Leaving himself exposed.
In a flash, Geneva lunged and with her nearer blade—three feet of true Basilican steel—thrust straight for the vulnerable flesh of Luca’s unprotected torso.
“No!” Amarande leapt for Geneva’s sword arm. She got both hands on the outside of her mother’s arm, and yanked, spinning her around. Her own dagger fell, skittering across the marble floor.
The whole motion sent them both stumbling unsteadily toward the tapestry-covered wall. Amarande careened into it first, the woven depiction of some dead Ardenian king doing absolutely nothing to cushion the blow to the back of her head and upper back. Breath knocked out of her, Amarande held fast to her mother’s arm, bashing her wrist over and over into the stone wall in an effort to release the sword from her grip.
Blood.
There was blood on her mother’s sword. Luca’s blood.
“Luca?” Even in her own ears, Amarande’s voice was strangled. “Luca, are you—”
Geneva smashed her body backward, driving Amarande even harder against the wall, so hard that her skull thudded off the unforgiving stone with a terrific crack. The world immediately became slow and muffled, her perception blurred by tears and a sudden pounding in her head.
Amarande tried to focus her addled vision, barely able to make outLuca in the chaos before her. Ula and Urtzi were pressing in, Osana dashing after them. Ferdinand shielding them all from Geneva’s second blade, still lashing out as Amarande maintained her grip on the sword arm that had struck Luca. It was futile, of course, because Geneva couldn’t truly reach.
And so, with one great swing, Geneva arced her second blade toward her daughter, pressed against the stone.
In a flash of steel and bootstrikes, Koldo attacked.
The general rushed Geneva’s flailing sword with her own, smashing it flat against the stone wall behind her. For a split second, Geneva’s body was stretched in a cross—Amarande still pinning one side with both hands, Koldo going for the other with her sword.
But then, just as Koldo reached maximum pressure, Geneva dropped that sword. Koldo’s own sword lost its leverage, and she went stumbling away.
With a great crash, the general careened into the heavy wooden council table, papers and figurines scattering. And as Koldo’s body hit, Amarande’s attention caught on another movement from that side of the room—Taillefer slowly backing away toward the door from where he’d come, apparently no longer entertained.
But Amarande was not yet done with him.
“Taillefer! Someone stop Taillefer!”
To Amarande’s surprise, it was Luca who heeded her call. In a blink, he scooped up her fallen dagger and slung it end over end toward the new King of Pyrenee. Amarande did not see the blade make contact, as Geneva spun to face her daughter and punched the tapestry in what at first seemed to be a missed strike to Amarande’s kidney.
But then the stone at Amarande’s back rumbled to life. The entire length of the wall behind the tapestry rotated, the princess and her mother with it. Geneva’s face broke into a calculating smile.
“Before this castle was yours, it was mine.”
And, as they were plunged into utter darkness, Amarande’s mother laughed.
CHAPTER62
THEpanel was stone again. The entire party save for Taillefer rushed it, prodded at it. The tapestry was gone and the wall completely solid.
A secret passageway.
Luca had lived at the Itspi his entire life, had combed every corner with Amarande—every stairwell, every floor, every nook and cranny. They’d even spent years using the library dumbwaiter as their own personal secret entrance into the yard.
But he’d never seen a wallmove.
He stabbed at the stones the same height as the one Geneva had struck, Ferdinand and Urtzi punching ones farther up, Ula and Osana jabbing balled fists and braced shoulders into ones farther down.
General Koldo hauled herself up from where she’d landed on the table. She was bleeding from the head, a huge gash over her eye from where she’d made contact with the massive piece of scrolled furniture.
“Koldo,” Luca called to her, “do you know—”
“The library.” As she said it, she collected Geneva’s discarded sword, caught eyes with Luca, and tossed it his way.
“Is that the only place?” Ferdinand was already pivoting for the double doors, not waiting for his mother’s answer.
