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At the prison, the queen had commanded Iarthil to tell Warrick about a prophecy in which a barbarian warrior killed her uncle with his axe, yet the serjeant had said nothing of a prophecy in his translation. Only that she needed Warrick to kill a usurper. Then he’d insisted Warrick bring the axe without saying why—and Warrick could not ask Iarthil about his reasons without revealing how much he’d understood.
Nor would he reveal that anytime soon. Better that everyone who surrounded the queen believed they could speak freely around him.
“Have you practiced swinging the axe by the chain?”
“I intend to now.” Especially as Warrick was meant to kill her uncle with the weapon. “What is her name?”
“Elina.” Iarthil regarded him steadily. “She is determined to have you. In that, I won’t interfere. But do not harm her, or I will kill you.”
“Fair enough. But fear not. You made a vow to your queen to protect her. I will make the same vow to mine.”
Confusion furrowed his brow. “Your queen?”
Warrick glanced back at the Radiant Queen’s tent, where the woman who’d overturned his entire world slept. “Elina.”
Elina did not awaken for supper.
Two women were in the tent watching over her—one the maid who’d given to Warrick the robe at the pool and had helped him dry her. Dara, he’d heard her called. Along with the nurse, she seemed to be Elina’s primary attendant. The other woman he’d seen in the gaggle of retainers who’d flocked into the pool to help save Elina, but knew not her name.
It was Dara who approached him as he stood by Elina’s bed. She hadn’t moved since he’d lain her down, not even to turn onto her side. Sleeping far more deeply than a mere nap suggested.
“Nurse gave to her a sleeping tonic with the draught for her cough. She won’t wake again this night,” Dara said—then attempted to say the same by pillowing her cheek on her folded hands and miming sleep, before shrugging and shaking her head.
Warrick nodded.
The other woman arched her brow at Dara, pursing her lips in clear disapproval—though unspoken disapproval. For the moment.
Warrick left the tent, then waited. The tent walls were no impediment to the voices within.
It did not take long. “Will you be tale-telling on Nanny, then?”
“I will not,” Dara said sharply. “But the queen would not be pleased about the draught. She wished to sup with him.”
“Nanny’s care will be the only reason the queen reaches home. If she ever does.”
“Whether she returns home or not, I should like to see her happy.”
“Oh yes, happy.” The woman gave a bitter little laugh. “I suppose at least one of our number should be. We have been apart from our families for a decade, but by all means—let us risk the queen’s health so she can be kissed.”
“Return to your family now, then. The queen will not begrudge your leaving, just as she has not the others who went. Though you know what happened to them when they arrived.”
By the other woman’s silence, Warrick assumed that they had not survived their homecoming.
An assumption confirmed when Dara continued, “What Soren did to them will happen to you. Our only hope of returning home is by staying loyal to her—or to her barbarian, if it truly is his axe that will fell Soren. So by the gods, I pray they kiss. And I pray he loves her enough to avenge her death and kill the king who cursed her.”
A deep sigh floated from the tent. When the woman spoke again, the bitterness was gone and her voice wistful. “Does he truly love her, you think? So quickly?”
“That is what the prophecy said. ‘From the first moment he lays eyes upon her face.’ And he’s here, isn’t he?”
Warrick was too thunderstruck to attend to any reply.
Something had happened within him when he’d first laid eyes upon Elina’s face. Her true face, beneath the haggard paint. He knew not if it was love. Yet he would kill her uncle. And never would he abandon her.
Nor would he let Elina leave him. Not in death. Not by any illness. It was clear to Warrick that there was far more—and far less—to her uncle’s curse than Elina knew.
But he need not ponder what it meant that a raven had delivered the Stars of Anhera to Elina, keeping her alive until she arrived in Torrath, where Bannin and Warrick had only remained long enough to meet her because Warrick had spoken to a dead man whose family was enslaved by Lord Gleris—a family who needed help to return home. Just as Elina’s people wished to do.
Whether a prophecy or a goddess put him at Elina’s side—or whether it had come about by chance—it hardly mattered. This was where Warrick wished to be.
Because until the moment he’d laid eyes upon her face, everything Warrick had thought and done had wronged her.
