The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,188

there? With his hundred men who stormed the citadelle?” His tone was thick with mockery.

“So the Viceregent has come running to you with his tail tucked between his legs.”

“I smiled when he told me what you’d done. I was impressed that you rooted out my moles. How is your father?”

“Dead.” He deserved no truths from me, and the weaker he thought we were, the better.

“And your brothers?”

“Dead.”

He sighed. “This is all too easy.”

“You haven’t asked me about Kaden,” I said.

His smile disappeared, and his expression darkened. I knew him well, too. Kaden was a blow he couldn’t hide. There was something in this world he had loved, after all. Something he had saved, nurtured, but it had turned on him. Something that pointed to his own failure.

A small rush of pebbles suddenly streamed down from the cliffs above. He looked up surveying the empty ruins, turning to look at the other side. The silence of held breaths gripped the valley.

He looked back at me and grinned. “You thought I didn’t know?”

Ice filled my belly.

He turned as if to leave but then stepped closer to me instead.

“It’s the girl on the terrace that’s bothering you, isn’t it? I admit I went a bit too far. Caught up in the moment I suppose. Would an apology change your mind?”

Caught up in the moment? I stared at him. There were no words. No words.

He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I suppose not.”

He turned and walked back to his horse.

The rage came, blinding, bright, consuming.

“Send Zekiah!” I yelled.

“I will, Princess. I always keep my word.”

KADEN

I handed Yvet to a soldier. She choked on sobs, but there was no time to comfort her. “Take her to Natiya,” I said.

Lia had set up a camp outside the valley for whatever children we could capture. Gwyneth, Pauline, and more soldiers were there. Natiya spoke the language and would reassure them that they wouldn’t be harmed—and hopefully help comfort them—assuming we were able to get any more of them out of the valley alive.

I got back on my horse, watching Lia step closer to the Komizar. It was madness. I surveyed the cliffs. Watched the wall of the army poised to attack. Watched and waited and knew this was not just a parley. It was tearing nerves loose. The slow draw of a knife over skin. A stalking howl in a forest. The horses stamped, knowing, nervous.

“Shhh,” I whispered.

Make them suffer.

This was the Komizar, doing what he did best.

RAFE

I finally breathed as the Komizar rode away and Lia got back on her horse.

Zekiah was delivered as promised, whole and alive. He was rushed out of the valley to wait with Yvet. I had been expecting the worst, pieces perhaps, as the Komizar liked to threaten, but he always knew how to turn the moment. To plant doubt.

Lia had warned me he knew there were troops up in the ruins, and I sent soldiers to alert them. He may have known they were there, but he didn’t know exactly where they would charge from, or how many of them there were. It was a long valley, and when the Viceregent had escaped, he only knew of me and my hundred men—not about the whole Dalbreck army.

The cloud rolled toward us again, but this time with ravenous hunger. I felt the thunder of its feet, both human and animal, but united as one raging beast. I sensed our troops tensing, ready to spring. I stretched out my left arm, a signal to hold. Hold.

“You’re sure he’ll send them first?” I asked Lia. With the high hills around us, dusk was already closing in.

Lia’s knuckles whitened. One hand clenched her reins, and the other, her hilt. “Yes. Him using Yvet and Zekiah is proof. He knows me. He knows what will unsettle our soldiers and make them hesitate. We are not like him.”

We watched them get closer, and their features came into view at last, lines of soldiers, ten deep, a hundred across. None of them older than Eben or Natiya. Most much younger. They held halberds, swords, axes, and knives. As they advanced, I saw their faces, wild, barely recognizable as children anymore.

I signaled the shield guard to move forward into position. “Shields up!” I ordered. Their shields interlocked with practiced precision. “Archers forward!” Orrin called.

And then the first of the brezalots charged.

LIA

The prodded animal streaked past their front lines, heading toward the shield guard. The ballistas tucked above us moved to the ridges, ratcheted, cocked, and ready. I