The Inadequate Heir, page 19
“I must advise against you being alone with her, Your Highness. She’s more dangerous than she looks.”
“Then how fortunate she’s locked in a cage.” Keris turned to glare at the man. “Go.”
Given she could barely stand, Zarrah didn’t feel very dangerous at all. And yet she readied herself to reach through the bars. If she could take him hostage, escape might be possible. And if not that, she’d satisfy herself with taking his life before his countrymen took hers.
Heart in her throat, she watched as the soldier’s jaw worked back and forth, a rush of anticipation filling her when he saluted sharply and strode down the hall. Only when the sound of his footfalls had faded did Keris turn back to her, the blithe indifference gone from his face, his expression heavy with concern. “How badly are you hurt?”
“What do you care?” It took concerted effort not to spit the words in his face, but she needed to lure him closer, not drive him back.
“Given I just ordered a man whipped to death in order to protect your life, I’d say a great deal.”
He gripped the metal just above her hands. Well within reach, if she was quick. And yet Zarrah stood frozen in place as he added, “I’m going to get you out of this, but I need your help.”
All the flippancy was gone, his gaze intense. The prince was vanquished, and the Maridrinian stood before her once more. Yet logic screamed at her not to trust him. That this was only a ruse. That she should attack. But Zarrah only stared at him, tasting the blood now dripping from her nose, his face blurring in and out of focus.
“Damn it.” White fabric appeared in his hand to press against her nose. His fingers were warm where they brushed her skin. “I know your head is rattled, Valcotta, but you need to focus. I’ve only got a minute before Otis comes barreling down here in my defense.”
Valcotta. Zarrah’s legs shook, only her grip on the bars holding her upright. And behind the Maridrinian, the light pulsed.
“I can’t keep you here,” he said. “Nerastis is too lawless, too wild. It’s only a matter of time until someone murders you in your cell.”
“Then let me go.” Her tongue felt thick, and it took all her concentration to form the words.
“If I thought they’d listen, I’d give the order,” he said. “But there isn’t a chance of them allowing you to go free, and Otis has half the garrison guarding you for fear of an escape or rescue attempt. To get you free, we must leave Nerastis.”
His voice sounded far away, as though they stood atop the dam with the spillway between them once more.
“I’m going to argue that your value as a political prisoner demands the crown decide your fate, which means bringing you to Vencia. Along the way, I need your people to attack our party to liberate you.”
Her mind sharpened for a heartbeat, seeing the trick. Seeing his endgame. “Kiss my ass.” Her heart was racing so swiftly, she swore it would wrench from her chest. “You think I’m such a fool as to lead my people into an ambush?”
His jaw tightened, likely from anger that her battered brain saw through his plan. “I intend no such thing. Which I realize requires you trusting me, but—”
Rage flared in Zarrah’s chest, though it wasn’t for him. It was for herself. “I did trust you. So it’s no wonder you think me the fool.”
Silence.
She watched his throat move as he swallowed, his eyes narrowing with frustration or anger, she wasn’t sure which. Then he closed them.
Grab him, a voice screamed inside her head. Capture him! Kill him! Do something!
“You’ve no reason to believe me, Valcotta, but I had nothing to do with your capture beyond being the reason you were here in the first place.”
“Liar!” She gave her head a sharp shake, but it only caused pain to lance through her skull and nausea to swirl in her stomach.
“I warned you not to go. I told you to wait until nightfall. But you were too busy being horrified over my family name to see reason.”
“Your father murdered my mother,” she snarled. “Laughed as he cut off her head and had his men stake up her corpse. Laughed as he put her head in my lap and left me for dead!” And instead of striking a blow against him by killing his son, she’d fallen into bed with him.
He recoiled. “My father killed your mother? I—”
“You’re the same as him. All the Veliants are.” She coughed on the blood dripping down the back of her throat. “You’re monsters, just like him.”
He flinched, then shook his head. “I’m nothing like him.”
“Says the man who just ordered someone whipped to death.”
“To protect you!”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?” She spit blood on the floor in front of him. “The spies said you were a womanizer and a drunk, but they also said you were very clever. Don’t think for a moment I’ll fall for more of your trickery. I see who you are now.”
His grip on the bars tightened, his knuckles blanching, and her eyes went to them, remembering what it had felt like to be touched by those hands. It had felt so real. Had felt so right. How could she have felt that way about someone so heartless? So cruel? “You’ll have to content yourself with my death,” she whispered, her eyes burning. “For I won’t allow you to use me against my people.”
Then her knees buckled and Zarrah collapsed, feeling his hands catch her around the waist as he said, “Goddamn your honor!”
Honor was all she had left, tarnished though it was.
He lowered her to the ground, then Zarrah felt his hand curve around her cheek, lifting her face to look at him. “I’m not allowing you to die just because you had the misfortune of crossing paths with me, Valcotta.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “Zarrah.”
Her chest tightened, and she pulled away from him, slumping against the stone floor, her body cold. “Kill me. Or leave me. Or if you must stay, know your words fall upon ears now wise to your deception.”
