CHAPTER 36: THIRTY SIX

Lucien

The dungeons reek.

It wasn’t so much as the stench of stale piss as it was the unbearable stink of fear and death. If I listened hard enough, I could hear their pleas. Or their curses. I tap my foot in tandem to the music of it.

"Tell me everything there is to know about Valka," I demand, Trent hovering over my shoulder with a grim frown of disapproval. *You shouldn’t be in here,* was written all over his face, but he knew better than to speak it, try to tell me what I couldn’t do.

Rhea Ironfang stares at the window, making a point to keep her lips clamped shut.

I find it amusing when they do that. Mortals. Resisting. Everyone has a price, and even if they do not, I could just as easily boggle their minds and take what I want from them. Usually, it doesn’t take much.

But for some inexplicable reason, everytime I find myself reaching for Rhea Ironfang’s neck, I remember Valerian--Valka’s face.

If you so much as touch a single hair on her head...

I scowl. Even now, she torments me. The flimsy little thing has been haunting me for centuries. In my dreams. In my bed. In my waking moments. In the way I can’t even take a shit without thinking I’ll find her face in the chamber pot. And after the grande reveal--for the lack of a better word--I want nothing more than to bleach my eyes out.

And my mind too, if that works.

My fingers tap against the armrest. "I could do this all day, you know. If there is anything I have, it is time. You on the other hand," I murmur, taking in her bedraggled form. Hair matted with dirt, blood and sweat. Face tired and hollow. The injury from the pierced blade through her side stinking of a spreading infection. Sweat sticks to her sagging skin and I can just about smell the fever. "Give it a day or two without the physicians and you’ll be just another one of the rotting corpses in here."

She catches the inclination of my head towards the dark corner of the small cell. Trent angles the torch beside her and her scream is loud enough to deafen me when she notices the rotting body sitting pretty on the side.

The woman, older in appearance, but nothing but a child beside me scampers back, away from it, her fear blooming yet another foul stench.

"Now, tell me about Valka."

Her eyes rise to mine. They’re a dull, ordinary brown. "I couldn’t tell you about the bitch even if I wanted to. Eldric swore me into secrecy."

"Eldric is dead."

Her eyes flash with fire and hatred. "My vows to him are not."

"They will be if you do not tell him what he wishes to know," Trent growls, hand on the pommel of his sword.

She shakes her dark head, bringing up her knees and her soiled skirts gather around her ankles. "Eldric and I may have been mates, but there many things he didn’t trust me with. His daughter was one of them. I don’t know much of their past. All I know and can say without tempering the blood oath he forced upon me is that she was ill when she first came to us."

I cock my head. "Explain ill."

Her fingers trembles, eyes flitting back to the body in the corner as she gauges which weighs heavier. Her life. Or her oath. She chooses like every feeble-minded mortal would.

She chooses cowardice.

I’ve lived long enough to know that you may not trust the words of man or deity alike, but you may trust their fear and desperation to survive.

"Ill of the mind. When she had awoken from her endless slumber after five years, she was frail, thin, but she’d found me hunched over the fire in the kitchens and called me mother." Her lips curl in disdain. "I was with child, then. My first with Eldric. I hadn’t even known it until she pressed her hand to my stomach, felt the life in me and began weeping. She said she was sorry. I asked her what she meant and she said, *’I had a bad dream.’*"

My brows furrow and the woman’s hollow eyes meet mine for the fraction of a second, before lowering from the pain of trying to stare too long and force her mind to comprehend me.

"My boy died at fifteen," she whispers in sorrow. "She mourned him with me. As she did the rest of my children. And I knew she was ill, couldn’t even remember what her name was or having that particular conversation with me, but I hated her. I wanted her gone. By the time I’d lost my fourth son, I knew it had to be some kind of curse. I did everything. *Everything*, to get her away from my family. But she sabotaged every arrangement I brought her way. Every suitor left claiming different things of her. She had a ruthless cunning I couldn’t fight against, and if you asked the entire village what they thought of Valka, they would tell you a million different things. And it was all by her design. You may think you have the power here, but I assure you that if Valka is here, in your castle still, in your life, it is not because you will it. It is because she orchestrated it."

