Amarande’s heart sank—this prince wasn’t bluffing, and she’d guessed correctly. They’d accepted a forgery without waiting for her to verbally confirm it despite all her efforts to force them to understand her point of view. It was just as she’d both imagined and feared: Her future had been bought and sold, her father’s top advisors sealing the deal.
What’s more, Luca’s conclusion regarding regicide working in hand with the succession laws—take out the king, kidnap the heir and force her into a wedding, and call Ardenia yours—seemed a whisper from being plausible.
There was the rustle and huffing of horses. Amarande surveyed those who surrounded her—four men of Renard’s private guard, Taillefer, and several hired thugs from the Torrent. Plus, if she was not mistaken, Luca’s kidnappers—as good an answer as any to her question of Pyrenee’s involvement—and the robbers who’d ambushed her. She saw a girl who looked very much like Osana, but she couldn’t be sure, as the girl had a cowl about her face. It didn’t matter anyway—there had to be more than a dozen bodies between her and the open road.
The princess held her head higher.
“The choice is always mine.”
“Not if I don’t let you go.”
“I did not consent. Iwill notconsent. You’ve lied to my council and to steal me away would be an act of war. Touch a hair on my head and the fury of the entire Ardenian army will be upon your neck.” She gritted her teeth. “And that’s only if you survive my blade first. Which you won’t.”
Again, Renard laughed. It echoed around them, cold and dead. “You won’t kill me. You won’t kill anyone. Those three right there stole your saddlebags, and you didn’t kill them. Those three over this way stole your stableboy, and you didn’t kill them. You didn’t kill them, and you won’t make your first kill with me. Or my brother. Or any of these other people.”
With each delineation of the princess’s failures, the prince’s voice intensified, his confidence in his words fortifying his body language. By the time he came upon his summation, he was staring down on her in such a way that Amarande actually did feel small.
The firstborn of Pyrenee continued, confidence bloated past his storybook features. “No one goes from showing opponents weak mercy to surviving an attack by seventeen men and women who will not only touch a hair upon your beautiful head but relieve it from the rest of your body.”
Luca’s hands tightened at her waist.
When the princess said nothing, Renard smiled. “Come quietly, marry me, and live.”
In response, the princess gathered every last bit of saliva the Torrent had yet to suck dry and spat straight at the hooves of Prince Renard’s stallion.
“I would rather die.”
The princess drew her sword. Luca drew the Eritrian’s dagger from the boot of his good foot. They sat upon their orphaned horse, armed and ready.
“As you wish. There is more than one way to take a kingdom.” And then the prince smiled, and it finally reached his blue eyes. “And if you die, I shall make sure your stableboy lives long enough to suffer prolonged, excruciating punishment for your death.”
“No.…” She said it almost to herself, the word dying swiftly on her tongue.
The prince’s eyes shifted over Amarande’s shoulder. “Oh yes. You see, Princess, I won’t take you kicking and screaming and scheming my murder on my wedding night. Oh no. I’ll just go ahead and kill you. And then I’ll trot your stableboy back to the Itspi and detail to your council how he stole you away and then murdered you when I tried to rescue you.” Renard clucked his tongue. “If he couldn’t have you, no one could.”
Amarande’s gut lurched. She could see it all now. He would do it. He would. Worse, the groundwork was already laid.
She pressed a hand on top of Luca’s. She wouldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t let that happen.
But she had no friends here.
These people would not hesitate to kill her. They’d been paid well and would continue a lie that would end with Luca’s head on a pike and Renard drawing control of her kingdom.
“Can you envision it, Princess?” Prince Taillefer asked. He smiled, fox-like, from his brother’s side. “You can—I can see the future scrolling across those exquisite eyes of yours.” The cheer from his expression dropped, leaving a sneer. “It will happen. All of it.”
Amarande swallowed. Not a dozen bodies—seventeen, as Renard had said. Men hardened by the Warlord’s rule. Men who swore an oath to the prince. Men, and women, hired by said prince to push her into marriage as a pawn.
The princess’s hand tightened on her sword. Renard lacked many qualities, but an eye for strategy was not one of them. He knew the princess had spent her life in the yard, fighting where it wasn’t life and death—bruises were the worst of it. He’d called it right. She’d been trained to fight, but she’d never killed a man. Even when she’d come close—the giant at the Warlord’s Inn, the man at the campsite—others did it. To get out of this situation, she’d have to kill at least half of these, if not all.
She wouldn’t kill any one of them. And he knew it.
“Ama?” Luca whispered at her back. He was ready to stand with her no matter her decision, she knew. But she wouldn’t see him hurt in any way.
Her next words determined so much.
The princess drew in a shaky breath. Time paused, waiting.
“I will go with you.”
