Renard laughed. “My brother was a psychopath.”
“Your brother also truly regretted every terrible thing he did, and his actions saved many lives in the end. You’d let your men and minerot atop the sand without a second thought in your first life, and I can’t let you try in your second.”
Enough stalling—Amarande kicked her boot out from between the bars and spun away. But somehow, in that blink of a moment, the impossible happened.
Renard wedged her sword straight out of her hand.
It clanged to the stone between them. Amarande dove to the dungeon floor but came up with nothing but dust and straw rushes. In his hand, her sword.Maite—love. Stolen from her. Just as she’d stolen his at her father’s funeral.
And now, just like that day on the funeral dais, it was pointed straight at the owner’s chest.
Straight atherheart.
The irony was enough that Renard’s lips lifted into something of a smile—rigid and violent and lacking any of the carefully cultivated charm he’d wielded previously.
Cool malice swept through the king’s voice, his grin never failing. “Oh, how I’ve dreamed of this moment, Amarande.”
Slowly, taunting, Renard dragged the tip of the sword from the hard web of bones at her sternum down to the middle of her chest—to the soft hollow between the wings of her rib cage.
Exactly where she had stabbed him.
Renard angled the tip of the sword to mimic her blow—one upward thrust and he would slice her lungs and heart in one fell swoop.
He raised a brow. “Beg for your life.”
Amarande didn’t watch his blade, he didn’t deserve the satisfaction. Instead, she watched his face. “Do it.”
Her dare paid off. Renard took the space to make a calculation—if the time was right, or if her death would be more useful later. And as those thoughts paged across his faded gaze, it gave her a chance to mount a counterattack.
In a single, sweeping movement, Amarande’s boot shot out, kicking the unused sword hanging in Renard’s hand.
The move spun him off axis, and she sweptMaiteaway from her body with a cross-body knock of a forearm against the blunt side. The combination of blows and heavy metal propelled his limbs this way and that and sent Renard stumbling back.
And then, in the near distance, the chapel bell began to ring.
“What’s that?” Renard’s eyes narrowed as he approached with both swords now. Amarande backed away, toward the wall opposite the exit, which was at the king’s back.
In her periphery, Ferdinand slowly stood from the crouch he’d been in near the cell bars, as they sneered in each other’s faces. She hesitated in answering just long enough to see the flash of steel in her brother’s hand.
“Your end.”
The skin around Renard’s eyes tightened just as the knife she always kept in her boot buried itself in the broad target of his back. Ferdinand’s aim was perfect.
Amarande shoved Renard aside in such a way that she was able to yank the keys from his belt as she did so. He went down with a thud, his sword falling beneath him as hers clattered across the stones. Releasing her boot knife with a good twist deep in his flesh, she leapt around Renard, gathered her sword, and sprinted to Ferdinand’s cell.
Key in lock, Amarande gave it a hefty turn, and the door yawned open.
Ferdinand fell into her arms in a crushing hug. “You came for me.”
“Of course, I did.” She shoved the dagger in his palm. “Perfectly done. Let’s get out of here. Another reunion, another battle to win. Come on.”
With one last look at Renard struggling to push himself off the floor, the Warrior King’s children ran out the door.
CHAPTER 50
“WEshould go in,” Ula announced from her spot in the shadows of the falling Pyrenee night. She and Urtzi waited at the topmost ridge beyond King’s Crest. It was still a low point, and they stared up at the white walls and spiraling towers, unnerved by the utter silence.
Urtzi furrowed his brow. “But the signal—”
