Tala forced them both to confirm they would retrieveonlythe princess before heading toward the resistance’s underground staging area near the Hand. “If you make it to the area before us, wait for the resistance to emerge. Whatever you do, do not seek the tunnel entrance. We must keep our location secure. Fromeveryone.”
“Amarande can be trusted,” Luca reiterated, keeping his voice as flat as possible.
Tala held up a hand. “But those who may be watching cannot.”
Luca nodded to his messengers. “Be careful.” Then to Tala: “What is my role?”
“You will wait for word at the secure location as the watchers infiltrate and report back.”
Luca shook his head. If he had learned anything from King Sendoa, Koldo, and Amarande, it was that leaders did not hide and wait.
“No, I will infiltrate with the watchers. I did not come here to hide, wait, or otherwise be set upon a pedestal and watch the others work.” His eyes flashed upon the older man. “Tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER17
INthe hours after her mother’s visit, sleep did not come easily to the imprisoned princess.
Amarande’s damaged hand throbbed, far worse than when it was first injured. The only thing that dulled that acute and terrible pain was the growing stiffness in her muscles from the restriction of the shackles that kept her against the circular cell’s curved stone wall, a whole room away from the relative comfort of her straw mattress. There was only enough slack to allow her to slouch against the unpolished stone, not completely lie down, and even then the metal cuffs at her wrists dug into her skin if she did more than prop herself against the wall like a doll.
But it wasn’t the physical pain that kept her awake.
It was the mental anguish.
Over her own decisions that led to this very moment—chained in a tower at her ancestral home, obscured in both person and title.
Over the raw horror of who her mother had become, a flesh-and-blood monster.
Over the searing combination of the two, which left Luca vulnerable in a manner she could not counteract, and for which she was solely responsible.
If this boy and his wolf tattoo is out to unseat the Warlord, I will personally see to it that he fails.
There was no nuance in that threat. Her mother was no longer the Warlord, but if she did not get out from under lock and key and get to Luca, his head would soon be on a pike just like his father’s had been. His tattoo flayed and visible, too, proof as much as a threat, exposed to all in the Torrent—the caravans that followed the Warlord, and the resistance that waited for the Otsakumea. A rebellion broken, the Warlord’s supreme power enhanced.
Come with me, Princess.
If only she had.
The pain in her hand would be replaced by the warmth of his gentle embrace. Her bones would be weary from fighting with him, for him. And, when the time was right they would have faced her monstrous mother’s ambitions together, sparing both her throne and his from Geneva’s machinations.
Instead, when sleep did come in some black hour, Amarande did not dream of what they could do together, but of what she had done. Of the look in Renard’s eyes, of the color draining from his face as bright red blood gouted from the upward thrust of her strike, staining her knife hilt, hand, wedding dress.
It was the dark vision of a memory she could not escape.
Her first kill—done not for honor, or fighting for her people—but for vengeance. A life for a life. Believing that Renard, in a way, had killed Luca, her love.
It matched one of her father’s tenets—If not an eye for an eye, a lash for a lash.And yet it was her biggest regret.
The sound of shattering glass jolted the princess upright and to full wakefulness.
With another crinkling crash, more glass shattered, salting the stones in shimmering flecks of cobalt and crimson. Hesitant to move, Amarande craned her neck as much as she could, trying to make out who or what was outside her window. Only a few jags of stained glass clung to the window frame now, leaving the steel bars in stark relief against the night.
“Luca,” Amarande whispered, a reflexive prayer built on immediate, impossible hope. That their love was so strong he could feel how much she needed him, and rode to her rescue, just as she had ridden to his.
Then she heard a cork pop with a loud sizzle and hiss, and acrid-smelling smoke filled the air. Before her very eyes the bars framing the window melted away. The hilt of a dagger nudged the mangled strips of metal out of the way, creating space enough for a lithe body.
Something about the sequence caused a drop of unease to settle within her. The princess shot to her feet, her training and strategy flipping from defense to offense. She pressed herself against the wall and gathered the minimal slack of her heavy chains in a loop gripped with her uninjured hand.
Through the window a boot appeared, black and shiny. Then another. Plain breeches and the tip of a long sword followed, as a male torso snaked sideways through the space left between the disintegrating bars. Amarande’s heart stuttered.
