Her love draped about him as surely as the sharp sense of loss he felt for all those years they hadn’t had before and would never have after.
For as strong as he was, Ferdinand couldn’t sit with that darkness long. Not yet. It was too fresh, too encompassing. And it muddled with a strange sense of confusion he’d had over Geneva’s murder of Alasne. She’d shown love in blood… and then hurt him more than he’d thought possible. It all made him as seasick as he’d felt on theGatzalwith no land in sight.
Ferdinand left his tent. He motioned to the nearest man in Ardenian regalia. A lieutenant. “I’ll be with the queen. If I receive a visitor, retrieve me at once.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Then, Ferdinand slipped away to confront the things he could control.
CHAPTER 31
STEAMINGplatters of supper sweated upon the table and Amarande was pacing a rut as long and deep as the Divide in the rugs about the floor when Luca arrived.
“You’re not covered in blood—I assume that means your modicum of restraint held fast.”
Though the jab was delivered in his typical gentle tone, Amarande startled at the sound, her head whipping round—she’d been so lost in both revulsion and frustration about Renard that she hadn’t noticed Luca until he spoke.
Trained in all the arts of a warrior and yet she suddenly had no idea how long he’d been standing at the tent entrance, holding it open so that his familiar strength was framed by the full black of a Torrence night. It was the kind of darkness that seeped down and touched the skin, the stars one with the air around.
The blazing light of the brazier fire painted his handsome features in such a way that Amarande lost a step just looking at him, some of the fury within her receding as she could not help but smirk—a little.
“It did. Though he sorely tested me.”
His dimples flashed. “His most recent experience with you hasn’t quelled his death wish.”
“Unfortunately not.”
Luca dropped into a chair at the table, taking in the spread prepared by the camp with hungry eyes—buttered hare, honeyed beetroot, sheepherders’ bread, and a mixture of dried figs and cherries for a sweet treat. None of it touched.
Just as the night before, Amarande was making a habit of letting all her food grow cold. Luca ripped off a hunk of bread and held it out. “Tell me about it—but first, eat, please. You’re terrible about sustenance when you’re agitated.”
Amarande stopped pacing and stared at the bread a moment too long before rushing forward, accepting it. The crust hot against herfingers, she took a bite without a word and dropped into the chair across from Luca.
A pang of guilt for Taillefer and his raw potato offering swelled in her throat as Amarande swallowed. He regretted Renard’s death as much as she did—what would he think now? And what would he do about it? Celebrate in relief, guilt abated at a second chance? Or scheme a way to end Renard for good?
If Amarande were being honest, for as horrified and frustrated as she was about Renard’s reemergence, and for as vociferous as she was about murdering him again, she actually stood somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. She didn’t know if this was a blessing or a curse. Only that the finality of losing Koldo and her father weighed on her heart in a much different way than the peace she’d made with Renard’s death and the subsequent cauldron of competing feelings that swelled within her now.
He was alive.
But he would hurt her. Hurt Luca. Hurt the continent.
Was it just days ago that Amarande wore the title of queen while watching Luca accept his own destiny, finally feeling as if the ground had shifted in their favor? Now it was as if they were in a valley, enemies revealing themselves one by one from the high ground.
“Well, he’s definitely alive.” Amarande let her eyes flutter near-closed, embarrassment clawing through her belly. “I may have attacked his shirt to ensure that he actually had a wound to the chest.”
Luca coughed, nearly choking on a fig. “Really?”
“Yes. Yanked up his tunic and doublet and there it was, evidence that I really did stab him at the wedding—upward thrust, under the rib cage, deep enough to catch both the lungs and heart.”
Amarande tried to deliver the news as Koldo would have—straightforward, no emotion—but her voice cracked at the end.
The evidence was there. True. But everything after it had been a lie. Apparently.
“The wound has been stitched up and salved, but the skin is black with necrosis. Similar to your leg but worse somehow? Like it’s spreading—black gold on water.”
Yes, that was exactly how it’d looked.
Silence hung between them, and Amarande’s own sutures—in her arm and leg—called to her. She almost ripped up her sleeve to stareat them in comparison—they were somewhat inflamed despite all the salves and ointments in the world but certainly weren’tblacklike that.
