the heart of the Church, you need to do more than that. Be pleased, my love, that young Aydrian has stepped forward to worthily fill the throne."
Marcalo De'Unnero slumped back on his bed as those words settled within his thoughts. Sadye was speaking wisely here, he knew, and it was surprising for him to recognize that he and Sadye had almost completely swapped their viewpoints in a period of a few days.
Aydrian's road to win the entirety of the kingdom would be a difficult one indeed, but De'Unnero's quest to remake the Abellican Church into what it once had been, into something even greater than it had once been, would be no less so.
For a long time, De'Unnero sat there, considering the events of the last few tumultuous weeks, considering the actions of Aydrian. The turning point, he knew, had come that day on the jousting field, when Aydrian had defeated, and seemingly killed, Duke Kalas, only to reach into his enchanted soul stone and tear Duke Kalas back from the netherworld.
So much of this amazingly quick rise to the throne had been facilitated by Aydrian, without consulting either De'Unnero or Olin. And now it was continuing.
It did not sit well with Marcalo De'Unnero that Aydrian was acting so much on his own here, and yet Sadye's reasoning made good sense. The first part in the plan De'Unnero and Olin had concocted called for getting Aydrian on the throne, and now that had come to pass.
The second part of that plan, the takeover of the Abellican Church, had just begun here, in St. Honce, and would carry them all the way to St.- Mere-Abelle, so they hoped. If the kingdom was to be Aydrian's and the Church the province of Olin and De'Unnero, then, yes indeed, it would bode well for the monks if Aydrian proved capable of handling his end.
But still... Marcalo De'Unnero glanced over at Sadye, to see her standing there, looking off into the distance, a wistful smile on her face.
He could guess whom she was thinking about.
* * * When Torrence awoke, he was back in his coach seat, and the coach was rolling through the streets of Ursal in the dead of night. He was gagged and lightly bound, but he didn't even think of pulling free of his bonds, for three others were in the coach with him: burly men, all armed, and all staring at him intently.
The coach went through the side gates of the castle, and up to a little- used door, where a pair of men waited, chains in hand.
Torrence was roughly grabbed and pulled from the seat, his arms yanked behind him and chained at the wrists. They ushered him through the servant areas of the castle, through the kitchen and the scrub rooms, then through a door and down a long flight of stairs to the dungeons.
Panic welled up inside the deposed prince as his entourage silently dragged him along the cellars, to another flight of wooden stairs that took him even deeper beneath the great castle. Down this second flight, they stopped and pulled the gag from Torrence's mouth, roughly turning him about to look back under the stairs.
There a hole had been dug, one about the right size for a body.
Torrence instinctively recoiled from the open grave, but firm hands held him in place.
"That will not be necessary," came a voice the young prince surely knew, one that offered him a glimmer of hope. He turned to see the approach of Duke Targon Bree Kalas, the nobleman who had been his mother's dearest friend for so many years.
"Leave us," Kalas instructed the others, and the guards moved off without question, back up the stairs.
"Glory to St. Abelle that you found me," Torrence said, as Kalas walked beside him and unlocked the shackles that bound his wrists. "I know not what those ruffians would have done to me. Why, it seems as if they even prepared a grave..."
Torrence paused as he considered the moment, as he realized that Duke Kalas was in possession of the keys to his shackles. He stared down at the open grave, then slowly began to turn about.
"Forgive me," Duke Kalas whispered, and Torrence spun about wildly to face him.
Kalas's sword plunged into his chest, tearing his heart in half. Stunned and shaking in the last moments of his life, Torrence grasped the bloody blade.
"Forgive me," Duke Kalas whispered, and he held his hand up to silence Torrence's breathless questions. "Forgive me, Constance."