Out cold.
Ula’s face broke into a smile and she lowered her sword enough to hug the tall boy’s arm. “Urtzi, you big oaf, you finally realized you could take Dunixi, did you?”
“No, I always knew I could. I just didn’t because you still followed him… and I want to follow you.”
Ula bit her lip but didn’t let go of his arm. Urtzi rubbed his neck and glanced down. After a beat, they broke apart and Ula sped back into action. “Do you think you can stand?” she asked Luca.
“With help.”
Urtzi offered a meaty paw. With the Myrcellian as an anchor, Luca did indeed stand, swaying a little on his heels. “This will do. I’m sure I’ll find my stride when I see Amarande.”
Ula smiled and then bent to Dunixi’s limp body. From it she pulled a handful of items—a slip of paper, a small vial, and a dagger. She stuffed the first two items into her pockets but handed the knife, the one that had been in the saddlebag he’d stolen, to Luca, eyes aflame. “Let’s go save your princess.”
CHAPTER
51
WITHevery step, Amarande’s tears dried. Her jaw tightened. Her resolve hardened. Her heartbeat pounded against the knife she’d carried with her for the majority of her life.
I will kill Renard.
I will kill Taillefer.
I will make Pyrenee suffer.
And, finally:I will die in the process.
That truth sat heavy in her heart. And yet it brought her peace.
Rather than giving up control to the vipers here, she would use her hands, her gifts, everything Father and Koldo had taught her, and end it all.
When it was over, the decision was hers, the action was hers, the fate was hers to choose.
That alone was worth it.
A stillness spread about Amarande, until it was no longer as if she was inside her body but out of it, looking down upon the queen’s chambers. The maids finally summoned her at the latest chime of bells and brought her down the stairs.
The girls pressed a bouquet into her hands—a mixture of unnatural aubergine and gold roses—and vanished into the shadows. Her new escorts appeared at the landing, members of the Pyrenee council whose names she did not know, all dressed in yards of swirling purple fabric, sour looks upon their craggy faces.
She did not trust them.
If they laid hands on her, they would be sorry. Her knife could spill more than royal blood.
The councilors did not touch her, though. Rather, they surrounded her in a cushion, leading her through the same rose garden in which she’d seen Luca’s body held aloft by the former pirates.
The sun had set, the cool sepia of twilight lighting the grounds. Lanterns lined both sides of their path, a sweet candlelit glow under the emerging stars.
Amarande squinted through the dim, attempting to read the shadows for a sign of where Luca had been laid to rest before the wedding. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t be able to find him. She wouldn’t be able to say good-bye. She could only meet him in the afterworld.
There, at least, they could be together.
No laws. No rules. No expectations.
The princess quickened her stride. The chapel loomed ahead, torches blazing from the walls, guards stationed outside. Two on either side of the doors, decked out in their best uniforms, stoically reading the land before them. They let the princess’s party cross the threshold without so much as a glance.
The beams and pillars of the foyer were hastily dressed in twists of golden roses and ribbon. Everyone was seated, and no one lingered beyond the main hall, save for a handful of guards—including Osana, in Pyrenee purple, Egia strapped to her side—standing sentry over morsels meant for after the affair. Perhaps in their haste of wedding preparation, Pyrenee had inadvertently admited women to the castle guard—or possibly they didn’t care who flaunted dead prisoners and guarded cheese. Silver trays of several stinking varieties lined tables along with shrimp culled from Pyrenee’s single fjord port along the Divide and vats of the dark-red wine so beloved by those here.
She could hear music playing beyond the foyer—flute and harp, the instruments of romance. Already with the wedding march. Likely on repeat, with the princess meant to fall in at the beginning of the set.
