down and down until they arrived at an opening that had no lighting and led into the far side of the valley.
Samuel stepped in front of the mare but stayed close to the wall and the darkness in case there was someone ready to take Beatrix and put her into chains.
But that’s not what he saw. He saw a very calm Beatrix simply . . . waiting. She was not in chains and she was not sobbing in despair. She was just . . . standing there.
Then, at one point, she pulled one of her hands out of her fur muff and scratched her face. Samuel gasped in shock. The blood on her hand. Her hand was soaked in blood and she didn’t seem bothered by it at all.
Confused, disturbed, and attempting to rationalize what he was seeing, he started to turn away but Keeley’s horse bumped him with her muzzle. Samuel looked back and saw a carriage with four horses coming through some trees. The carriage stopped in front of Beatrix and the driver dismounted. He opened the carriage door and dropped a small set of stairs. Holding her hand, the driver assisted her into the carriage. The stairs were returned, the door closed, and the driver went back to his seat. With a lash, he sent the horses turning around so they could head back the way they’d come. When the carriage was facing away from him, Samuel saw the crest on the back of the vehicle.
“What the fuck,” he muttered to the gray mare behind him, “did I just see?”
CHAPTER 12
Once Keeley was in a proper bed in the witches’ healing chamber, Gemma was sure that her sister was dead. So much blood had been lost and she didn’t seem to respond to anything. But the witches kept working, making Gemma and Keran leave Keeley and wait in the passageway outside.
Eventually, a panting, sweating Samuel returned, with Keeley’s gray mare behind him, refusing to be led away when several of the witches tried.
When the witches were reassured by the centaurs that the horse would not be allowed into the healing chamber itself, Gemma led her squire down the passageway.
“All right, tell me. Did you find Beatrix?”
“Yes. She was alone.”
“Are you sure?” Keran pushed and that’s when Gemma realized her cousin had followed.
“She was definitely alone.”
“Where is she now?” Gemma asked.
“She left the fortress through a tunnel.”
“A cave tunnel?”
“Yes. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. It led her straight into the valley where a carriage met her soon after she arrived.”
Gemma and Keran exchanged glances.
“A carriage? Are you sure?”
Few people in the Hill Lands had carriages. Except, of course, for the—
“It was a royal carriage,” Samuel replied. “And the crest on the back was the crest of Prince Marius.”
“Prince Marius . . . ?” That didn’t make sense to Gemma. Why would her extremely smart sister ever get in a carriage with one of the Old King’s sons? They would just kill her, wouldn’t they? As the Devourer had already tried to do.
“That makes no sense,” Keran said, shaking her head.
Samuel had been Gemma’s squire for nearly two years and she’d learned to read his silences because he was often scared to death to tell her things.
“What else?” she finally asked him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He let out a shaky breath and focused on the ground.
“Samuel, spit it out!” she snapped.
“She had blood on her hands.”
Gemma blinked. “She was wounded?”
“No. I . . . I don’t think so. And she was very calm. And patient.”
“Patient? You mean she was waiting for that carriage?”
“I think so.”
“Wait,” Keran cut in, “what are two saying?”
Gemma knew what she was saying but she didn’t have time to inform Keran because the healing witches began barking orders at one another, some ran out of the chamber, and others ran in.
Pushing past Samuel, Gemma tried to enter the chamber to see what was wrong. What might be happening with her sister. But several witches pushed her out.
“We do not need your kind of help, War Monk,” one of them said. “You can wait outside.”
Not willing to risk her sister’s chances of survival, Gemma respected the witches’ demand and returned to the passageway. And that’s where all of them waited.
* * *
The carriage pulled to a stop where Marius waited with several of his men. He glanced up at the suns again to gauge the time and wished his mother would hurry up. Most people he wouldn’t waste his precious time