heads for Pierre’s bedchamber. Before he can reach it, Pierre flings open the door, pulling his dressing gown around him and calling for the guards. “What is going on?”
“We don’t know, my lord. Explosions from the fourth floor.”
He swears, grabs his sword, then races out of the room with the guards.
I wait until I can no longer hear their heartbeats, then spring up, my attention on the large trunk that sits behind the enormous wooden desk.
With no time for subtlety, I grab the small kindling ax propped against the hearth, then head for the trunk.
As I raise the ax, the third pot explodes, the noise of it covering the sound of my blow. The lock shatters. I toss the ax aside and yank open the lid. So many papers! I do not have room to carry them all. The last of the iron pots goes off, and I pick up a handful of papers—I am running out of time.
Scanning the words on the pages for anything that could be from the regent or Viscount Rohan, I mutter, “Got you,” when I find a letter asking Pierre to join Rohan in his Breton campaign. It is dated one week after the duchess was betrothed to the king. Victory surges against my ribs. Now to find proof of the regent’s involvement.
An enormous explosion rockets through the holding just then. Merde! The first cannon! I have tarried too long. I shove the letters into my bodice as a second massive explosion goes off, and I curse the timing of the fuses. That one was too soon. But it is followed by a third, far louder explosion that rocks the very ground under my feet, and I hear the sound of screams. As the tower sways slightly, I realize the second cannonball must have reached the storeroom—with all the oil and wine and tallow.
The entire keep is about to go up like a torch.
I pick up the culverins and head for the door. When I reach it, I set them on the floor then snag a sturdy twig of kindling from the fireplace to use as a match. I return to the guns, leaving one leaning against my leg, and lift the second, touch the ember to the powder hole, then hang on as it belches flames at the curtains behind Pierre’s desk.
The explosion causes my ears to ring, but the curtains catch fire immediately. I toss the empty culverin aside, and pick up the second one. As the noise from the explosion clears, I become aware of a heartbeat off to my left. I jerk my head in that direction to see Pierre blocking the path to the door, his face alight with the red and yellow glow of the flames.
“What have you done?” he asks, stepping more fully into the room. He holds his sword in his right hand and a crossbow in his left.
“I am ending this.”
“This?”
“Our family’s legacy. Your family’s legacy,” I correct myself. “You have ruined enough lives.”
“You are mad! Killing a hundred innocent people to get your revenge on me?”
“Not all of them are innocent,” I remind him sharply. “But that was what the first explosions were for—to give them time to get out. Even now they’re choking the halls and doorways, pouring out into the courtyard, heading for the gate tower. If worst comes to worst, they can heave themselves over the wall into the sea. The fire cannot reach them there.”
The flames have consumed the curtain behind me. I am out of time. I raise the culverin. He stumbles backwards, eyes fixed on the weapon. “You cannot mean to kill me.”
I laugh. “I have waited years to kill you.” Except, the driving hunger to kill him, to kill his father, has left me. I just want them out of my life and unable to ruin others’. Surely death is the only way to accomplish that.
Even if I must die to do it? For Pierre’s crossbow is aimed at me, and he will have time to release his bolt before the culverin’s finds his black heart.
As we stand at our impasse, I become aware of a small heartbeat behind Pierre. No. Please no, do not let it be Charlotte.
“Surely you are not afraid to die,” I taunt, to distract him. “You who have meted out death as casually as an almoner hands out scraps?”
But he is. Fear overshadows the hate and fury in his eyes as they shift between me and the flames. Finally, he drops his