Heart of Midnight, page 2
“Lady Cinder, Jacquetta, Augustina, we are all very proud of you, and blessed to welcome you back,” Madam said with a tilt of her head before she stepped back and gestured for us to walk inside.
Well, something had changed then. This time she didn’t try and hide my presence from the neighbors.
I nodded back to Madam as I walked in the door, and then froze, unsure where to go next.
“Forgive me, Madam Valentin,” I said, “But I must change into my traveling clothes, and beg your assistance to call a carriage to take me back to Lehar as soon as possible.”
Gus and Jacquetta both turned toward me, their mouths opening as if they were going to say something, but Madam spoke before they managed.
“You are not staying on with us for a time?” she asked, her mouth pressing into that line I tried to avoid at all costs when she was preparing me for the palace. Now, it made me miss her already.
“No. I am sorry, but I think it is for the best.”
Jacquetta lifted her nose in the air, and looked so much like her mother it almost coaxed a smile from me.
Madam only nodded and patted my shoulder before she walked away.
But Gus…Gus’ face fell, and a tear started to trickle down her cheek.
I looked away, up the stairs, not sure where to go to find my clothes, or what there was possibly left for me to do after I made one of my best friends cry.
“Lady Cinder,” Madam said, returning to us with servants in tow, “your trunks are in your old room if you wish to change, and I have called for a carriage for you. It should not take long.”
“Thank you.” I nodded, and headed up the stairs, holding myself back from sprinting.
Sure, killing people was no problem. Running headlong into a battle with magical giant birds I did without a thought. But facing the disappointment of my friends was so much harder, and took a kind of courage I didn’t think I would ever possess.
My trunks waited for me just as Madam said.
Focusing on them, on digging through the beautiful gowns and things from my pretend life at the palace was at least useful for ignoring the room I was in and the memories in the walls.
Taking out the things I needed to keep was easy. There wasn’t much, but looking down at my mother’s shoes, my heart turned to ashes in my chest.
How could I take these back to Lehar with me when I wasn’t sure Ash would let me keep them?
As much as they seemed to belong in the duchy, in the lands where my parents lived, loved, and died, I didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if my brother’s rage burned as bright as I feared it might.
I took off the red cloak—there was no way I could wear it home—and placed the shoes inside, wrapping them up together.
Getting out of my dress was impossible by myself, but only if I wanted to keep it in one piece.
Madam would probably be angry because it would fetch a slightly lower price, but I gripped the scoop neckline in both hands and tore, scattering gems across the floor and tinkling into my open trunk.
Finally, I tossed the destroyed dress on top of the other gowns, put on the clothes I arrived in the first time I came to Madam’s, tucked the Breakwater sigil ring into the hidden pocket at the top of the lining of my boot, and strapped all my weapons on.
Shaking out my shoulders, refusing to let them curl forward in that small way that I used to live with, I walked out of the room, not looking back.
No matter how ready I was or wasn't to face Ash and his wrath, it was time to go home.
Chapter 3
Fragile
Madam, Jacquetta, and Gus were all gathered in the parlor in hushed conversation when I walked down the stairs.
“I hate to ask anything more of you, but I must.” I held out the bundle of the cloak and my mother’s shoes in their direction, waiting until they recovered enough from my appearance for Jacquetta to take it from my hands.
“What is this?” Jacquetta asked.
How was I going to explain this?
“The red cloak cannot come with me, and neither can my mother’s shoes. I am sorry I am unable to explain more, but if it is not too much, can you hold onto them for me?” My heart thundered in my chest sending pieces of it flaking off.
If Ash killed me, this was the only thing that would be left of me.
Finally, Madam nodded, taking the bundle from Jacquetta as tenderly as if it were a child.
“Of course, I will take care of this,” Madam said.
I nodded and tried to smile, although it felt hollow.
“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “then I will leave my trunks here. You can sell them and either keep the funds as payment for all your well-done work, or send it to the people of Lehar or the Shield Home here in Bridgeton.”
Madam blinked, her brows raised.
Gus gave a tiny shake of her head, and looked to the others as if they might hold the answer to the question she didn’t say out loud.
Jacquetta’s breath caught, and the corners of her mouth twitched down as if she was going to cry.
“So, is the carriage here?” I looked toward the window, not able to handle their reactions much longer.
“Yes. It should be now,” Madam said, her voice strong, as if the faces on the people around her didn’t affect her at all.
“Thank you,” I said, balling my hands into fists so I could hold it all in as I looked at each of them, committing their faces to memory. Just in case.
Madam smiled, her eyes softer than usual, and I held my fists tighter.
Gus nodded, biting her lip with watery eyes, and I nodded back to her, pressing my fists into my sides.
Jacquetta’s chest heaved in frantic bursts of air, but it wasn’t enough to stop the tears from leaking out of the corners of her eyes and trickling down her dark skin. I dug my fingernails into my palms.
“I could not have done all of this without you all,” I said, my voice thin, tears threatening the back of my eyes, and my jaw clenched. “I love you.”
