Page 5 of A Matter of Destiny

The fading light of the setting sun leaks through the narrow windows in the stairway leading to Ensyvir’s tower and spills across the stones like blood. I climb slowly, my heart thundering like battle drums, my teeth chewing my lower lip ragged.

What is Ensyvir expecting? He’d once asked me if my relationship with the king had weakened me, and then he’d thrown my answer back at me in the king’s bedchamber. So he thinks I’m weak. Foolish, he’d said. He thinks I’m a woman who will do anything for her king.

So, I realize numbly as I twist my hands together, bare skin running over the black leather of the glove hiding my scars, I have to be weak. If I’m going to have any chance of surviving whatever it is Ensyvir expects me to do, I have to be foolish.

The door to Ensyvir’s chambers is closed. I pause on the landing, my pulse searing through my body like lightning. For just a heartbeat, I let myself imagine running. Racing down the stairwell, through the training yard, and out the gates. Running to the harbor, leaping aboard whatever ship is available. Letting the wind and the sea carry me away.

But my heart pinches like it’s being squeezed in a fist. Because there’s nowhere I could go where Ensyvir won’t find me. He’s a man who somehow captured a dragon, for the king’s sakes. No, running won’t help. I just have to make myself small, foolish, and weak. So small, foolish, and weak that I could never be a threat to anyone.

I cross the narrow landing, then raise my hand to knock on the door. But the door falls open when I touch it, swinging soundlessly on its hinges to reveal complete devastation.

I gasp at the disaster inside Ensyvir’s chambers. Papers litter the floor like fallen leaves, and it looks like every single piece of furniture in the room has been turned upside down. Or turned into kindling. I blink at the shattered remains of the massive black desk where I’d found the key to the cell holding Doshir and his mother. And King Donovan’s signet ring.

There’s only one piece of furniture still intact, aside from the black stone stand holding the tarnished silver bell, and it’s a massive chair covered with red velvet. Its resemblance to a throne seems even more pronounced now that all of its companions have been destroyed, and the thought sends a shiver snaking up the back of my neck.

Ensyvir sits on the red velvet chair, his hands steepled before him, a stack of paper on his lap. His eyes narrow as I walk into the room, stepping carefully to avoid treading on books or papers or broken quills or what looks like the frayed end of a coil of rope.

“Rayne,” Ensyvir says, and his voice is glacial. “Tell me about Doshir.”

My skin jumps like it’s trying to tug my body out the door. I try my best to look weak. And foolish.

“Sir?” I ask.

Ensyvir rolls his eyes, then gestures dramatically at the paperwork spread across his lap. “Doshir. The wine trader from Cairncliff. Your name is all over his paperwork, Rayne.”

My cheeks burn. I turn down to stare at my feet. Foolish. Weak.

“He said that he could heal me,” I mumble. “Sir.” There’s a tremble in my voice that’s not worth fighting.

“Heal you?” Ensyvir snorts.

“My arm. Sir.”

“And what, pray tell, is the matter with your arm?” Ensyvir snaps, glaring at me. “What can’t the castle physicians attend to?”

My heart sinks. Even after all the long years of my life, all the times I’ve had to remove my glove and reveal the broken mess of scars scratched down the length of my arm, it still hurts. I still hate it.

I raise my gloved hand slowly in the thick red light of the setting sun, then tug the black leather off. I feel strangely naked as the light falls across my scars, twisted and puckered, and the sight of them drags up the memory of Doshir kissing the back of my hand. Running his lips over the ruined skin. Acting like I wasn’t maimed, wasn’t broken. Shame burns hot in my cheeks and chest. I force myself to meet Ensyvir’s eyes anyway, weak and foolish woman that I am.

Ensyvir laughs. It’s a harsh, bitter sound, almost a bark, and it makes me feel like someone’s running needles down my scarred skin. He shakes his head, wipes his eyes, and then rolls his gaze to the ceiling, almost as if he were appealing to a higher power.

“Oh, stars,” he hisses. “You women will believe anything if it comes from a pretty face.”

Rage seethes inside my chest, steaming like a kettle. I grind my jaw together and say nothing as Ensyvir continues to snort with laughter.

“So, this Doshir promised to heal your scars if you let him into Valgros? And I can see how well the healing worked,” Ensyvir continues with a sneer that makes me wish I had a blade. “What else happened between the two of you?”

I swallow hard. What will make me look the most like a weak, foolish woman?

Well, the truth, of course.

“When I was dismissed from His Majesty’s service,” I begin, my voice trembling again, “I told Doshir. I—I asked to go with him when he left Valgros. I had nowhere else to go. And, he— he agreed.”

Ensyvir raises an eyebrow above his tight, sardonic smile.

“And what happened after that?” Ensyvir asks. “Your scars remain, and Doshir is gone. Or haven’t you heard? So why aren’t you gone too?”

Shame boils hot inside my chest. I run my tongue across my lips and wait for my throat to open enough for me to speak.

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