He was drunk and performing for the other guests, but Lydia’s cheeks still burned as she retreated, helplessness souring the wine in her own stomach. What would it be like to live with Vibius without her father to intervene when he got out of hand? Just how badly would he treat her as punishment for her father’s inquiries?
Was marriage the better option?
“Lydia, is this comedic?”
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 wall, thirty feet tall and six feet thick, with a gate made of steel-banded oak held shut by a beam that required two men to lift. The stables and outbuildings were made of equally sturdy construction as the fortress, soldiers moving among them as they prepared their defenses, the three white-robed healers standing at the ready. But his gaze drifted beyond them, past the clear-cut at the base of the fortress’s wall to the dark expanses of forest behind them. To the kingdom they defended.
The horn sounded again, tearing his attention back to the enemy host as they hammered their weapons against their shields, the noise deafening.
Then abruptly the thunder ceased.
The army parted, a lone figure carrying the standard of the Seventh striding down the path they’d formed. The individual moved with the awful grace of one of the corrupted, the soldiers cringing away with fear that was obvious even from this distance.
Lifting his spyglass, Killian focused on the woman, the snug leather she wore making it no question it was a she, his eyes fixing on the black mask rendering her face featureless. Rufina, instinct told him, and Killian handed off his spyglass in favor of his bow, pulling an arrow and nocking it without taking his attention from the enemy queen. They fight out of fear, a voice whispered in his head. Kill her and this ends here.
Narrowing his gaze, Killian tracked Rufina’s progress to the front of her host, torchlight illuminating her long black hair, which gusted sideways with the wind. You’ll only get one chance, he warned himself, aiming at her heart. Only one chance to catch her unaware. One chance to kill her.
Rufina stopped, planting her standard deep in the snow. Far out of range of most men.
But Killian wasn’t most men.
He shot the arrow, the twang of his bow loud in the silence.
It was impossible to see the trajectory in the darkness, and Killian held his breath, waiting to see if his aim was true.
Yet it was impossible not to see Rufina’s hand move with sudden speed, stopping his arrow inches from her breast. Lifting the arrow, she regarded it, head tilting to one side in amusement that radiated across the distance. Like it was nothing more than a child’s toy.
Several of his men made the sign of the Six against their chest even as Killian shot three more arrows in swift succession, but Rufina snatched them all from the air, her shoulders shaking with laughter that caught on the wind, filling Killian’s ears. The ears of his soldiers.