Silence stretched between them, broken by a loud bang and the shout of, “Keris!”
He glanced down the hall, then leaned forward. “If you give up now, you’ll never have vengeance. My father wins.”
Zarrah squeezed her eyes shut, seeing Silas Veliant’s face. Hearing him laugh and laugh and laugh as her mother’s blood rained down upon her.
“Fight to live,” Keris said, “and you will live to fight.”
Live to fight.
Otis appeared, his face splattered with blood that she could only guess was from the man he’d whipped to death. “Have you lost your mind, Keris? Do you have any idea how dangerous she is?”
His voice was light as he said, “So everyone keeps telling me.” Keris rose. “But thus far I’ve been rather disappointed. All she’s done is faint. What did the physician say?”
“That she’s concussed and will either die tonight or live to meet her end in Vencia.”
“Let’s pray for the latter,” Keris answered. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m somewhat short of sleep and in need of a nap. Make arrangements to transport her north by road—the Valcottans are thick upon the seas, and they’ll be after us as soon as they learn we have their general.”
“It will be done,” his brother answered, but he remained where he was as Keris strode off, humming a tune.
The princeling watched his brother go, then turned back to her, the blood splattering his face at odds with the words written to him in those love letters. As was the hate in his eyes. “You and yours are a scourge upon this earth,” he hissed. “You took those I loved most and slaughtered them. Don’t think there won’t be a reckoning.”
Pulling herself upright, Zarrah stared him down as best she could with the world slowly turning to black around her. “Perhaps so. But it seems it won’t be coming from you.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said, then darkness once again pulled her under.
THE CARRIAGE BOUNCED up the road, Keris’s teeth rattling with each rut and rock a wheel hit, his ass already bruised despite the thick cushion on the seat.
But none of it registered.
Not with Valcotta sprawled on the bench across from him, her wrists and ankles bound, and her eyes glazed from the head injury she’d taken. She drifted in and out of consciousness, the out a mercy, because when she was awake, he could see the pain in her eyes, her jaw clenching and unclenching.
And there was nothing he could do to make it better, even his words of comfort silenced by the soldier who sat next to him on the bench.
Otis had insisted. “I’m not allowing you to ride alone with her. She’s dangerous, Keris. All of this could be an act to get you alone and kill you.”
“I’m not helpless, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were! But she’s a trained soldier, and I’ve seen firsthand how well she fights. And you’re … well, you’re you.”
“How flattering.” But Keris didn’t bother with further argument. Once he was on the road and away from his brother’s overprotective tendencies, he’d resolve the issue.
That had been days ago.
Days of watching Zarrah grow progressively worse, no longer able to stand, her skin burning hot with fever. She tossed and turned, crying out often. Although much of what she cried was indecipherable, there was no mistaking her begging her aunt to help her, to come for her, not to leave her. Yet as the days progressed, her delusions turned to someone named Yrina, whom she begged over and over for forgiveness. The servant girl he’d brought with them did her best to get her to drink, but he didn’t need to be a physician to know that she was dying.
And she was doing it surrounded by her enemies, because the Valcottans had made no move to rescue her. The farther north he took her, the less likely it was that they would.
“Won’t be long now, Your Highness,” the guard sitting next to him said. “Valcottan bitch has got one foot in the grave. Might as well turn back to Nerastis so that she still looks herself when we throw her corpse across the Anriot.”
White-hot fury burned through Keris’s veins, the desire to pummel the man making his hands ball into fists and his vision turn red. But that would accomplish nothing, least of all sparing Zarrah this fate.
Pulling open the window of the coach, he banged on the side. “Stop. Stop right here.”
“Is there a problem, Your Highness?” asked one of the soldiers riding close to the precious cargo. “Has the prisoner—”
“The prisoner is the same. But I’m tired and in need of a nap.” He gave a pointed look at the man sitting next to him. “Find a horse or ride with the coachman. I care not.”
“But—”
Keris flattened his gaze, and the man blanched, swiftly acceding to his request without further argument.
It was a power that came from fear. The power his father wielded so well, everyone around him too terrified of what he might do to ever argue. A power that Keris had never wanted to have, and yet in one act, he’d gained it. His stomach twisted, but instead of yielding to the sensation, he pulled the curtains shut and then knelt next to her.
“Valcotta?” He pushed her sweat-soaked hair off her face. “Can you hear me?”
She stirred, then her eyes cracked to reveal dilated pupils that stared at him without focus. “Where …”
“A few days south of Vencia. And there has been no sign of your people.”
Her lip quivered. “Good.”
“I dislike fatalism, Valcotta,” he said, because if he didn’t speak, he’d crack. Would break down and scream, because he’d done everything right. Had ensured that dozens had seen her alive. Ensured there was no secrecy surrounding his intent to take her to Vencia. The Valcottans knew what had happened and where she was, yet had done nothing to retrieve her.
Which meant they’d abandoned Valcotta to her fate.