Turning on my heel, I fled from the house into the back of a waiting carriage, not even seeing the other people who might have been around.
“We’re going to Lehar,” I yelled to the driver as I shut the door and laid down on the bench, finally letting the tears flow as the carriage started to roll through Bridgeton on the way back toward a home that didn’t want me.
* * *
After days of travel, I didn’t bother to have the driver leave me at the edge of the duchy, or even the edge of the manor’s grounds. I let him take me all the way to what was left of the courtyard of the manor itself.
Home.
No matter how many years went by, no matter what I thought I might face when I got there, I could still see past all the damage from the fire to what it was before.
The layers of ashes, soot, and rubble peeled back in my mind, and showed me the manor as it was when Mom and Dad were alive. When roses climbed along the walls because Mom loved them, and Dad loved her. Although he hated the thorns.
Being able to see the manor for what it once was made it easier to get out of the carriage, and step into the drifts of ashes as more fell from the sky and landed on the black of my cloak, dulling the rich brown of my hair.
My memories made it easier to believe my brother would spare me even as the muscles in my body tightened and my shoulders curled just enough to protect me without him being able to see it.
While my body prepared, my mind held on to the hope that was as fragile as the roses were after the fire, when they were reduced to flower-shaped ash sculptures, scratched away by a breath.
Every step closer to the entryway sent tingles running down my arms and legs, the nerve endings screaming to turn around and go back to Bridgeton.
But this was my home.
And I needed to see it through.
Jocelyn, my trainer and a fighter who appeared during the last war, stepped out to the top of the stairs, her face unreadable.
It didn’t matter that I spent more hours with her, devoted more time to master skills she laid out for me, and hung on her every piece of wisdom for the last seven years. Especially after Sandan, her partner, died from the lung problems the ashes caused in so many. No, I still couldn’t see through to her thoughts when she put on that mask.
Her ability to block me from guessing what she was thinking when she wanted me to remain in the dark made her an ideal trainer and sparring partner. And a damn irritant when I needed a hint.
“Where’s my brother?” I asked, my voice hollow and thin, the sound of it almost choked out by the ashes falling around us.
“Duke Ash will come out to meet you,” Brix said, walking out to stand next to Jocelyn, his grin cruelly edged. “When he’s ready.”
She didn’t hide what she thought of Brix standing next to her. She stepped down from the stairs, and moved three strides to the side.
It wasn’t lost on me that her move brought her closer to the weapons sheds.
Ash, what were you doing?
Behind me, the muffled sound of many feet made me turn just enough to keep Jocelyn and Brix in my peripheral vision while I watched a whole regimen of Lehar guard pour into the courtyard and fan out behind me.
They had me surrounded.
In my worst expectations and most out-of-control worries for what would greet me when I got home, I didn’t think Ash would use my own people against me.
Once, these same people looked to me when we were under siege. When we manned the ramparts that now lay in piles of scorched rubble where they fell when the blast hit, these same people hailed me as a hero.
Not Ash.
Me.
But now? Now they stood around me, not to ask for direction or encouragement in a battle. Now I was the battle.
My hands were ready to reach for my few weapons if any of them even breathed wrong, but I couldn’t be the first to move. Not against them. And Ash knew it. He coordinated this on purpose.
He stepped out onto the top stair, his nose high, and his lips pursed, looking down at me as if I were a noxious weed.
“Lady Cinder,” he said, his voice caustic enough to make me wince, “you shouldn’t be here.”
Chapter 4
The Time
My heart fell into my toes, making me drop from the balls of my feet to land flat in the ashes.
“Am I not welcome at home, Duke Ash?” I asked, my voice flat, unable to imbue it with anything, even the begging he no doubt wanted.
His mouth twitched at the corner, and my lungs ached in my chest, no longer used to the air. But I couldn’t cough. Not now.
“You have a job to do.” He walked down the stairs, his gait even and deliberate, even as hands clenched on weapons all around the courtyard.
“There was no way to do the job,” I said, coughing on the last word, unable to hold it back.
It was the opening they were waiting for.
Behind me the guards moved in, but I crouched down, pulling both my spikes—the new, thin one, and the old, thick one—in position as I turned on them.
One of the guards was faster and more foolish than the others. He got to me first with a wild swing of his short sword.
I stabbed my thin spike into his hamstring, grabbing his sword with my now empty hand as I stood up and kicked him away while he wailed.
Coughing again, the swift intake of breath from the move making it worse, another guard came at me with a spear while the others hesitated.
Shaking my head, I blocked his spear with my stolen short sword, pushing the spear shaft straight up, locking us up at the hands. At the same time, I lifted my thin spike right under the guard’s chin.
I didn’t want to kill these people. They were my people. From my lands. I trained with them, sparred with them, taught them.
“Drop it,” I yelled in his face, lifting the point of the spike enough to force him to tilt his head back.
He let go, hands raised, and stepped back while I pushed the sword forward just enough for the spear to slide down, the bottom hitting the courtyard. It sent up a tuft of ashes, and the rest of it leaned against my shoulder.
