He was dying, yes. But he’d come too far for this to be the end.
“One thing about being the creator of the fabulous tinctures at your back, Mother, is that I know more about what is in those vials than anyone else.” His eyes were as cold as hers. “And one thing I know about the liquid is that it is highly flammable.”
With all the strength he had left, Taillefer tossed both the desk candles at the vials.
The glass surrounding the candles shattered in a hail of shards, hitting the corners of the wooden cratesSMASH SMASH—the sound shoving Inés out of frozen disbelief and into action.
As the fire caught, she and the dagger spun away from the crates, hands thrust up to protect her regal head as she dashed for the door.
But to get there, she had to pass the desk—and Taillefer was ready.
He popped the cork of a vial hidden in his tunic. It was half-used, and his hands were unprotected. But he didn’t care.
And, as he splashed the remaining vial of fire swamp on the woman who bore him, he thought of Amarande’s horror in her prison cell.You would purposefully use that on a human?
The right one. Yes. He regretted Luca—a little. But he would never regret this.
The bright green liquid caught Inés mid-turn, droplets hitting her from the point of her chin, down the side of her neck, her chest, all the way to her kneecap. It burned straight through the silken aubergine gown she wore, through her skin, through her capacity to scream.
She fell almost as hard as Nikola had, dissolving with a thump and gag as the tincture went to work on her windpipe.
Taillefer furiously rubbed at his hand, spotting with smoking holesfrom the tiny droplets that had sprayed back upon him with the thrust of the vial. He gathered himself as her movements began to slow, crossing to the crates and stamping out the flames, the damage minimal.
When he turned back to her, she was only shivering now. Not really breathing.
The tincture had dissolved the skin at her throat, the meat of her exposed, veins and capillaries burned back like parchment blackening and curling in flame before vanishing altogether.
It was a mishmash of exposure, the very inner workings of this woman who called herself queen, revealed for all the stars to see, her beautiful exterior gone. The blackness within bare in the light.
Taillefer bent and peered into the single eye facing him, the other swallowed under hair and pinned to the floor. It watched him, unblinking, but still full of life.
“Mother, you should know by now that I lie as easily as I tell the truth.”
She couldn’t answer, of course. Her voice taken along with the air from her windpipe, all exposed. If he’d had the time, it would make fascinating research.
But he did not have the time or the tools.
As the light faded in that one brilliant eye, Taillefer saw her out with an exact replica of the smile she’d given him. Clever, confident, malicious. It was fitting that this was the last thing she would ever see.
“I only wish your death had been as slow and painful as what you did to Father. Rot in the stars, Queen.”
CHAPTER57
THEYlooked the part.
An efficient little group of the Warlord, her captive, and two scarf-swaddled guards. The kind of party that could travel swiftly, boldly. An entire army plausibly following in their wake.
Much of this was because of Koldo, who had two decades of experience in the art of this. Sweeping in under the cover of darkness. Navigating hairpin turns. Traveling like a grain of sand in the wind—quiet, nearly invisible, blink-and-miss-it kind of movement.
But, as the sun shimmered over the horizon and the spires of the Itspi were somewhere straight ahead, their clothing became just as crucial as their on-a-mission, breakneck pace.
Koldo, in the suntan-brown tunic and tights, cuffs at the wrists in leather matching the waist scabbard for her sword and dagger. Ula, swathed in the Warlord’s silken clothes and head covering—chin high, determined, obviously important, even when seen through the haze of dark before dawn. And Luca, dressed in the brimmed hat and sun-bleached canvas of all the Warlord’s bandits, a handkerchief around his neck. He transported the prisoner, strapped to him with rope in much the same way he’d been transported by Ula not long ago.
To play her part, they’d given Amarande clean prisoner garb to go along with the deceptively secure knots of rope at her wrists. She clung more tightly to Luca’s back—mindful of the wound he had there—than any of the rope clung to her. A quick twist of the wrists, and they would fall away. Better still, a dagger sat in her boot, an easy draw for her practiced fingers. Despite appearances, Amarande felt more in control and more certain than she had during any other time in this long and winding journey.
The plan wasn’t perfect, of course. Not like something her father would conceive, but it cleverly deployed their resources and an element of surprise, and it was what they had. That was not nothing.
What they did not have was rest. But that would come soon. In victory or in death.
