Page 15 of Knightfall
“Why?”
She was trying to embarrass me. The bitch. But I’d seen so much in my time outside these walls and I wasn’t easily embarrassed. I’d seen men caught with their trousers down tripping through the streets as they chased after their furious wife. I’d seen a man who’d fallen through the slats of a rotten privy and had to yell for help and be towed up by six villagers, a woman going to the doctor for boils on her … Whatever mother asked me, it couldn’t be worse than that.
I squared my shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “I pushed Avia out because I was too old ...” I trailed off, not wanting to say more.
“Too old to comfort your scared little sister?”
I swallowed. “I was a teenager.”
My mother slowly folded her hands in her lap. Finger by finger, letting us all just watch her like mice watch a cat who’s paused in toying with them. There was no hope she’d let me go. No hope she’d let it drop. Not when the tension level ratcheted up several levels and she could feel it. She reveled in these moments. She always had.
“The night before you left, what did you give Connor?”
My eyes widened and flitted to Connor’s. His seafoam colored eyes were just as wide as mine. He seemed shocked, too. I didn’t ask how she knew. But she did. She always knew.
I worked very hard to keep my hands from curling into fists. But my fingers flexed in anger. On instinct. I wanted to punch her in the mouth.
Behind me, Ryan let out a low growl as he saw my stiff back and realized the implication.
Mother had chosen Ryan for me when I was sixteen.
He’d been twenty-four then. Eight years my elder, already an officer. A local boy who’d come to the castle and ‘made it.’ I’d never questioned why she chose him then. I’d been overwhelmed. He’d been a dreamboat by all accounts. Part of the naughty fantasies I’d whispered with my lady-in-waiting. But sometimes fantasy was better than reality. Reality had scared me.
Ryan had approached me the night after the announcement. I’d been walking back to my rooms when he’d grabbed me from behind, like a thief, and stolen into an unlocked room. He’d pushed me up against the wall, dragged his hand along my hip, and whispered dirty things in my ear. Things that I’d been too naive and cowardly to take him up on as a teenage virgin.
I nearly laughed at that memory. His little whispers were nothing to what I’d seen in the months I’d worked in the counting house at the back of a brothel. But back then, I’d been too dazed by his looks and too scared by his words. I’d run.
Ryan’s hand clamped down on my shoulder as I faced my mother. His fingers dug into me painfully.
I bit my lip and tried to decide what my mother’s goal was. The answer to her question would divide them. They were meant to be a team, four knights who protected different aspects of the realm. She’d selected them to operate that way. For their differing but complementary abilities. Answering would mean war amongst them. I might be furious at her. But she’d also raised me to be tactical. She had a reason. “Why are you doing this?”
“Which of them did you write to while you were gone?”
I heard muttering behind me as the men whispered to one another.
Ryan’s hand nearly crushed my clavicle. My knees bent under his weight and I had to struggle to remain upright. Pain rippled down my arm like flames. I pushed his hand away and took another step toward my mother.
“Why are you stirring the shite?” These men were perfect leaders. She’d chosen them.
They’d never be able to rule divided.
Did she expect me to use my power to end this? Sard her. That was only temporary. The barbs she threw could not be repaired by fleeting magic.
Before I could determine the method guiding her madness, her eyes flickered to the side. Her maid had returned with the castle mage, Wyle, and ten soldiers in tow.
My mother nodded toward me.
“Do it now.”
The soldiers surrounded us. Declan, Connor, and Quinn were herded closer until the armored guards formed a circle around us.
The mage, Wyle, sprinkled a ring of ash and salt around us. He lit a candle and burned a sage leaf.
And then he muttered a spell in an ancient language.
He ignored me when I interrupted. My mother ignored me when I shouted. The guards ignored me when I tried to break through their circle. My idiot husbands ignored me and followed their queen’s orders even as golden circlets appeared and glowed on our wrists.
I finally kicked the soldier in front of me, walloping his crown jewels. He fell forward and I jumped on his back, intending to launch toward the doorway and out of the room.
