She lifted her head to find Ulpia holding her book up for all to see. “Pardon?”
“Is it funny? I do adore a good comedy.”
It was a linguistics text. “I’m afraid not.”
Ulpia scrunched her face in a parody of disappointment mirrored by the other girls around her. “Do you have anything comedic in that library? You could read for us.”
That was the last thing Lydia wanted to do. Already her skin was flushed hot, her heart beating too rapidly in her chest, stomach twisting with humiliation and anger and distress. “I’m afraid I have nothing that would suit.”
“Of a surety, that will be one of the first things I remedy,” Ulpia said, and laughter spilled out of the lips of the other young women in earshot. Laughter that was like pokers in Lydia’s ears, because that was her library. Hers and her father’s. And Ulpia would take it. Change it. Fill it with nonsense and then likely never even step inside. A room visited by servants to keep the dust in check, nothing more.
Fury burned in her chest, and Lydia snapped, “Perhaps refrain from making plans to redecorate my father’s house until he’s actually dead.”
Ulpia’s eyes widened and she pressed a hand to her glossy lips. “It was a jest, Lydia. Truly, you mistake me. Vibius and I wish nothing more than for Uncle to overcome his illness.”
“I’m sure.”
“Peace, peace,” several of the other young women murmured, and Lydia leaned back into a cushion, allowing the conversation to carry on without her.
The noise in the room ratcheted up, dancers wearing cheap silk and plumes of feathers swaying between the couches, bare feet moving to the rhythm of pipes the Bardenese women played. Lydia could barely hear herself think, but she saw the way the other girls pressed together, mouths next to one another’s ears as they gossiped.
Then above the cacophony, she heard: “Are you well, Valerius?”
Lydia turned in time to see her father double over, clutching his stomach in pain, but though she lunged to try to catch him, her fingers only grazed the fabric of his clothes as her father slumped to the floor.
5
KILLIAN
As the sun set, the first drumbeats rippled down the pass.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
There was no music to it, only a steady, familiar rhythm. The beat of men on the march.
A glow appeared on the horizon, as though the sun had reversed its cycle around the world, rising up like fire. Only Killian knew the light was a flame of a different sort. Torches. Thousands of them marching closer with every passing second.
The wall was thick with soldiers, the reinforcements from Blackbriar and Harid having arrived, and those from Tarn due within the hour. The men huddled next to smoking braziers, trying to keep warm in the howling wind that froze exposed skin in a matter of minutes, their heavy fur cloaks making them appear more animal than human.
There was no conversation. No banter. Only whispered words and Killian’s occasional order, punctuated by the snap and pop of the wood burning beneath the vats of boiling water.
Ten thousand men. That’s what the corrupted woman had said was coming. To bring such a host through these mountains was impossible, and yet there was no denying the numbers as they poured over the lip of the pass, a tide of darkness and fire flowing toward the ancient wall.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Lifting his spyglass, Killian panned the approaching enemy, their faces barely visible beneath heavy hoods, glistening steel held in their hands and, where it was not, wooden poles bearing a black banner emblazoned with a burning red circle.
The sign of the Seventh.
“The Six protect us,” several of his men muttered, but they held their positions, hands concealed against the wind until it was time to fight.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
A horn sounded, long and mournful, and the enemy host stopped just out of range of longbowmen.
“Archers,” Killian shouted, marking the flashes of motion among the masses of enemy. Corrupted. “Target those who move too quickly. We don’t want them up here with us.”
“There are thousands of them,” Bercola muttered. “We’re outnumbered ten to one.”
“The wall puts the odds in our favor,” Killian replied. Even with ten thousand men, this enemy force couldn’t win. The Derin army had no siege equipment and was exposed to the frigid wind surging down from the mountain peaks.
And yet Killian’s skin crawled like he was covered with spiders, his gaze drawn over his shoulder to the courtyard below. The fortress was protected by a half circle of curtain