“I am aware.”
“Rather than escorting us back to Ardenia, as I’m sure you expected he might, he insisted we turn for Pyrenee, where the two of us could be wed. I refused, of course, and when I did, he threatened to kill me and blame Luca if I did not do as he asked. Outnumbered, and surrounded in the bottom of a fire pit, I felt I had no choice but to go with him.”
“He threatened to kill youorbe married to you?” Ferdinand asked. “That is quite the gamut of choice.”
Her brother had much to learn.
“The laws of succession in Pyrenee are clear. To obtain his power before his eighteenth birthday he must wed. What’s more, Renard believed his mother to be making moves in a concerted effort to prevent his ascension to the throne.”
“Sounds like Inés,” her mother muttered and the cords in Geneva’s neck tensed between heavy curtains of dark waves.
“Thus, he was eager for us to marry.” The princess swallowed. “We arrived at the Bellringe in the afternoon and he demanded that we be wed before the evening meal. In the hours between, while I was being prepared for a wedding I knew the people of Ardenia did not know was occurring, I believed Luca to have died at the hands of Taillefer, who had been ordered to hold Luca hostage for my compliance. Taillefer knew that if Luca were to die then I would likely retaliate against his brother.”
Just saying Luca’s name seemed to thrust her heart on display—repeatedly—though she had not once admitted her true feelings to these people. “And, though I knew this to be Taillefer’s aim, I still reacted in the way he wanted.”
“Princess, you didn’t…” Satordi’s face had gone flat white, the weight of what she’d been trying to get across to him over the last several minutes now fully registering.
With an unsteady hand, Amarande lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip. The water tasted too warm on her tongue. Suddenly her whole face felt hot.
“They did not properly search me before the wedding.” Koldo’s eyes met hers and in them Amarande saw the choreography of what went down running through the general’s mind. The princess had indeed done exactly as her surrogate mother would have done in the same position.
“During our vows I stabbed Renard. It is his blood on this wedding dress. I attempted to kill Taillefer as well, but failed before I fled with my life and Renard’s blood on my hands. I have no doubt, though, Dowager Queen Inés wants the crown for her own; she is mounting an attack on us now and will twist what happens next to her advantage.”
Amarande did not mention Luca or the pirates in her escape. The princess didn’t know why, but she couldn’t reveal the full story. Not to her mother, not out into the open. Not to the unsettling-yet-familiar form of her brother, deep in thought, lounging in a pose very much like that of a man whom he’d never met. Not to Satordi, who never seemed to see it her way.
She didn’t trust them.
For as unsteady as Amarande was, she felt comfort in Koldo’s sturdy presence and even demeanor. “Councilor Satordi, advise the rest of the Royal Council of what the princess has learned. I must warn my soldiers.”
The general’s hand left Amarande’s as the older woman stood. She reached across the space and, to the princess’s surprise, put a hand to Ferdinand’s shoulder. Just one gentle touch and she was headed toward the door. The princess was floored—that was a good-bye. A wordless one, yes, but one with more emotion than she had received.
Something was not right.
“Koldo, why… why are you here and not the front? You’d been headed to the southern kingdoms before I left,” Amarande ventured. Then she added, so that her interest didn’t seem so pointed, “Did Myrcell and Basilica relent?”
The general’s face was all tight angles. “No, they did not relent. They escalated.”
Amarande stilled, mind racing. When battle called, Koldo was never one to be anywhere but the front lines. That had not changed with her regency.
“But why—”
“The general must go attend to what you have started, Your Highness,” Satordi insisted, steering the conversation away.
“Yes, but—”
“The general is here because she is my natural mother.” Ferdinand cut her off with an answer that took her breath away, his voice loud and clear and unwavering. As the weight of his admission settled between them, he looked Amarande in the eye, so much like her father she almost had to glance away.
Geneva’s lips parted, and Satordi pinched the bridge of his nose. Their reactions were enough to confirm two things: that it was true, and they had decided she should not know.
Ferdinand’s defiance was quiet and stiff and suddenly she saw Koldo within him.
A bastard. A half brother. A secret.
“She deserves to know all of it,” Ferdinand announced in answer to the silent rebuke. “I do not want to lie to my sister. I do not care if it is stupid for me to think so, but if everyone in this room knows the truth, she should, too.”
The princess’s stomach plummeted so low it felt as if it might tap the knife in her boot. Amarande looked from the general to the boy, skipping over her mother in between. Heat licked at her throat as her voice found hold. “Koldo? You… and Father…?”
Words failed her as Koldo nodded once. This was more outlandish than her original guess.
