The road opened into the wide square. No longer picturesque, it was now as shattered and litter-strewn as the road leading there. The last time he’d been there, the square had flanked a long, wrought iron fence that gave glimpses of the palace’s luxurious gardens. Now, the fence had been replaced with an ugly blight of a wall—a huge, untidy structure of stones and bricks, built too quickly for any kind of elegance—and its forbidding pair of heavy black gates.
Along the new wall, near the gates, was a row of parked coaches, coachmen and footmen laughing and talking in the absence of their wealthy masters.
To their left stood a huge wooden platform. And on it, lit by flickering lanterns, gallows.
Fuck.
Next to him, Nim went completely still, and he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her against his body and nestling her head into his chest. He dipped his head and lowered his voice so that no one else could hear. “Look at me.”
She tilted her head up and looked at him. Her face was pale and drawn, and he cupped her cheek, using his hand to keep her eyes pointed solely at him.
She gave a small, tremulous nod, and whispered, “I can do this.” But she kept her gaze firmly on his as they drove slowly past.
Before they reached the end of the interminable square, he felt her fumbling with something. Looking down, he saw that she had pulled Val’s ring off her thumb and was offering it to him. “Look after this for me? Please.”
He didn’t try and speak against the tension in his throat, simply put out his hand and let her drop the heavy signet ring into his palm before tucking it safely into the inner pocket of his breeches. There was no way he could put it on his own finger.
Eventually they reached the new Court Gate and were approached by a trio of harassed-looking guards. They were wearing the green uniform of the infantry, thank the gods, not cavalry, as were the additional soldiers spread out along the walkway at the top of the wall.
He held out the invitations as Nim smiled weakly at the soldiers, who made a big production of looking down their noses at the borrowed carriage and checking the watermarks on their cards while spending significantly more time staring at Nim’s chest.
The beast inside him rumbled, a hairsbreadth from defending what was his.
Nim held his hand even tighter and he kept himself under iron control until they were waved through with a smirk from the soldiers.
“Where are the Blues?” Nim asked in a whisper once they were past.
Tristan cast an eye over the heavily guarded walls. “I guess the king has them arrayed through the palace for the banquet.” He shook his head. “This amount of force is… excessive. He’ll have called in reinforcements.”
Nim nodded slowly, no doubt considering, just as he was, what such a huge display of power might mean for them when the time came to try and leave.
They passed the gate and drove out onto a low cobbled bridge, only just wide enough for the rows of carriages and coaches going to and from the palace. The bridge was flanked by tall wrought iron lamps, their light sparkling on the water that lapped noisily against the bridge.
Water. Gods. The bridge had once spanned a tiny stream that ran delicately through the manicured gardens that surrounded the palace.
Ballanor’s mother had loved the gardens. She had spent many hours cultivating them into a vast array of formal beds of vibrant blooms and informal meadows filled with an array of pretty shades, all interlaced with walkways and dainty arbors.
They had been immaculately maintained after her death, a memorial to the lost queen, and the old king had used them for entertainments, filling them with music and dancing, balloon flights, even a menagerie.
Now they were gone. Flooded. Sacrificed to the moat.
And for what? The war in the north should have been over. And even if hostilities had resumed, they were hundreds of miles away. Tristan couldn’t imagine the strategic benefit of the massive amount of destruction and cost the changes to the palace had caused.
It felt like the behavior of a spoilt child kicking down a sandcastle. Ballanor’s juvenile revenge on the mother who had dared to die and leave him, and the father who had made no secret of how little he thought of him.
Was that what it was all about? Could Ballanor have ordered the attack at Ravenstone himself in some childish revenge? To one-up the king, end the treaty, and get back his war? His chance to prove himself the better strategist all while adding immeasurably to his coffers with pillaged wealth. Was that what all these shows of power were all about? Ballanor’s feelings of inadequacy?
The thought was staggering, and Tristan felt a cold ripple as his beast flicked scales all the way up his arms in horror.
He had never believed that the king, his supreme commander, would lie to him. But maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Nim was right and it was Val he should have trusted all along.
Gods.
The crowd shuffled forward again, breaking into his thoughts, and he pushed away his traitorous musings to focus on the danger immediately ahead.
The bridge ended at a long line of scaffolding and piled stones where the inner wall wasn’t yet finished. The stones were topped with flickering lanterns and, in some places, massive torches, their flames dancing and smoking in the evening breeze.
A wide-open space marked where the gates would eventually be installed and was currently filled with clusters of soldiers. More soldiers were positioned over the stones and scaffolding. And, more worryingly, they all wore black uniforms. Cavalry.
