Page 97 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

Pressing her face into the dirt, Lara wept.

53

Aren

Haulingthe dying Maridrinian soldier’s head back by his hair, Aren pulled his knife across the man’s throat, then dropped him back into the mud, surveying the battleground around him.

The Maridrinians had been ready for them—not that it had done them any good. Aren and his forces had climbed the cliffs and taken the garrison from behind in a fevered hand-to-hand battle that he knew had cost him. Now, healers scrambled to aid the fallen.

How many had died in the fight to retake the bridge? Hundreds. Possibly more. Compounded on those lost when it had fallen, and in the year since. Catastrophic numbers.

It was enough to make him sick.

Then the sound of horns filled his ears. The message rippled past Midwatch, moving north, and he exhaled a ragged breath even as his soldiers began to cheer.

Valcotta had taken Southwatch. Zarrah had delivered on her word.

And if the battle proceeded as planned, it wouldn’t be long until Northwatch conceded to Harendell, and Ithicana would be free.

Except the last thing Aren felt was victorious.

Wiping his knife on the dead man’s uniform, Aren started up the path toward his home, stepping over corpses as he went, the sun already low in the west.

It didn’t take him long to reach the clearing containing the Midwatch house—the home his father had built for his mother. The home he’d given to Lara back when he’d had ambitions and dreams for a better life for his people.

A fool’s dreams.

The front door hung from broken hinges, and even before Aren stepped inside, he knew the Maridrinians had used the home hard, the smell coming from within nearly stopping him in his tracks. Of soldier and filth. Spilled wine and rotting food.

Of death.

But he forced himself to go inside, blade in hand in case one of the Maridrinians had escaped the slaughter. The floor was covered with dirt, the paneled walls cracked, artwork either missing or destroyed. The table in the entranceway was overturned, a dead Maridrinian on the ground next to it, his opened guts already buzzing with flies. Aren glanced into the dining room, eyes moving over the stacks of filthy dishes and shattered glass, the floor covered with broken wine bottles from what was likely now a looted wine cellar.

He kept on down the hallway, glancing into rooms as he passed until he reached the door to his own, which was ajar, a naked dead man in his bed. A whimper caught Aren’s attention, and he turned to find a Maridrinian woman hiding in the corner. “Get out,” he said, and she scuttled past him and into the hallway. Someone else could figure out what to do with her.

Aren surveyed the room, the dead soldier’s belongings interspersed with his own, waiting for a reaction in himself. For some form of emotion. Sadness. Anger. Anything.

But all he felt was numb, so he walked out into the courtyard, striding to the center where he’d once stood in the eye of a storm and made the most catastrophic decision of his life.

More horns sounded, this time word coming from Northwatch that the Harendellians had the island under their control.

Aren stared at the waterfall. At the discarded wine bottle bobbing in the pool, steam rising around it.

He felt nothing. For anything. Not even this place.

Abandoning the courtyard, Aren went back inside, taking up an unlit lamp sitting on his desk and splashing the oil across the carpets. Across the bed. He went from room to room doing the same until he came across a glowing lamp. Picking it up, he held the flame to a splatter of oil, watching as it ignited. Fire crossed the room that had been Ahnna’s, burning up carpets and linens and curtains. Smoke filled the air.

He retreated through the house, setting rooms aflame as he went, and only when he began to cough and choke on the smoke did he step outside. To find Jor standing in the clearing, waiting.

“It’s done.” The old soldier watched the house, the interior now an inferno, flames licking out of the broken windows of the dining room. “The Maridrinians are defeated.”

“I heard.”

“Wasn’t much of a fight.” Jor’s voice was low.

“Tell that to the dead.”

The other man exhaled a long breath, then shook his head. “You know what I mean. For months we fought tooth and nail trying to evict the bastards, and they pushed us back at every turn. Only to concede in a matter of days?”

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