Behind the disarmed guard, the rest of the guards lowered their weapons, and darted looks between me and my brother.
Ash clapped behind me, laughing his fake chuckle that bunched up all my muscles, preparing for a blow.
“Well,” he said, and I turned to bring as many in the courtyard into view as possible, straining to hear if the one I couldn’t see moved, “now that is the Cinder I know.”
My brother moved closer to me. The only move the others made was to step further back.
Holding myself still, the spear leaned against my shoulder, the short sword ready in my hand, and my spike aloft in the other, I barely allowed myself to breathe. But I didn’t break my stance, even though I knew he wanted me to. Expected me to.
One of the other guards helped the man I stabbed hobble away to have his wound seen to, leaving behind my spike and a patch of blood, turning blacker by the second as it soaked into the ashes.
“You see,” Ash said, coming to stand just in front of the blade of my sword and stare into my eyes, cocking his head to the side, “dear sister,” his fist struck me in my stomach, making me cough, “after your failure, I thought perhaps you had changed.”
He kept striking, shoving my arms wide to get better access to my mid-section.
With each blow he listed the ways I was a failure, a disappointment, and a traitor.
Finally, I couldn’t breathe. I doubled over, dropping all the weapons to scatter around me, coughing until blood sprayed the ashes at my feet.
“You,” he punched me in the back, right in the kidney, “should,” another blow to the other kidney, “have,” another, “killed,” he reared back and kicked me in the face, knocking me off my feet to fall across the blackened blood in the ashes, mine and the pool of my opponent’s, “him.”
“No,” I yelled, surging to my feet and throwing ashes at him, every part of me screaming from his battering.
“What?” he asked, his voice ice and his eyes on fire.
“Corvid magic is real,” I said, forcing down the cough clenching my chest, making my oncoming bruises louder. “I had to fight giant crows. And they’ll be back. War with Corvid is coming, and the only thing staying their hand is the possibility of the Dragon King. He’s the last of the line. We need to be at his back when the war comes.”
“At his back?” His voice was an unhinged scream, his fists clenching and unclenching. “You suggest we, who already suffered enough in the last war, fight this one, too?”
I stood up straight, putting on every bit of Lady Cinder, no matter how much my body fought the movement.
“Of course not, brother.”
He sneered.
“Good. For a moment I thought you left your brain in the Obsidian Palace.”
“No, I would never suggest you would fight any battle.”
Red took over Ash’s face, while his knuckles turned white.
“Jocelyn,” Ash yelled, looking behind me toward the fighter, “take care of Cinder for me. No foils.”
No foils? My breathing sped up. So, this was how I would die, at the hands of the one who trained me.
He wanted Jocelyn and I to fight with full blades, which would only mean a fight to the end.
My end.
I didn’t move.
“This is not in the prophecy, Duke Ash,” Jocelyn said, her voice from far enough behind me that I knew she had not moved either.
“You and your fucking prophecy. Fine,” he said, turning to one of the guards, grabbing the short sword from her, and turning back toward me. “I’ll do it myself.”
Ash held the sword up with both hands, his grip as abysmal as ever.
But he didn’t need a good grip.
Not for this.
I wasn’t going to gut my brother.
I was right. This is how it would end.
Looking past Ash’s shoulder, into the grayed-out lands of what was left of Lehar, I closed my eyes and imagined the world as it had been. Lush and green. A world where I was loved. By my mother, my father, and my brother.
A tear trickled down my cheek as I heard his heavy steps toward me, muffled by the ashes, pick up speed.
Chapter 5
Remember
The sound of hooves thundering through the ashes and into the courtyard drowned out my brother’s advance. I snapped my eyes open as I jumped back.
Ash’s wild, wobbling swing passed narrowly in front of my face toward the ground as he dropped his arms, and turned to look at the black carriage rolling in with palace guards sitting three across the driver’s seat and three across the footman’s.
His eyes were huge, his mouth working around unsaid words, and he looked as if he wanted to kill whoever interrupted him.
I took a deep breath, the places where his blows landed making it hitch and stutter, and I bent over to rest my hands on my knees.
“Lady Cinder,” General Pace called, and I lifted my eyes back to the open door of the carriage where she stood with her hand on the sword at her side.
“This is my house,” Ash yelled, his voice cracking as he walked toward her, his movements disjointed jerks. “How dare you come here and address her.”
“General,” I yelled, freezing Ash mid-step. He didn’t know who she was, or if he did then his fury overrode common sense. But he needed to tread carefully with her. “What are you doing here?”
My question was lighter than the barked address in part because I had to stand up straight in front of her, and pain shot through me like lightning. I hoped no one realized that.
“You’re needed at the palace,” she said. Ash looked back and forth from me to her. I understood even less than he did.
I shook my head, not trusting my lungs not to cough, and my pain not to spike so much I might cry out in the process.
“All the potentials still wanting to be part of the search for a bride are needed,” the General said, her smile smug. And only then did she turn to my brother, the smile falling from her face as she looked him up and down with a withering stare.
