She missed Mathos with a steady ache, and she wished that it was Penelope that she was riding, but she couldn’t help the grin spreading over her face.
This was freedom. The freedom to be who she truly was.
They clattered up toward the city gates, slowing as the road grew busy. The stone walls of Kaerlud rose to either side of them, and around them throngs of people of every race made their way into the city. Some with red-and-black tattoos on their arms like hers, others with wings, or scales, occasional red-haired Nephilim, and she felt her heart swelling with love for them. The people of Brythoria.
The alarm went up with a loud bugle call and squads of guards rushed forward to cluster together in rough formation near the gates, their hands resting on their sword hilts.
The crowd fell away anxiously, pulling back from the menace in the air to press against the city walls and drag their children off the road, away from danger.
Damn. These were her people. But they did not look happy.
Lucilla had to force herself to hold her smile as they trotted forward onto the wide, dusty space in front of the gates.
Tristan urged his stallion forward. He was wearing a blinding white-and-gold tunic emblazoned with the Nephilim warrior angel, but he had added a swirling deep blue cloak, embroidered with the royal fighting boars. His scales flickered over his clenched jaw, and his horse danced nervously, unsettled by the unfamiliar beast on its back.
He lifted his chin and roared, “Open for Queen Lucilla!”
A sweating soldier in a green infantry uniform stepped forward. He opened his mouth, perhaps to argue, but then his gaze settled on Lucilla, and he closed it again. For the first time ever, she didn’t regret that she looked just like her brother.
He looked behind him, to the group of rough-looking soldiers, and then turned back to the party in front of him. Two squads of Nephilim warriors, the Hawks, three women dressed in velvet and silk, and all flying the royal colors.
There was a moment of tense silence. And then he turned and waved them through.
Tristan grunted as if he had never expected anything different, but his hand was still clenched firmly over the hilt of his sword. She let out a breath that shook more than she liked and then followed him into Kaerlud.
It was astonishing. So many people. So many homes, so close together. Children running down pavements, reminding her viscerally of Alis darting down the dusty path through the fields, despite the entirely different surroundings.
The city was frantically busy, noisy, smelling in turns of spicy food and rotting waste. Storefronts with brightly colored awnings lined the road while open squares were filled with hawkers and costermongers calling their wares. She had never imagined such seething masses of people or the strange frenetic vibrancy of such a huge city. But under the layer of noise and commerce, she could see a darker undercurrent. Children in threadbare clothes with no shoes, beggars on the street corners, women in tattered dresses, and haggard men wearing dusty uniforms, many with pinned sleeves and trousers where limbs were missing. The human cost of war.
The news of their arrival spread ahead of them, and huge crowds gathered to watch them pass, blocking out her view of the city with their bodies. The throngs stood with clenched jaws and heavy scowls, dark and suspicious. Bruised by their treatment under Ballanor and Geraint before him.
There was a low rumble through the crowds; exactly what emotion it reflected it was impossible to tell… anger, mistrust, bitterness… perhaps all three.
Her shoulders bunched under the weight of those hard, assessing stares, but she lifted her chin and urged her stallion forward. They had the right to their cynicism.
They turned a corner and entered a space that made her throat close in horror. It looked like a battle had taken place, destroying buildings and leaving piles of broken bricks and old wood to litter the square. A gold filigreed astronomical clock was littered with embedded crossbow bolts and arrows. But worst of all, opposite the clocktower stood a huge wooden platform, and on it a massive gallows.
Gods. This was where her brother had tried to execute Alanna.
The crowd surged through the square, a beast in its own right, voices rising at the visceral reminder of Ballanor’s rule and the lies he’d perpetrated. The justice they’d wanted and believed themselves to have been denied. Hatred for Alanna and Val, but also Ballanor.
She wished she could turn away and deal with it when she was better prepared, when she knew what to say, or how to fix the disaster Ballanor and Geraint had created. But everyone was watching, waiting to see what she would do. Would she allow the devastation that her family had perpetuated to stand? Would she ignore the rumbling misery of the people in her capital? Or would she act?
There was only one answer. She was the queen, and this couldn’t wait.
She looked across at the huge, untidy structure of stones and bricks that made up the outer wall of the palace. There was a row of guards standing, resolute, side by side, blocking the entrance. She ignored them.
Instead, she turned to Tristan beside her, leaning over to speak with him privately as she gestured toward the gallows. “How difficult would it be for me to tear that down? Right now.”
Tristan’s eyes gleamed; one side of his mouth even twitched in what, for Tristan, was a huge display of emotion. He bowed his head briefly and then pushed forward into the middle of the square, addressing the crowds that had followed them. “Queen Lucilla requests an ax. Can anyone help?”
There was a shuffling of feet and confusion, disbelief, a rising current of anger. The atmosphere in the square grew ripe with the threat of violence. They only had Geraint and Ballanor to judge her by. Geraint who had sent them to war, year after year, willingly paying the price in his own people’s deaths. Ballanor who had torn up their city, filled it with violence and corruption, and then done everything in his power to continue that war, all while blaming his wife.
Her small group of Hawks and Nephilim were caught between the infantry and the crowds, neither of whom trusted or accepted her. They were balanced on the edge.
Lucilla clicked to her stallion and nudged him forward to meet Tristan. “Give me your sword.”
Tristan’s eyebrows clashed together in a deep frown, but he slid out his sword and handed it to her, hilt first. The watching crowd rumbled uncertainly.
