I understand.” He laughed. “There’s this saying in Mordoux that every stone has a listening ear. Have you spied anything interesting lately?”

  She furrowed her eyebrows. He couldn’t know what she and Nita had heard, could he?

  “I’ve heard all sorts of things about you.” He smiled that typically Frank smile.

  What game was he playing? “Like?”

  “Come now, don’t pretend you don’t know.” He leaned closer. “I know everything that happens in this castle, after all.”

  She glared at him, her heart pounding. Aside from eavesdropping on Frank and Clarity’s conversation, Varda had woken with Nita’s name on her lips the past night, drenched in sweat and hot all over. The dream had been so vivid, her need so great, she’d risen to find Nita and pick up where the dream had left off. She’d made it as far as the first floor before she’d reconsidered and had returned to bed. Could he know about that?

  “The cleaning girl who walked into your room last week.” He nudged Varda in the side. “Says you all but breathed fire at her. I had a bit of a riot on my hands.”

  “Oh. That.” Varda almost laughed. She took a deep breath, then said, “She didn’t knock, and I’d just exited the bath. In Dvara, we bathe hot, and allow ourselves a moment to cool after, before we dry off and dress for bed. Then she walked in to clean. Who chooses that time to clean?” Probably a spy.

  “Well, I beg of you to talk before you shout next time,” he said.

  “I’m moving out. There won’t be a next time.”

  “Sad tidings indeed.” He reached for her trunk. “Need a hand?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Suit yourself.” He waved over his shoulder and walked away.

  Varda draped the blanket over Blizzard’s back again, then hauled up the trunk and left the castle. What a strange conversation. He hadn’t tried to stop her—he despised her, after all. He still hadn’t needed to sound so happy about her leaving.

  She tutted and carried her trunk down the cobbled pathway, while Blizzard walked just ahead of her. Only a few odds and ends remained in her old room, but she’d go back for those another day, if just to avoid Frank.

  For once, the cobbles weren’t slick. The day was cloudless and the sun warm enough to melt the snow and ice wherever it could reach. Heaps of snow endured undisturbed in the shadow, but blue skies remained a definite improvement from the infernal drizzle-and-snow combination of the past months.

  According to Ghedi, there would be at least one more heavy snowfall and accompanying cold spell before the weather would truly heat up towards the end of spring. The best time of year, apparently. With the arrival of summer, he promised intense humidity and millions of mosquitoes. Much different from Dvara.

  The closer she got to the Dvaran tents, the louder the shouting became. One voice in guttural Dvaran, and the other in a weird Mordian dialect.

  The Dvaran was Sven—imposing with his hulking form and the sun glinting off his bald head. His copper beard was just a s
hade lighter than his face, mouth open as he shouted. He thumped the butt of his axe to the cobbles three times, each time louder than the last. He levelled a glare at one of the most senior training officers of the resistance, Sauvageon—a bull of a woman with one eye and a thick scar where the other had once been.

  She sliced the air with the flat of her hand with enough force to finally shake the tie from her reddish-blond hair and shouted in Mordian. Her accent and the speed with which she spoke made her impossible to understand, and Sven’s slack jaw confirmed that he didn’t follow her either. Sauvageon must have been raised in the Mordian countryside, in a village small enough to develop their own dialect—nothing like what most of the people spoke in Collinefort.

  Varda stopped next to Blizzard and lowered the trunk. “What’s going on?” she asked the nearest spectator.

  “Not a clue,” the woman said. “Apparently, they started shouting at each other this morning near the training grounds, and they’ve been shouting since. They don’t even understand each other.”

  Sauvageon’s arms flailed as she gestured, and spit flew with every other consonant. Her face was crimson, nose scrunched, and the large scar across her face remained light pink. Even in her wild anger, she wasn’t a bad-looking woman. Nothing like Nita, but who could compare to Nita’s effortless sexuality? Those curves.

