The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,147

they left. He hadn’t been happy about the diplomatic mission proposed by the cabinet, and he was surprised my brothers had agreed to it so easily. He suspected they were up to something.

He privately confronted the eldest prince, asking him what they were plotting. Regan hadn’t tried to deny it. “You know what we’re doing. The same thing you’d do if your sister was wrongly accused.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“I thought you would,” Regan had answered.

And then the Field Marshal wished them luck.

I sat on the bench at the end of my bed, resting my face in my palms. My breath swelled in my chest. He said my brothers had never planned to go on to Gitos or Cortenai after they set the memorial stone in the City of Sacraments—only on to a few cities to recruit more help, and then they were heading to Venda to get me back and prove I wasn’t a traitor—which meant the trackers we had sent were headed in the wrong direction. By the time they figured out the princes had planned a new route, they would likely be too far behind to catch up. But this also meant those lying in wait to ambush them had to regroup too. It might give my brothers an advantage, but even if they evaded those sent to kill them, going all the way to Venda was a sure death sentence. Even a dozen regiments at their sides wouldn’t be enough to defend themselves against the Vendan army they would meet.

“The Aberdeen garrison,” I said. “After what happened to Walther’s company, that’s where they’ll go next, to recruit more and double their numbers. We’ll send riders there.”

Rafe shook his head. “No. Your brothers would be past there by the time riders arrived. We have an outpost northeast of the City of Dark Magic. Fontaine. We can try to intercept them near there.”

“That’s even farther away,” the Field Marshal scoffed. “How would you get a message to them in time?”

I looked at Rafe, my heart gripped in a fist. “You have Valsprey with you?”

He nodded.

We sat down at my desk immediately to write messages. One from me to my brothers so they would know the interception wasn’t an attack by Dalbretch soldiers. The other from Rafe to the commanding colonel at Fontaine to set patrols combing the landscape for Morrighese squads. It was still a long shot. There were miles of wilderness, and those lying in wait to ambush my brothers could still reach them before they were warned. But it was something. Rafe looked over my message and rolled it up with his. No one else saw what he wrote, because it was written with ciphers known only to his officers. “I told the colonel I wanted a well-armed battalion to escort your brother’s squads home if he finds them.”

Alive. It was unsaid, but I saw the word looming behind his eyes.

He left to get the message into the hands of the Valsprey handler. If all went well, he said, it would be there by tomorrow, but he warned me there would be no return message. It took months to train a bird to fly to a distant location. They weren’t trained to return to Civica.

I looked at the Field Marshal, nodding thanks and apologies in the same gesture. “And from this point forward, you must trust the king of Dalbreck as one of our own. His word is true.”

I told the soldiers to release him, and ordered the Huntmaster, the Timekeeper, and Trademaster freed as well. The rest of the cabinet would remain in their cells to face trial and execution—if I didn’t kill them first. My threat to the Viceregent had been real. If any harm came to my brothers or their comrades, his death would not be an easy one.

Devastation looked down on us,

But a green valley lay ahead.

The end of the journey was in sight at last,

And I did what I knew I would do all along;

I buried my knife deep in my betrothed’s throat,

And as he gasped for his last breath,

As his blood soaked into the earth,

There were no tears

Among any of us,

Especially none from me.

—The Lost Words of Morrighan

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

RAFE

It was a warm dark hole I climbed into as I had interrogated the prisoners that morning. It had no bottom, a free fall that invited me to let go. All I could see in the darkness as I asked questions were barrows full of bounty taken from Dalbreck’s