At this, Taillefer did not argue. He did not glance away. He simply accepted the fury in her face.
Which made her blood boil over.
“You have years to go and many lives to save before I would ever think of forgiving you for what you’ve done to my love! Trust and forgiveness are not the same and you won’t earn either easily from me,no matter how long you cling to my side.” Spit crowded the corners of her lips, precious hydration lost on him. “If you stay with me, stay out of my way. I will abandon you or kill you. Either way, you will be dead. Do not try me.”
CHAPTER24
AMARANDEkneed Bastian into a faster gallop, angling for the Warlord’s Inn upon the horizon. Taillefer would follow or he wouldn’t. She did not care either way.
A few moments later, Amarande heard hoofbeats behind her, accompanied by his voice screaming something into the wind. She rode onward—the second son of Pyrenee would never learn to shut up. He pulled up beside her. “I know who he is!”
Her heart stuttered.
“Luca! I know what the ink means!”
Her heart nearly stopped altogether.
Stars, save me.Fear welled within the princess, cold and fast-moving, up her spine, her gut, past her flailing heart. Was it all so transparent? Had Luca always been the ultimate target of the kidnapping ruse? Her mother knew. The man they killed in camp at the Hand knew. Now Taillefer knew. Who else?
This time, it was Amarande who snatched Taillefer’s reins and yanked. Both horses again came to a skidding halt, engulfed in a massive cloud of ochre dust. Coughing as the dirt fell away, Taillefer plowed forward. “I know what the ink means. I know why we’re here, in the Torrent. I know you told me not to play stupid—I was attempting to tease out what you knew.”
Amarande sucked in as deep a breath as the settling dust allowed. “Why didn’t you simply ask me?”
Taillefer’s cough melted into a laugh. “Ask you if you know the boy you fought so hard for is the son of a dead king? Heir to a fallen throne? Don’t you think that would’ve sounded highly suspect coming from me if you didn’t actually know that information already?”
He had a point. Frustration warmed her cheeks—a much more comfortable emotion for Amarande than fear. “What else are you still playing stupid at? The poison?”
Taillefer did not hesitate to answer. “I assume the bodies at thewatering hole were the Warlord’s reaction to getting information on Luca. He is a tyrant, but he can’t be an idiot—he has to know there’s always been a current against him. And now that resistance has their champion. He’s panicking and trying to exert control to avoid a rebellion that has been a long time coming.”
The frustration within the princess cooled to deep, icy panic.
Taillefer knew so much more than he had let on. About Luca. The resistance. The machinations at play within the Torrent.
Amarande’s pulse pounded in her ears, so loud she thought he could hear it.
Now she had no choice—she had to do everything she could to keep Taillefer with her, considering all he knew.
All he could do.
And so the princess very carefully, very purposefully did exactly what she knew would work—she stated her purpose and then gave him the option he would expect and decline.
“Taillefer, we have to reach Luca before the Warlord finds him.” She nodded toward the lumbering structure in the distance. “This is where we start. Again, you—”
“Can leave. I know. You’ve said it so many times, I daresay you would prefer it.” Squinting at the building, Taillefer sighed. “I suppose we shall get this over with.”
ONEat a time and your life on the line.
Taillefer peered at the rhyming proclamation scrawled in blood across the sign that announced their arrival to the Warlord’s Inn in all its rambling, wooden glory.
“Do you think this is the best course of action?” he asked, gaping wearily at the hulking compound that stretched before them. “I knew this would be suspect if the Warlord allowed it butthatlooks like certain death.”
Indeed, the Warlord’s Inn was a dangerous aberration—its mere existence went against every understood rule about the Torrent.
In a place where cities were burned and people were kept on the move to avoid resistance born in static congregation, this was a sprawling, stalwart, stationary thing. Large main building, massive fence flowing off it like a ship’s wake, full of Warlord-sanctionedcampsites—covered and away from the elements—to be purchased for the right price.
Even more stunning, the entire thing was made of wood in an almost treeless landscape of nothing but parched earth and open sky for miles around. That made it expensive, permanent, and wholly unbelievable.
And therefore, very dangerous.