  Varda scratched behind her ear where her braid was too tight. Ash and damnation, this infatuation had to end.

  “Stuck here, then. Creator, not this, too.” A plump woman with salt-and-pepper hair stopped just in front of Varda. She leaned close to the man next to her. “It’d make sense for him to hide out here. It’s chaos with all the bears and chickens and languages most of us don’t understand.”

  Him being Du Pont. Everyone in Collinefort had been speculating about the whereabouts of the tall, blond spy who had upped and disappeared without a trace on the same night as a pair of missing soldiers.

  Out here with the Dvarans, though? He’d need Vendla’s permission, and she wouldn’t allow such a thing. Still, the tented area was enormous—the largest percentage of Collinefort—and many people from all over lived there. This woman was probably right—he had to be in a tent somewhere.

  Nita would probably know. Snap out of it, Ahlström.

  The pair had their heads pressed together now, voices low and fast.

  Varda closed her eyes and focused on them.

  “—telling you, it’s the bloody king,” the woman whispered. “It’s like he’s desperate to discredit Du Pont. Have you seen the princess? ʼCourse not, not even the Creator’s caught a glimpse. Why? Why bring her here then keep her locked in that room with that bitch of a harlot? And these new rumours that someone’s drugging her? Ethirin, they say. If this comes from the top, I’m afraid she’s in danger. A princess of the blood, drugged and imprisoned by her own brother. Crying shame, it is. Crying bloody shame.”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Marie,” the man said. “King’s gotten progressively stranger since he arrived, but the last year? I don’t know. He seems paranoid sometimes. Desperate, and neurotic.”

  “That’s what I said, innit? And the network, too. They pull closer and closer, more secretive than ever.”

  “And that’s saying something, am I right? If Du Pont’s not taken over the network, it must be true that someone else has. Someone we should be afraid of. And if you can believe what people have been whispering, the king’s being squeezed to a pulp in this shady person’s fist.”

  Marie pursed her lips. “That there scares me shitless. We should—” She and her companion edged out of earshot.

  Interesting. The mysterious disappearance of Jacques Du Pont must have been part of Clarity’s scheme. He’d been gone before the announcement had been made that he was to be taken into custody. He probably did have something to do with the disappearance of those soldiers, but likely for a different reason than what Frank wanted the people to believe. With her knowledge of what Clarity planned for Du Pont, Varda had been surprised that he’d remained as long as he had.

  Nita would have told him everything. It spoke of his loyalty to Cara that he hadn’t run off to safety at the first chance.

  No, Du Pont must have been provoked. Considering how he’d made her feel when they’d met at that outpost, the way he’d studied her, he wasn’t the kind of man you provoked and survived.

  Varda’s earlier belief that the people followed Frank blindly was incorrect. They respected his name more than they respected him, and many of the whispers around the keep followed the general tone of what Marie had just said.

  Upon meeting Frank, Varda had spied a sadness in his gaze. At least, she’d believed it to be sadness back then, as they’d journeyed from where they’d portaged the ships to Collinefort. Now? Marie’s companion was right to call it paranoia. Frank was strange. His moods changed without warning, from smiling and laughing, to vicious anger and back in almost no time. He was caught in Clarity’s fist—a fact that likely resulted in the desperation and neurosis.

  And the people weren’t blind to the fact.

  Olaf and the others had learned much during their time in the tent village. The resistance troops had been all smiles and had praised Frank night and day, while the Dvarans were still strangers in Collinefort, but now that they’d all trained together, drank together, spilled blood and sweat together, they were comrades. And comrades talked.

  The Mordians of the resistance were excited about their new princess, but never got to see her. The kitchen staff who cleared her plates, chock-full of uneaten food. The cleaning staff who weren’t allowed to enter her suite. Rumours of her illness, but not a single witness to confirm the fact, nor a physician to treat her. Only Malak’s word, which meant nothing, and Frank’s, which carried less weight than it once had.