Trent hand rests against my arm and if it had been anyone else, I would have it removed permanently, but he is my friend, my brother. "She’s babbling nonsense. The fever must be ravaging her."

But the grief in the air is real and I cannot seem to shake it off. "She claims to be nineteen."

Rhea Ironfang laughs, but there are tears in her eyes. "I told you she was ill. Trauma, Eldric often said. Whatever happened to her altered her memories so terribly, she believes that lie she has told herself. She believes her life began in House Ironfang. She genuinely believes I birthed her. You all but need to look in her eyes to know that Valka is far older than she lets on."

I think about the woman who hard hurled my coat in my face so fast, I couldn’t catch it until it hit me square in the head. "Perhaps your grief of your husband has made you mad."

Rhea Ironfang smiles. It is a horrid thing and her words haunt me even after I have left the cell. "You’ve already fallen into her web, Your Majesty."

****

"There was a missive," Trent grunts behind me. "From the new King of Silvermoor. Rafael Draemont. He wishes to meet."

Courtiers clear from my path like scattering butterflies, holding their breaths until we walk past.

When I don’t respond, my General clears his throat. "It wouldn’t hurt to consider it. Especially now."

I quirk a brow, hands folded behind my back as the men flanking me rush forward to part the great doors. "I already offered once, Trent. That ship has sailed. If he wishes to meet, he might grace our gates alone, though, I do not assure he’ll return in one piece."

"Lucien."

I turn my gaze to him, meeting his dark stare. "Everytime I consider it, I get more blood on my hands, important lives lost in the process because I hesitated. Because I thought of the hopeless innocents behind those walls. But you see, brother, I have begun to wonder if there are any lives worth saving if it means sacrificing my own subjects. And I’ve decided that a truce, after all, is a fool’s bargain. I do not want peace anymore."

Trent’s jaw clenches tight. "This isn’t for them. I..." He loosens a tight breath. "Kat is with child. She told me when we returned."

My steps falter. "Well, shit."

He laughs, though his head hangs low. "It was a shitty one night stand, I admit. But... when she told me she wanted to keep it, I couldn’t help but imagine what it’d be like to have a family. You’ve been my only family, Luke. I didn’t realize I wanted a child, until now."

"I’m sure I could find a replacement--"

"I don’t want to be replaced. You know there’s not a single battlefield I would not follow you to. I’m not scared of dying or worse, laying my life down for you." He stares at his hands. "I’ve only begun to fear that this has become a loop we may never break out of. And you’ve been stuck in it for longer than I have. I just... wanted to help."

My muscles stiffen and my defenses snap up, into place. "What did you do?"

Trent’s eyes widen and he drops onto one knee in the centre of the hall. "I sent..." He swallows. "I sent word to the humans, seeking asylum for a Summit of The Three."

Rage fissures in my blood and the temperature in the hallway drops to a dangerous level. "You had no right. You acted without my orders. Without my permission."

"I apologize--"

"Apology won’t bring back the dead if this goes wrong," I snarl, but my voice fractures, just for a second. Just enough for him to hear the crack before I patch it over with steel. I trusted you, Trent. And you more than anyone else knows I don’t give it more than once. You’re dismissed."

His eyes widen as I rip his badge free from his chest. "Luke--"

"You forget yourself, Trenton. It is His Majesty to you from now on." My fangs slice my tongue as I grind them together, tasting blood. The softness in me dies. "Had it been anyone else, it would have been their heads. Not the badge. Consider this my warning and do not darken my door again until I call for you."

He exhales sharply, nodding, and I squash the badge in my hands, tossing it at his feet, my mood completely ruined.

The double doors to the hall part then, the herald announcing my arrival. The women fall over themselves in a rush to courtesy. Only one remains seated, disregarding my presence completely.

Valka Ironfang is fast asleep. And in my chair, no less.