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Next to her, Dom slid from his horse. His face was stone, unreadable.
“Sorasa,” he growled. “Take her and go.”
The assassin’s mask slipped, if only for a moment. She blinked furiously, a flush rising in her cheeks. Beneath her steady confidence, Corayne saw doubt. Doubt and fear.
But Sorasa turned away, her expression clearing like a slate wiped clean. She refused the waiting horse with a wave of one bloodstained hand and faced the horizon again. The riders were nearly upon them, the pounding hooves of forty horses thundering over the sand.
“Too late,” the assassin muttered.
Dom bowed his head, looking as he had in Ascal, a hole in his ribs, bleeding out his life as they ran for the gates.
But even in Galland, we could run. We had a chance.Corayne felt herself slump in the saddle. She was suddenly glad for Andry’s closeness. Only his hand on her ankle kept her steady. The squire did not let go, nor did he look at the approaching outriders. They could hear their voices now, yelling in Ibalet, calling out orders.
“You think he won’t feel it?”
Andry’s voice was soft, nearly inaudible.
She glanced down at him, noting the set of his shoulders, the tightness of his fingers. Slowly, Andry raised his eyes to hers, letting her read him as easily as she would one of her maps.
“You think he won’t feel the Spindle is gone?” Andry murmured.
Despite the outriders bearing down, Taristan filled Corayne’svision. He bled to life in front of her, blotting Andry out, until there was only her uncle’s white face and black stare, a red gleam moving behind his eyes. She turned away before he could swallow her whole.
Her eyes trailed back to the village, her gaze weaving among the ruins. Back to where the Spindle once burned. Even as the outriders closed in, their voices growing louder, Corayne felt herself drift further away.
“I hope not,” she whispered, praying to every god she knew.
But if I can feel its echo—and its absence—
I’m certain he does too.
And so does What Waits.
2
Between Queen and Demon
Erida
The flaming brazier crashed against the wall, spilling hot embers across the stone floor of the small receiving chamber. The edge of an old rug caught fire. Queen Erida of Galland didn’t hesitate to stamp it out, even as the same fire roared inside her. Her face burned, pale cheeks red with anger.
Her crown lay discarded on a low table, only a simple band of gold, plain but for its gleam. She had no use for opulent gems or ridiculous finery in a cold castle at the edge of a battlefield, in the middle of a war, in the eye of a Spindlerotten hurricane.
Across the chamber, Taristan’s chest rose and fell, his bare hands unburned as he threw another bronze bowl of hot coals. It looked as easy as tossing a rag doll, though Erida knew the brazier must be twice her weight. He was too strong, too powerful. He felt neither the heaviness nor the pain.
Thank the gods, he did not feel the poison either.
Not after Castle Vergon and the last Spindle cut. The portal still glittered behind Erida’s eyes, a thread of gold near invisible, so important and yet so easy to overlook. The door to another realm, and another link in the chain of her empire.
Taristan’s shadow loomed behind him, guttering with the torches and embers, leaping like a monster on the wall. His ceremonial armor was gone, leaving only the deep red of his tunic and white skin beneath. He did not seem smaller without iron and gilt.
Erida wished she could loose that shadow onto the Ward, send it out into the night, seeking whatever road her cousin Lord Konegin now raced down. Her anger flared brighter, the flames fed by thought of her treasonous kin.
I do not want Taristan to kill him,she thought,but to drag him back here, broken and defeated, so we may kill him ourselves, in front of all the court, and end his insurrection before it can begin.
She pictured her royal cousin and his entourage, their horses thundering through the darkness. They had only a small head start on her own riders, but the sky was clouded, the moon and stars veiled. It was a pitch-black night on a shifting border. And her own men were weary from the day’s battle, their horses still recovering. Not like Konegin, his son, and their loyal few.
“They planned for this,” Erida muttered, fuming. “He meant to kill Taristan, my husband, their own prince, and take the throne from us. But Konegin is cunning, and he knew to plan for failure too.”
