She was so far from where she’d been in the days after her father’sdeath. And yet here she was again. The same. This time, a pawn between two of her own repressed gender. Three, if one counted Inés. And it was clearthatqueen would not be counted out.
Three so-called queens, all jockeying for position on their little continent.
Amarande cut her chin at a defiant angle. Bared her teeth. “You can go ahead and try to buy the Torrent with my head, but you will lose it in kind. If not to my mother, who, no doubt, will not give away the title quietly, by Luca’s hand. The Torrent cannot be conquered without the fall of the Warlord. My Luca will come for you.”
The Warlord laughed. Amarande’s face pinched in confusion as she watched the girl toss her head back. Meanwhile, Taillefer sighed and found his voice—as low and heavy as Amarande’s was defiant and resolute. “No, Princess. He will come foryou.True love is as powerful as it is predictable.” A sudden jolt of tears pulled at her eyes. “She is counting on it. His people will feel betrayed, the revolution will fall apart, and she will own the Torrent.”
“Exactly.”
Amarande’s mind raced with all that was left unsaid. The dregs of the Sand and Sky fighting it out, with Ardenia as the battlefield, war brought to her people. With herself and her love locked away or murdered. Neutralized. Same as Taillefer on his side.
“We must make haste and arrive at Ardenia’s gates ahead of Queen Inés and her new army. It is not ideal to broker payment in the middle of a battle.” The Warlord’s hands clapped together loudly three times—a signal to the guards. The women immediately entered. Running down the line, she gave orders. “Janea, ready our fastest caracara for flight to the Itspi. Grania, Tomli, clean and feed our prisoners and place them in transport cells. Manu, ring the bell—we leave immediately.”
CHAPTER40
“WEleave the carriage and head out on the horses. Go straight to the hideout. The rest of the team can take our carriage and follow along with the caravan. We’ll go east, parallel. Cut them off.”
Ula’s plan flowed out of her in whispered breath as they made their way across the Warlord’s camp to where their carriage, cook fire, and the other resistance members waited.
The brim of Luca’s hat was pulled low over his eyes as they skirted through the narrow walkways weaving between tents and carriages, cook fire smoke and coffee scent trailing—breakfast delayed slightly by the spectacle of Amarande’s capture.
“No.”
Ula clutched his forearm, nails digging in, as sharp as her low tone.“No?”
“No. She’s here. We can’t leave. We’re here. We stay with her.”
“Miguel,” Ula snapped. A few people turned at her admonishment, clearly yearning for more entertainment after an exciting morning. Every other word was “Princess” or “Ardenia” slipping through the haze of smoke and chores.
Luca’s dimples flashed and he hooked an elbow around her neck, leaning in to her ear as their bodies came together for what should’ve appeared to be a lovers’ moment. “At the carriage.”
Ula complied with a smile for those around them, before spitting through her teeth, “But Urtzi. Withher.Her sister! And with you-know-who at the castle!”
Yes. His worst fears about Osana had been confirmed and heightened knowing her relationship to this Warlord in search of power. Still, he answered, “At the carriage.”
Ula pasted her lips together in another forced smile and tapped his cheek as if he’d made a joke. He laughed, and they quickened their steps, silent the rest of the way. Luca’s mind churned.
Amarande was alive, and here.
Her mother was alive, and at the Itspi.
And apparently, she had a brother and he was on the throne?
All the times the princess had wondered after her mother fell on top of one another in Luca’s mind, intertwined and thick as a bird’s feathers. As she’d grown older there were always comments about how much they looked alike, padded with theories as to where her mother had gone and what had happened. Or how the disappearance was simply a cover for what had been orchestrated by her father’s hand—that theory was one at market, never within the Itspi where the king’s true character was properly understood.
Until Luca’d met Ula and the resistance, he’d always thought he knew King Sendoa as well as he might have known his own father. Now he wasn’t sure he’d really known him at all.
Luca drew in enough breath to fill the emptiness in his gut.
Amarande. Focus on Amarande.
Everything was spidering together, strands in a web. In the meadow on the day of King Sendoa’s funeral, after Taillefer came upon them and inquired about Amarande murdering Renard for him, he’d asked her if all the royal players were all like the second son of Pyrenee. Even though neither of them knew what was to come with Taillefer, Amarande’s answer was immediate.
Greedy? Backstabbing? Opportunistic? Every last one of them.
Luca now understood the web was much wider than he’d thought. Understood, too, that he would not leave this caravan until she did, preferably at his side.
His whole chest—his heart, throbbing under the strain of his wound and stitching and all the layers of protection—pounded with the truth that he could not be anywhere else knowing Amarande was here and in the Warlord’s clutches. Not with the promise he’d made to her as they vanished into the dark after the wedding, alive despite it all.
