Jos reacted instantly, ripping the door open in time for Mathos to sprint through it and then slide to a scrambling halt as his brain tried to understand the horror of what he was seeing.
The bed was empty, sheets rumpled and pulled roughly to one side. On the far side of the room, the window was open. And, most horrifying of all, Dornar was straddling the casement.
In one hand, he was holding a vicious blade, the other, half-concealed outside the window, seemed to be wrapped in dark rope as he prepared to lever himself the rest of the way outside.
“Don’t move,” Garet called from the doorway, “or we’ll shoot.”
Dornar looked past Mathos to the men behind him and then lifted his head and laughed. It was a dark, malicious sound. Humor with no joy. “I don’t think you’re going to do anything of the sort. Not if you want your precious queen to survive.”
“What have you done with her?” Mathos asked, a vicious snarl threading through his voice.
“She’s right here. Aren’t you, Your Majesty?”
“Matt?” Her frightened voice trembled through the open window.
“Come back up,” Dornar commanded, lifting his outer hand, and for the first time, Mathos saw that it wasn’t rope, but her dark hair wrapped tightly around Dornar’s fist.
Her pale, terrified face appeared in the opening.
Dornar grinned. “I would put those crossbows away if I were you. This ladder has been sitting in the head gardener’s shed for months, so who knows how stable it is. If you shoot me and I fall, well—”
He didn’t need to finish. It was abundantly clear what would happen to Lucilla.
His beast churned and roared helplessly as Mathos took a step forward. “How the fuck did you find us?”
Dornar shrugged, his lips twisting up in a smug sneer. “It’s actually surprisingly easy to find out where the queen’s rooms are. All you have to do is stroll into the servants’ quarters looking like you belong, and someone will tell you—they had to make the beds, after all—and no one seems to have remembered to let them know that I’m no longer Lord High Chancellor. The tricky bit was getting the ladder through the gardens unseen, but then I do have the advantage of having approved the guard rotation. Someone added extra patrols, but they didn’t change the routes.” He chuckled darkly. “Other priorities, I guess.”
He focused his glare on Mathos. “I’ve got to admit though, I didn’t expect you’d be in here too. Nearly fucked up my plans. Again.”
Mathos took another step forward, Jos at his shoulder. His face was stiff with scales, his body armored from his long claws to his eyes, more beast than he had ever been before.
Dornar snarled. “Stop, or I’ll drop her.”
Mathos hesitated. “You can’t drop her. If you do, Garet will shoot—and he never misses.”
“Maybe I don’t care. Maybe the look on your face would be worth it.”
Mathos stopped. With Dornar, it was impossible to tell. “What do you want?”
“I want what I’ve earned,” Dornar snarled. “Lucilla is going to take me to the vault and compensate me for all my… time.”
Fuck. There was no way Dornar would release Lucy afterward. To escape, he would have to take her with him as a hostage. Was there even any chance she would survive his captivity? Almost certainly not. Without a chance at the crown, Lucy had nothing to offer him, and more than that, now he knew what killing Lucilla would do to Mathos, and he would do it just for that.
Mathos took another threatening step forward, letting his scales ripple menacingly, hoping to distract Dornar from Jos working his way forward beside him. “It’ll never work. You’ve fucked up again, Dornar. Actually, now that I think of it, you’re not nearly so clever as you imagine.”
Dornar’s face contorted. “If you take one more step, Mathos, my blade will be buried so far in your chest you can look for it between your shoulder blades. We both know that you’re too far away to reach her before you die.”
“Matt, stay back.” Her voice was frightened but so determined, her eyes holding his over the sill. “He has two daggers and a crossbow on his back. I don’t—”
“Shut up.” Dornar shook her head brutally, and Lucy whimpered, trying to twist away but caught helplessly by his grip on her hair.
Mathos looked away from those beautiful dark eyes. He couldn’t look at her and do what had to be done.
He let his most insolent grin spread over his face and took another step forward. “That’s Right Honorable Baron Mathos to you, Dornar”—he spat the bastard’s name—“or you can call memy lordif you prefer. Unlike you, I was born into this position.”
A pulse was beating hard above Dornar’s left eye. “Do you want her to die? Is that your plan?”
“Do you know what I think, you fucking asshole? I think you’re betting that we’ll let you drag her through the castle rather than risk her, when you have no intention of ever letting her go. I think you’re going to kill her anyway.”
