The only mercy was that Carlo had finally shut up. The Beast’s expression slowly darkened through the process, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching as he surveyed the results. “You do not look like you,” he said sourly when they’d finished. “This is not the face of my nemesis.”
“You don’t look much like yourself either,” James growled, jerking his face away from the man trying to rouge his cheeks.
Carlo barked out a laugh and touched his empty eye socket. “Perhaps I ought to remove the other one, for with only my ears to guide me, you are still James.” Reaching over, he caught hold of the guild member’s wrist and twisted. “Enough.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” The man lowered his arm, no pain registering on his bland face though Carlo’s grip had to hurt.
“Mother awaits.” Carlo snapped his fingers. “Put a hood on him so that no one sees his face. Then bring him.”
A hood descended over James’s head, and he was hauled onward. The fabric was dense enough that he could see nothing, but his ears picked up the sound of a harp with a young woman singing in accompaniment. They climbed stairs, and the air smelled not like any prison he’d been in, but rather like he’d stepped into a garden. He could practically taste gardenia and lily with each breath, and when they reached the top of the stairs, his boots sank into thick carpet.
The sound of the singing grew louder, the girl possessed of a lovely voice. Next to him, Carlo gave a soft curse and then demanded, “Give me that scarf.”
They moved onward, and James heard a door shut behind him.
“Your Highness,” two voices, male and female, said in tandem. “Welcome to the Furnace.”
“Wardens. Is—” Before Carlo could finish what he was saying, the singing broke off and the girl cried out, “Papa! What has happened to your face?”
One of the soldiers pulled off James’s hood in time for him to see a girl of perhaps twelve years of age bolt across the room, white skirts trailing behind her, her expression drawn with fear and concern. She flung herself at Carlo, who had wrapped a dark scarf around his missing eye. James took the opportunity to look for Ahnna, but there was no sign of her in the room.
“My sweet Nina, it is nothing.” Carlo swept his daughter up into his arms and turned in a circle, her skirts swirling around them. “All is well now that I am returned to you.”
“It is not nothing, Papa.” The girl pulled up the scarf and made a noise of distress. “Your eye!”
“I will get a patch and we will play at being pirates.”
The girl’s face twisted in annoyance. “I am too old for pirates and this is no jest, Papa. Who did this to you? Grandmama will have their heads. Was it him?”
The girl turned her head to glare at James, the fury in her brown eyes blistering. It struck James that this daughter, at least, held affection for her madman of a father.
“Alas, no,” Carlo said, putting the scarf back into place. “But since you are too grown for games with your father, perhaps you might find a worthy gemstone to put in my eye’s place. You do admire all that glitters, sweet Nina, and I do not wish you to look at me in horror.”
“I would never!” Her lips parted for further protest, but Carlo shooed her back toward the instrument. “We shall go to the market later, dearest. Grandmama is waiting.”
James’s focus moved from the girl to the wardens. A man and a woman, dressed in identical short coats and tight trousers, both with hair dyed bright red, and both with their faces painted stark whitewith a black beauty spot adorning the same site on their cheeks. Sharp eyes regarded James with interest, and the man said, “He will make a fine addition to the Furnace, Your Highness. That sort of strength will endure for many years.”
Carlo huffed out a disgusted breath and shouldered past the man, and James’s escort pushed him onward. They moved through the sumptuously appointed room toward a silk screen, which rustled with the ocean breeze. On the far side of it was a wide stone balcony on which stood a tiny woman with her back to them. It was hard to see the details, silhouetted as she was by the sun, butpresenceseethed from her.
Queen Katarina of Amarid. The Crimson Widow.
“Mother,” Carlo said, his tone a strange twist of adoration and terror. “I have accomplished the task you set for me.”
“And do you think you deserve a pat on the head for your efforts, my son?” Katarina’s voice dripped with condescension. She did not turn, keeping her attention fixed on whatever the balcony overlooked. “My guild whispers in my ear of how sorely you botched this task. Dozens of soldiers dead, acres of forest burned, civilian corpses that will require effort to explain away, and your face maimed in a way that will never heal. I stand in the most precarious moment of a plan decades in the making, yet rather than exercising a deft touch you smash at my schemes like a child with a hammer.”
Carlo hung his head. “I am sorry, Mother. They proved more difficult—”
“Do notlieto me, my son.” Tiny pale hands rested on the balcony. “James Ashford has always been your favored playmate, yet despite the fact he has gotten the better of you before, you made a game of his capture rather than treating it like the duty it was.”
Playmate?
James knew the Amaridians hated him because of his time in the Lowlands. Because he’d been responsible for driving them well past the border and because of the body count he’d left in his wake. Yet Katarina spoke of him and Carlo like two boys in a schoolyard.
“I am sorry, Mother,” Carlo whispered, his eyes fixed on Katarina’s hand, her index finger tapping up and down on the stone. “I could not help myself.”
“You understand that you must be punished?”
“Yes.” Carlo snuffled, and James could not keep the astonishment from his face, because the Beast was weeping. “I shall deliver myself to the drowning chamber.”
