Amarande slowed briefly. When presented that way, it did seem rather far-fetched. Luca had expressed similar doubts to her in the captain’s quarters of theGatzalbut in a much softer presentation than Taillefer’s sardonic tone.
“You did not know my father.”
“Oh no, I didn’t, not really. But you know very well what kind of environment raised me.” Amarande recalled her meeting with Inés. The Bellringe was truly a viper’s nest. It did not excuse his tendencies. “And I can tell you that even if Sendoa was playing the long game,this belief of yours makes little sense. At any moment he could’ve marched that vaunted army of his to the Torrent, killed the Warlord, and returned home in time for supper.”
Taillefer’s argument was so sound it was nothing more than infuriating. The narrow pass she’d etched through her father’s actions—and particular inaction—seemed now but a trick of the light. She’d been so sure upon learning of Luca’s birthright that her father had always intended this.
He had a plan. He always had a plan.
“He didn’t change the law.” Even to her ears now, this argument was cobweb thin.
The prince laughed darkly from behind, gaining ground. “Likely he didn’t change the law because he didn’t expect to beassassinated. He thought it wouldn’t matter. By the time his reign ended, you’d be long married—maybe to your true love, or maybe in a political alliance, but either way it would not matter.”
“He had a plan.”Her voice broke—audible, unmistakable.
Amarande trudged forward, almost jogging now, her steps lengthing as the trail tipped downward again. The tunnel on this side of the water stop was at least twice as broad as the one they’d been in for hours, and there was room enough for Taillefer to walk alongside her if he dared.
Yet there were no footsteps coming from behind now. Taillefer’s progress had stopped altogether. She didn’t have to look back to know he was watching her and the light race away. From him, from her insistence that this was what the Warrior King had planned, from all of it.
When he spoke again, his voice, for once, wasn’t brimming with sarcasm or laced with the joy of a private joke. Instead, it was cool and straightforward, and his words stayed in her mind rather than being rejected outright.
“Amarande, you can go over and over your father’s plans in your mind, but the idea that he was protecting your heart while giving you the task of overthrowing the Warlord in order to ruleyour ownkingdom is wholly unlikely.”
The princess halted, her frustration welling into solid, indominable sadness. She stood there, breathing hard, the underground air too warm and stale for any relief. When Taillefer reached her, shescrewed her eyes closed and swallowed the sob that had settled in her throat. “It is all I have, Taillefer. It is what I have to believe.”
Amazingly, the prince let that sit. And in that silence came another surprise.
The distinct rush of water.
It was distant yet unmistakable. Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, and then they were running. Full-bore, down the shaft, as fast as the weak light and terrain would allow.
They stumbled around another bend of the tunnel and found themselves in a cavern twice the size of the one underneath the quicksand that had swallowed them whole. And there, banked against the far side, was an underground stream—wider than the Cardenas Scar. The water pushed south, its current flowing into the mouth of a dark, high tunnel.
Propped against the nearest wall were a few man-made rafts, formed from the strange, spindly deciduous trees of that bizarre forest where Amarande had rescued Luca from the pirates.
If the stars could see her heart from here, perhaps one would deliver her straight to Luca and the resistance.
“A much more comfortable way to travel,” Taillefer said, inspecting the raft nearest to where they’d entered. “This one should do nicely. Grab us paddles, would you?”
It took less than a minute for them to carry the raft to the water, retrieve the most viable paddles from a nearby pile, and arrange themselves and their torch in such a way that they could push off the bank. The water moved at a lazy clip, but even if they eventually became too tired to paddle, it was going to be a faster mode of transportation than walking, and yet another confirmed sign that they were on the right path to Luca and the resistance.
Perhaps it was that certainty that sparked within Amarande the need to finally repay Taillefer and his curiosity with questions of her own.
“Taillefer, why did you not simply escape into the ether? You say we’re each other’s greatest hope and yet you have proved thus far that you won’t die in the elements without putting up somewhat of a fight. You could have very easily left me, disarmed and disoriented in that cave, and made your way out on your own. Why didn’t you?”
“Come now, we both know you would’ve bashed my head in with a rock before I got too far.”
She squinted at him, watching his eyes in the torchlight. “Why put yourself in a bind where you know you are dead if you go, and might die if you push forward? Never mind the fact that I cannot control what Luca may do to you once we finally reach the resistance—his talents with a blade rival mine and he has more than one reason to make sure you die an excruciating death.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose he will save none of his storied kindness for me.”
Amarande looked him in the face and lied because she loved Luca and knew that with the torture Taillefer had inflicted upon him the prince would never fear his victim, no matter how his power grew. “No, he won’t, and neither will the rebels supporting him.”
“Yes. Perhaps I am doomed if I stay or if I go.…” Taillefer turned and the torchlight caught the angles of his face, softening in a way that almost made him appear like a child. Not a sixteen-year-old boy with blood on his hands and a bounty on his head. “Princess, I chose to free you, follow you, and stay with you not because you’re my greatest hope—that was a bit of a stretch, I know. Rather… it is because I have never been alone.”
Taillefer looked away as if something resembling shame bent his neck and rounded his shoulders.
“I know I had a direct hand in Renard’s death. I did horrible things to Luca because I wanted you to help me achieve the dream I’d held tightly for far too long. That the crown would be mine, and I could rule. I cannot tell you how many nights I fell asleep to plots and plans and urges to clear my brother out of the way. Perhaps not in the brash manner of Domingu, but to forge my own path to the crown I so desperately wanted.”