  Now that the word ethirin was thrown around, along with the knowledge that Frank had ordered the drugging? These rumours could destroy him.

  Meanwhile, Du Pont gained respect because of the suspicions. His name was legend, and many people believed he should have been received in Collinefort like a saviour. That Frank stuffed him in a room and forgot him there, then accused him of a crime without any evidence confused the little people, and confusion was the worst kind of spark for rumours.

  Varda didn’t know much about the flaming game, but this was dangerous. The more people speculated about Frank’s motivation and integrity, the more power he lost. The more power the resistance lost. How much could Frank’s reputation suffer before the resistance crumbled, and with it Ehrdia’s hope?

  Considering she’d chosen to stay with him, this was also Varda’s problem.

  Sven lifted his head and roared. “You drive me insane, woman!”

  Sauvageon slapped him across the cheek, and silence fell among the spectators.

  Sven’s nostrils flared as he sneered at Sauvageon, his eyes bulged, and his chest heaved as though he’d forgotten how to breathe. His fists balled by his sides, then he stomped away, flipping over the card table between a pair of younger Dvarans on his way.

  Sauvageon thundered off in the opposite direction.

  Maybe Sauvageon understood Dvaran after all. Why else would she choose that moment to slap him?

  The crowd dissolved, and Varda hauled up the trunk. She’d have to ask Sven about this argument and how much of it he grasped.

  Another crowd had gathered in front of Olaf’s tent, barring her way once again. Dvarans and bears waited around, but Olaf wasn’t among the people.

  The trunk was getting bloody heavy, and Varda didn’t have time for this.

  “Clear a path for us, would you?” she asked Blizzard.

  The blanket slid to the cobbles as he rose to his hind paws and growled.

  Some of the other bears answered in kind, but when the people noticed Varda, they moved out of the way as best they could. She squeezed through the gap they left her, banging her trunk into knees and thighs, but she managed to reach her own tent and drop the l
oad.

  A coal oven stood in the corner of the space and offered cosy warmth. Since the tent was so much smaller than her room in the castle, it heated faster. For now, it was wonderful. Come night, though, with the wind and the drizzle, that little oven would have a hard time doing its work.

  Still, it wasn’t bad. A standard-size bed instead of one of those uncomfortable camp cots took up almost half of the floor. A standing wardrobe of cracking pine took up one of the canvas walls, and the floor was covered with the pelts she’d brought from the castle. Her armour waited on a table by the side of the tent, and a pot for washing was tucked under the table. No bathroom here, but Varda had shared a communal washroom on a ship for long enough to survive without that luxury.

  She patted Blizzard’s muzzle. “Let’s go get that blanket, boy.”

  He snorted but followed.

  If anything, more people were now packed in the narrow place in front of Olaf’s tent. What in Ehrd’s name was going on?

  Varda forced her way through the horde and slipped into his tent.

  Her mother sat on the cot, while Olaf poked around the innards of a splayed-open chicken carcass. Metallic blood, droppings and charred feathers stank up the space, as well as the lingering sickly sweetness of the herbs and weeds Olaf burned to speak to the gods.

  Skjold and Asger lay on a rug by a small coal oven.

  “I wondered when you’d come.” Vendla drained her cup of coffee and set the cup on the ground.

  Blizzard made himself comfortable next to the other two bears, and in an instant the trio’s snoring filled the space. Olaf’s tent was bigger than the others. The furniture stood along the edges to allow room for his rituals.

  Varda dropped into one of the chairs near the cot. “What’s going on?”

  Olaf’s face was smeared in blue paint, black ritual tracings swirling up and down his cheeks and forehead. Fourteen likenesses of deities carved from wood hung from his gothi’s necklace, partially stained with paint. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils large. As she’d suspected, he’d smoked something for the occasion. But what occasion? Was he using the smoke to make up for the years at sea, from where he could rarely seek out the gods?