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At the table, Andry cleared his throat. The memory pained him still, that was clear for anyone to see. “Taristan has an army like—like nothing the Ward has ever seen before. Corpses and skeletons. Alive but dead. And so many.”
Oscovko cocked his head, bewildered.
“I didn’t believe it either,” Corayne said softly. “Once.”
She remembered the girl she was, on the cliffs of Lemarta, who wanted only the horizon. Who was foolish enough to think the world would give it to her. Who saw an Elder and an assassin as merely stepping stones, a chance to escape the lovely cage of her mother’s making. Corayne envied that girl, and hated her in the same breath.
Oscovko continued to stare, his pale eyes going hard, his jaw clenching tight. To Corayne’s dismay, she realized it was not confusion on the prince’s face.
“Bring me the letter,” he said sharply, speaking over their heads to one of his lieutenants. The man jumped to attention and swept from the room, his boots hammering on the floor.
Fear gripped Corayne’s heart, its icy fingers clawing her insides. “What letter?” Her voice trembled.
The prince did not answer, stone-faced. When the lieutenant returned, a parchment in hand, Corayne almost snatched it away to read for herself. Instead she tightened her grasp on the arms of her chair, trying to ignore the rising thud of her own heart.
With a snap, Oscovko unfolded the letter. Corayne leaned forward in her seat, as did Charlie, both trying to glimpse its contents from across the table.
“From the King of Madrence,” Oscovko said, eyeing them both. He indicated the dark red seal, broken in half, the stamped image of a stallion cut in two. “The rider nearly died getting here, changing horses without rest.”
Madrence,Corayne thought, swallowing hard. She exchangedworried glances with Andry, who sat across from her, his brow deeply furrowed.
“Are you going to read the letter or dangle it in front of us?” Sorasa hissed.
Oscovko’s throat bobbed. He looked to Corayne, and she saw fear in him, the destructive kind, the one that hollowed you out. The kind she knew too well.
“‘Crown Prince Orleon has been killed,’” he said, reading from the smudged paper. “‘The city of Rouleine has fallen to Erida. She has twenty thousand men marching to Partepalas, and another army of—’”
Something broke in his voice, and in his eyes.
Corayne felt it break in her too.
“‘Corpses and skeletons,’” Oscovko whispered. He lowered the letter and slid it across the table. “Just as you said. An army like nothing the Ward has ever seen before.”
Corayne’s fingers trembled, shaking beneath the table. She stared at the letter and the inked message, the scrawl messy. Whoever had sent the message did so at great haste.
“Not a forgery,” Charlie said, pulling the paper closer. He scrutinized the seal and signature with the eye of a master. “This is the king’s own hand, his own writing. He is desperate indeed.”
“For good reason,” Andry muttered, his fist clenching on the tabletop.
Dom’s massive form slumped against the thick window glass, his chest rising and falling. “The Spindle army marches.”
Andry slowly collapsed back into his seat, taking his head in his hands. Corayne wanted to go to him but could not move. Theshades of the Ashlanders ran through her mind, their decaying bodies coming through the trees of a quiet forest. A scream rose up in her throat, as the woods became buildings, the overgrown ground turned into city streets. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her thoughts. Trying not to see the skeletons as they fell upon man, woman, and child, laying waste to everything in Erida’s path.
Rouleine is a border city, built to withstand war and siege.Her eyes opened, stinging with hot tears.But not monsters. Not Taristan. Not What Waits.
Her dreams flared up before her waking eyes, only for a moment. The red presence of What Waits leered at the corner of her vision, a hot and pulsing sheen. She turned her head, trying to catch it, only for Him to disappear.
The fear did not.
She could not imagine what Andry saw in his mind, or Dom. They knew far worse than she did. Both bowed under the weight of their memories, battling a storm Corayne would never weather. Instead she met Sorasa’s copper eyes, sharing a sharp look. The assassin then turned to the squire and the immortal, her full lips pressed to nothing, her nostrils flared as she took in their pain, and despaired of it.
Oscovko watched them all, uneasy. He folded the letter with deliberate motion, creasing the paper.
He cleared his throat. “King Robart calls for an alliance of the Ward, all united against Erida and her consort. Against whatever evil they’re using to roll through the realm.”
“Will you agree to it?” Corayne blurted out. She expected thatfamiliar burst of hope in her chest, but it never came. The situation was simply too dire.
The prince hesitated. “This letter was written last month, and I only received it two days ago,” he finally bit out, and Corayne winced. “I must assume Robart is already dead. Or has surrendered his throne.”