“Your comrades are cowards. Every last one of them.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Angry your little plan didn’t work, Princeling?”
Though the sentiment was not unexpected, her words still stung, with the knowledge that nothing he could say, nothing he could do, would ever be a match for the distrust his name provoked in her. Not just distrust … hate. Hate placed in her by his father and then compounded by his brothers, and by his cursed sister, ensuring that the world believed that all who possessed the Veliant name were monsters.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to pound his fists against the floor of the carriage, wanted to put a knife in his own heart, because everyone he cared about met this end. His affection was murder, his name poison, and he couldn’t escape it. “Is there anything I can do that will make you believe that I want you both alive and free? Anything that will make you believe I don’t conspire against you or your people?”
Valcotta opened her mouth, then closed it again, staring at him in silence for so long he thought she refused to give him any answer at all. Then she whispered, “Give me your knife.”
His heart skipped, hope rising in his chest only for it to be dashed as she said, “Let me go out there and die fighting. Die on my feet. And then make sure my people know it, so they’ll not suffer my shame. You do that, and I’ll die knowing you are a different man than your father.”
“No.” The word jerked from his lips, because gaining her trust only for her to lose her life was nothing he’d ever agree to. He refused to consider it. Refused to sit back and watch his soldiers slaughter her. “You get better and I’ll give you a knife to fight your way out.”
“I’m not going to get better.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “And if you wish to prove to me that all that passed between us was real, you’ll allow me to die with honor, not wasting away like this.”
Every part of him wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her that this was a mistake, that she’d recover, that he’d get her free.
Except that was a lie.
She was dying, and would denying her the chance to die on her feet be a mercy to her? Or to him?
Keris slowly pulled a knife from his boot, then pressed it into her palm even as indecision warred in his chest.
Valcotta stared at the knife for a long moment, then lifted her face to meet his gaze, her pupils so dilated that no color remained. “Thank you.”
“It was real.” His chest tightened painfully, making it hard to breathe. “I swear it, Valcotta. Everything I said. Everything I did. Everything I felt.”
“I believe you. But that doesn’t change who you are.”
Nothing would.
Sliding an arm underneath her, he lifted Valcotta upright so that she was sitting, then unfastened the knots binding her wrists, dropping the ropes to the floor.
“Tell them I untied myself while you were sleeping,” she said. “And attacked you.”
“You’ll be dead, so what does it matter what I say?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice, the darkness rising in his heart whispering that the world might be better if he joined her in the grave.
“It matters to me.” Clenching her teeth, she dragged herself to her feet, moving behind him, but he was painfully aware that if she hadn’t been holding on to his shoulders, she’d have fallen.
“Call the alarm. Tell them to stop the carriage.”
They’d kill her. It would be over in moments.
And he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stand back and let her die. Couldn’t lose her like that.
“Do it!”
He’d get them to stop the carriage. And then he’d fight to get her away. He’d die trying to give her a chance, even if it was the chance to die free. “Guards!” he shouted. “Stop the carriage!”
The carriage lurched, nearly sending them both sprawling. He caught her, accidentally pulling the bandage loose from her arm, revealing the injury beneath. Rather than having healed into a pink line, the skin around the lesion was the grey of a long-dead corpse, and horror filled him as understanding dawned.
The carriage ground to a halt, and he jerked the knife out of her grip, shoving it in his belt just before the guards opened the door to find Valcotta in his arms. “Get me somewhere with a healer,” he snarled at them. “She’s been poisoned.”
And he knew exactly by whom.
THE WORLD WAS a blur as she faded in and out of consciousness, first too hot and then too cold. Darkness fell, and Zarrah was vaguely aware of Keris lifting her. Carrying her out of the carriage and into a building, his voice loud as he berated the soldiers. Told them he didn’t want them anywhere near her because they’d damaged his prisoner enough.
Then louder still, him shouting, “You will treat her or, for the love of God, I’ll have you hanged in the square for murder!”
“But she’s Valcottan!”
“And I am the Crown Prince of Maridrina.” Through the waves of pain she heard the faint edge of panic in his voice, and it twisted at her heart. “You will do what I say!”
And then nothing.
ZARRAH WOKE TO the sound of a rooster crowing, the breeze blowing over her smelling like horse shit and hay. Blinking, she tried to sit up. Only to find herself tied to the bed on which she lay.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse. “It was the only way they’d agree to leave me alone with you.”
He rose to his feet, retrieving a cup of water and sliding a hand beneath her head to lift it so that she could drink. “Do you feel better?”
Her head still ached, but the nausea and dizziness and fog were mostly gone. “Yes.”
“It wasn’t the blow to your head.” He set the cup down, then pulled back the bandage, revealing the slice she’d taken during her capture. It looked as though it had been cut open again and all the dead flesh removed before it was restitched. It was going to leave a significant scar. “There was poison on the blade of the weapon that gave you this. Nightbloom.”
Poisons were not her forte, but even she had heard of nightbloom. It hailed from Amarid and was very expensive. Slow to act and always fatal, unless properly treated.
