“I’ve been patient,” Thren said. He crossed his arms and stood directly before her. “I’ve given James plenty of chances to come to my side. Your Ash Guild is strong, and I hold more respect for it than any other guild. Yet you did something stupid, girl. You plotted against me.”
“No,” she said.
Thren’s fist smashed her face. Will’s rag was there immediately, soaking in the blood she spat. The rage coupled with kindness only confused her more.
“Don’t lie to me,” Thren said. “The Worm has already told me your plan.”
Gileas, Veliana thought as she felt her stomach sink. You bastard.
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
“I need the Ash Guild’s men. We cannot be fractured any longer. If any are to trust me, then all must join me willingly. The second I force loyalty, the other guilds will break away for fear of absorption and disbandment. James has proven stubborn. I will not kill him, though. Too many whisper of me doing such things as is. I cannot dignify those mad ramblings with a kernel of truth.”
“You want me to kill him,” she said, guessing where his thoughts were leading. “I’ll take over, and then bend my knee to you.”
“You’re smart, strong, and beautiful,” Thren said. “It would not be difficult for you to consolidate power.”
“Your plan is suicide,” Veliana said. “A combined attack against all three leaders of the Trifect during their Kensgold? We’ll be slaughtered and broken.”
Thren ran a hand through her long red hair.
“Do not let loyalty cost you everything,” he whispered to her. “Either accept my proposal or suffer the consequences. What is your choice?”
Any other guild member would have turned on their leader. Veliana was unlike any other member.
“James has saved me a hundred times,” she said. “Kill me or let me go. I will not turn traitor and knife him in the dark.”
Thren sighed.
“A shame. I will not kill you, Veliana. That was not part of the deal. Gileas required you as his price for telling me of your conspiring with Gerand. I had no intention of paying it, but then again, I never thought you’d refuse the position I offered you.”
A shiver of disgust ran up and down her spine. Now she understood why she they’d stripped her naked. They’d even healed the wound on her shoulder where the arrow had pierced clean through. She closed her eyes, trying not to think of the ugly man’s black teeth, twisted face, and stubby fingers lacking fingernails. She almost changed her mind. Thren paused, as if waiting for her to break. When she didn’t, he put his back to her.
“Remember, Aaron,” she heard him say. “Things will never go as you plan. Prepare for anything, and be willing to sacrifice everything, even beauty.”
Veliana saw the boy standing next to Thren. He stared back with beautiful blue eyes, eyes that sparkled with tears. Then the emotion died as he turned to look at his father, and the disgust she had thought she’d seen became nothing but a lie.
“Yes father,” she heard the boy say.
If Gileas didn’t take her life, Veliana swore revenge. Not on Thren, not directly. She’d only fail. But the boy, the groomed heir, him she could kill. Him she could make suffer.
Aaron took one torch, Will the other. They walked away from the forest, toward the western gate. The torches faded away and then died. In the starlight, she watched them pass a hobbled form approaching the other way. Her way. She didn’t want to imagine what they might do to James now that she wouldn’t give them an easy way to control the Ash Guild.
Veliana struggled against the chains. The original purpose had been to execute criminals outside the city by leaving them for wolves and coyotes to come and eat. While the punishment was gruesome, the spectacle was rarely witnessed and too random in its length. Fifty years ago, the Vaelor line had instituted beheadings before the castle steps instead. Quicker, bloodier, and a much better spectacle. With how old the chains were, surely they would be rusted and ready to break.
They weren’t. From the corner of her eye she could see one of the manacles on her wrist. Black steel, clean and polished. Thren had brought his own chains. Of course he had. He wouldn’t make such a stupid mistake as letting her escape because of some rusted buckles.
Gileas was getting closer. He was a fat shadow sliding across the wall, worse than any monster in her childhood stories.