Blood dripped down the back of his ivory doublet and swerved around the cut of his torso to the double-breasted front. One arm hung unnaturally long and low, yet he faced her and the pewter night, straight-backed and determined.
“I told you, Amarande. You best make sure you kill me this time. You left me to die but I didn’t. Your mistake.Again.”
The queen tilted her head. Her hands gripped the balcony casually as the cool, granite-flecked stone pressed into the small of her back and the tip of her sheathed sword. “It wasn’t a mistake. I, too, wish for nothing but your suffering. Step forward, Renard. I won’t kill you until you see it’s over for you.”
He drew his sword with his good arm but hesitated at the threshold. Searching for Ferdinand, she knew. He wouldn’t find him.
Amarande shot out a question where he expected her brother’s blade. “Where are your guards, my king?”
It struck perfectly.
Renard leered at her, trying to read her thoughts. Failing.
Finally, he said, “They appear either to have been killed or are conspicuously absent.”
She inclined her chin toward the torchlit rose garden below. “They’re not absent, Renard. They’re busy.”
The king stepped into the night, onto the balcony, veering to theopposite side—as far away from Amarande as he could get. This gave her the perfect vantage point to watch as reality dawned upon Renard’s face with the sights and sounds of what was happening.
Below, the Torrentian crew flooded the rows of roses, their movements well lit from the high torches reflecting off the glittering white walls of the main castle and all the surrounding buildings. Luca ran around, directing traffic through the mess as the resistance fighters rushed away, a trail of dead Pyrenee men in their wake.
Renard bit out a mean laugh, ignoring the truth.
His prisoners had escaped, and he was suddenly under attack.
Instead, he gestured toward his stables and the mountains beyond. Toward Luca, handsome and fierce and running every way but toward Amarande. Toward Ferdinand, suddenly appearing, too—in honesty she was quite surprised by how quickly he’d made it to the courtyard using Inés’s secret passageway. Or perhaps Renard and his bleeding body was slower than she’d anticipated. “They’re leaving you—stealing my horses and running away.Cowards.The loyalty in these people is astounding. Surely, in your beauty and ferocity, you could’ve inspired better. Much better.”
Again, Renard laughed, the exterior torches catching the light in his eyes as they illuminated the glittering white walls on either side of the balcony, which protruded into the rose garden like an iceberg at sea.
“They aren’t leaving,” Amarande assured him. She tipped her chin to the far distance, the stables at the top of the hill. “They’re regrouping.”
Disbelief paled the king’s features, but this time instead of ignoring the truth he searched the distant recesses of the castle grounds, his eyes failing in the low light. But as the torches grew in number, mixing and mingling with the Torrentian bodies, so did recognition upon his features.
Riders—hundreds of riders, perhaps five hundred, in fact—raced from the stables and toward the Bellringe, the exodus tide turning back and heading straight for the home of Renard, King of Pyrenee, and any remaining soldiers he had left.
Amarande arched a brow just as Renard had. She took a step closer to him to ensure the king wouldn’t look away from this truth as it barreled down upon him.
His end.
Just as she had told him.
Just as they had planned.
“What was that about your army holding mine in port?” she asked, feigned innocence biting and brutal. “Perhaps someone got their messages crossed?”
She let that question hang. And in that flailing silence, Amarande watched all color drain from his sallow, starlit face as Renard turned to her, devoid of all his former manic joy.
Amarande grinned, as fierce as a tiger.
“Or perhaps it was never a message fromyourarmy at all? Because it certainly appears that my army, my love, and his loyalists are all here exactly as I need them.”
CHAPTER 52
FERDINANDplowed into the rose garden to utter and total chaos.
Amarande hadn’t had the time to tell him the plan. Only that he was to escape through a hidden passageway in the queen’s bath and to aid Luca and the Torrentian rebels.
Ferdinand was immediately confused, given Renard’s impassioned belief that Luca and his fighters were in a cell somewhere else on King’s Crest. At this, Amarande had arched a brow in a way that reminded him too much of Geneva.
