As if, somehow, he knew something she did not.
Chapter forty
Aldric
The night at the roadside inn had been long—colder than it should’ve been. But perhaps that was because he had spent it posted outside Sera’s door, listening to the quiet rise and fall of her breath through the thin wall.
Then a full day’s ride.
Then the gates of Goldreach at last.
Now, the dungeon.
Jaw clenched, hand braced against the rough-hewn stone wall, Aldric carefully navigated the narrow steps leading down into the bowels of his kirei’s palace. The air was damp and choked with torch smoke. Calix’s silhouette descended before him, silently leading the way further into the black. The clank of Coreto’schains sounded just behind him, where Rakon kept a firm grip on the bound duke.
Victory should have tasted sweeter than this.
But it didn’t.
“Where is my son?” Coreto abruptly asked, his voice echoing eerily in the silence.
If only Sera had let him gag the man.
“Elsewhere,” he rasped, “but alive.”
At least he had been able to talk his wife into that much. Separate cells in the dungeon. Unaware of the other’s whereabouts. Guarded only by men Sir Arkwright named as those he trusted most.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Coreto was too dangerous to be left alive.
Unease coiled low in his gut as they finally reached the bottom of the stairs, and Calix continued onward, passing rows of empty cells. His second twirled a heavy iron ring of keys around his finger as he went, whistling.
“Hurry up,” Rakon rumbled.
Behind him, boots scuffed against stone, as if the duke had stumbled.
“What a wonderful lap dog you make,” Coreto seethed, like a viper spitting venom from the shadows. “Doing everythingyour queencommands you to do.”
Aldric’s jaw flexed.Lap dog.
It was as if the duke knew how many times he had replayed that very moment in his mind since yesterday—the sound of his own voice sayingas my queen commands,far too easily, far too naturally.
He’d meant it to be a threat. A performance. Sera thought him to be her pet bogeyman. The world might as well think it, too.
So why had it felt…true?
His hands curled into fists. Without glancing back at the prisoner, without dignifying the other man’s taunt with a response, he marched on, only pausing when he stood before the cell at the very end of the corridor.
Calix slid the key into the lock and shoved the iron door open. The hinges groaned. Dampness clung to the air, thick with the scent of rust and wet stone.
Aldric stepped aside and jerked his chin toward the dark opening. “Inside,” he growled.
When Coreto didn’t move of his own accord, Rakon pushed the duke across the threshold and straight into the opposite wall. With a grunt, the duke caught himself against the hard stone and shot him a baleful look.
He ignored that look.
“Shackle him,” he commanded Calix instead; his second-in-command hurried to comply.
“Oh, how flattering,” Coreto mocked him further as Calix slapped the heavy cuffs affixed to the far wall around his ankles and wrists. “ThedreadedCrow of Drakmor, orderingmeto be chained. Am I truly so great a threat to the realm?”
