Page 107 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy
“I need to find Clysta!” Her voice echoed off the ancient stones.
Silence was Nestor’s only response. He stared at her with a mixture of helplessness and suspicion, as if trying to decipher her true intentions.
“I know you’re working with her,” Bris pressed on, “and I’m not sure if she knows yet what’s happened to Gena! Her daughter’s been taken captive, and they’ll use her to control Achilles.” The logic was brutally simple—Achilles would sacrifice anything for his sister, which made Gena’s freedom the key to his own. “Clysta said to find her heart and seek the cross, and I didn’t understand, but you’re a part of this! You were following her signal. You have to tell me who is driving the Myrdons into doing this? How do we fight them?”
Nestor cleared his throat nervously, his eyes darting toward the sounds of approaching footsteps. “There are… agreements in place. Alliances that were necessary, but I owe Clysta after allthe wrong I did against her. I would’ve helped her, even without the… blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” Bris didn’t understand. “What did she have on you?”
Nestor watched her carefully, his priestly demeanor cracking under the strain. “I’m the reason your mother was killed, that Clysta was taken by that—that…” He couldn’t even finish the thought. “I’m sorry, my daughter. Will you ever forgive me?”
Was he asking her? She didn’t know what he’d done?
“I trusted the wrong people,” he said, “thought their cause was righteous… and when I thought Chises Mnon had gone after General Peleus with assassins, I tried to stop more meaningless deaths by leaking where your father was hiding, but you and your family were there with him, and O Skia’s too.”
And so, they’d tried to escape… Bris didn’t remember much from that day—Myrdon bullets, screaming, cries—she carried the pain with her everywhere she went. If her father knew about the betrayal… but he didn’t. Nestor was allowed to live free as his trusted advisor, rewarded for his loyalty to the crown and placed in a position that gave him access to their secrets.
“The Myrdons still work with you.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded, and for once the sadness of his eyes consumed his entire face. “They have asked me to deliver messages here and there, to accept packages, give up… minor information. Of course, had they asked me to do something worse than that—that night, I never could’ve gone that far.” And the Myrdons knew it, probably blackmailed him like Clysta decided to do later, knowing it was easy for the priest to justify minor sins than face his part for the massacre that night.
“You deliver communications between the Myrdons and Aggie Mnon,” Bris said. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
Once again, the older man fell silent, his fear of his past warring with the danger surrounding them. She had to get himto talk, to admit what he was doing. “The Myrdons think O Skia won’t suspect you as being their spy.” And it made sense. If anything, Nestor seemed loyal to her father; he’d come for Bris in the citadel tunnels; he’d rescued her and Achilles from his hated blackmailers, and in a way, he’d used that as his redemption. “Well, O Skia is onto you,” she said, remembering the conversation from yesterday.
And for some reason Nestor was still allowed access to the prisoner. Something was off!
A sudden crash echoed from somewhere behind them, followed by shouting voices. Nestor’s hand tightened on her wrist as he pulled her away from the commotion, deeper into the underground maze. “I’m here for Clysta, and for her alone,” he said as they hurried through the shadows. “She was afraid! The Myrdon’s new allies were going after her children, and so she planted an operative at the palace—someone who infiltrated their ranks by pretending to be one of them.”
More sounds of conflict erupted nearby, spurring him to move faster. “She tried to blackmail me, didn’t trust me. I blame myself for that! But even after everything, she lost.” He turned to her in the darkness, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Do the Myrdons have both her children now?”
“Yes! You have to help me reach her!”
His jaw firmed in the dim corridor, blending with the shadows as he shook his head grimly. “They’ll use them as leverage against her, against O Skia too. And I fear they’ll be forced into negotiations that will hurt us all.”
Of course, they would—blackmail was the Myrdon’s favorite tool! But what other choice did they have? Her frustration consumed her. How could she reach this man?
They emerged into what had clearly been a gladiatorial waiting chamber—marble arches were now fitted with modern lighting, steel doors replacing wooden ones. Bris felt the weight of historyin these walls, imagining the warriors who had once paced these same stones, waiting to face death in the arena above. How much blood had been spilled in the name of power?
At the far end of the chamber and behind bars stood the face of her nightmares. Aggie Mnon. She took three steps back, her suspicions coming to life in the piercing blues that cut straight through her like a knife. His black jumpsuit made him into pure villain. Despite the bars, he carried himself with a type of confident madness—tall and lean but powerfully built. She’d felt that muscle used against her. His abuse still ached in the bruises against her skin.
“Aggie?” she breathed.
His penetrating gaze moved from Nestor to her with calculating indifference. “Oh, you’ve brought along a cockroach, priest.”
Bris forced all emotion from her face, drawing on every lesson in royal composure she’d ever learned. Judging by the looks of him, she wasn’t the only one covered in bruises. His ear was mottled in purple and yellow, the damage pooling down his cheek and neck like spilled ink. And where she’d hit him with the pole? A clumsy row of stitches ran along his scalp. The man was injured and behind bars. There was nothing he could do to harm her.
Nestor stepped forward, and she noticed him fidgeting with a folded paper in his hands.
“Did your little empire crumble beneath you already?” Aggie’s voice carried aristocratic contempt. “I’d heard about your… failed coronation. You didn’t actually believe we would allow a little cockroach like you to be crowned queen, did you?” While Aggie’s words dripped with disdain, the priest’s nervous movements drew her attention. “Perhaps you should’ve been sucking up to the true kingmakers. You wasted your time playing savior to those rats in the flood. What power do they hold?.”
She stiffened. Did he truly believe she’d only helped with relief efforts to win a crown? Maybe that’s whathewould’ve done!
The paper brushed against her palm. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what it was as Nestor pressed the scrap into hand. He moved around her, breaking her contact from Aggie while her cousin fairly spat at her: “Your father is on the island, young prince. You should prepare yourself for the upcoming storm.” The rest of his words got lost while she carefully, and as unobtrusively as possible, unfolded the paper and scanned its contents.
Her breath caught in her throat. This explosive message was meant for Aggie. The fact that Nestor had only just decided to give it to her meant that he’d been hesitant to turn completely against his blackmailers.
Apparently, Aggie Mnon’s railings against those “rats in the flood” changed his mind.
