Igniting Darkness (Courting Darkness Duology #2) - Robin LaFevers Page 0,9

have any idea how much you’ve put at risk? Any idea whose lives might be ruined?” For one heart-stopping moment, I am certain she is considering killing me where I stand. “How much danger complete innocents will be in because of you?”

Her words pour over me like acid, the burn of it mixing with the searing shame I already feel. “I was trying to save them, you rutting sow, if you would only let me explain.”

She folds her arms and raises her eyebrows. “I am listening.”

I force myself to draw a full breath. “I told you, we had not heard from the convent for five years. Nothing.”

As I talk, she crouches down to peer at the rug, tilting her head sideways as if examining the surface. When I pause, she looks up at me. “Continue,” she says curtly.

“Margot . . . Margot got tired of waiting and entered into a liaison with Count Angoulême. That is how she died.”

The hand she had been running over the rug stills. “He killed her?”

“Not with his bare hands, no, but she became pregnant and died giving birth to his bastard.”

“Merde.” She shoves to her feet, her gaze flitting briefly to me before she goes to the window. “Go on.” She yanks the curtains aside.

“When the count told me that the duchess and king were to be married, I didn’t believe it. France consuming Brittany was everything we’d been fighting against.”

“She was out of choices,” Sybella mutters as she examines the latch closely.

“That’s what the count said. I took comfort in the fact that I would be in a perfect position to help her now, with all my connections at court and the knowledge I’d gathered over the years about all the courtiers, not to mention the king and the regent.”

She pauses long enough to stare at me. “That was precisely the sort of aid we were hoping for.” In disgust, she looks back at the window and runs her fingers over the casing, wincing at something.

“What is it?”

“A nick in the wood.” She begins rubbing her finger over it, as if trying to smooth it away. “Keep talking.”

“But much to my dismay, I still received no call from the convent. When Count Angoulême left for the wedding, I demanded he take me with him.”

The corner of her mouth quirks. “I wager he loved that. Princes of the Blood do so enjoy being ordered about.”

“I told him I needed to be somewhere the convent could find me, but he refused.”

“You could have just followed him.”

“I would have, but he had other news as well. News he claimed was from the convent.” She stops rubbing the wood and looks at me. “The news was that, by order of the king, the convent of Saint Mortain was being disbanded.” For the first time since I have begun talking, she gives me her full attention. “His followers were to be farmed out to other convents or married off to willing husbands. I was now Angoulême’s legal ward, and he was to find a suitable husband for me.”

“But no such thing has happened! How could you not know he was tricking you?”

“Of course that was my first thought,” I snap. But how to explain the many signs that seemed to point to the same conclusion. “I considered such a possibility carefully, but he had a message bearing the wax seal of the convent. It was signed by the abbess. And he had never lied to me before. I could not discern a reason he would do so now. And believe me, I considered it thoroughly. But I could never see what he would gain, except the animosity of the convent, and he has always struck me as too self-serving to incur such wrath without good reason.”

Sybella opens the windows and runs her hand carefully along the windowsill. “And so you left.”

“Not right away, no.” How do I explain to her the utter betrayal I felt? The sense of aloneness. “Margot had died but three days earlier,” I say softly. “We had been like sisters, and I . . .” Her fingers still, and she frowns before retrieving a tiny scrap of cloth. She holds it up for closer inspection.

How to explain the enormity of what I’d lost? Not just with Margot’s death, but in the year preceding it? “And there was her babe. I wanted to stay long enough to see if it lived.”

Sybella shoves the scrap into the pocket of her gown. “And did it?”

“Yes. She did.”

“That’s