“Maybe Mother desires peace.” Andraste leans forward. “What happened at the Queensmoot was unsettling for all of us—”
“She murdered a queen,” Thiago replies. “The only thing that unsettled her was that Prince Kyrian and I got away before she could slit our throats too.”
Andraste continues as if he didn’t speak. “And now the Alliance stands in disarray. We must stand strong against the unseelie threat from the north.”
“Again, a striking argument. Again, a lie. There is evidence your mother has been in contact with Angharad, and has used the unseelie for her own purposes.”
They stare at each other.
Thiago leans forward, resting his forearm along his thigh. Edain doesn’t quite shift, but he’s no longer at ease. Every inch of him tenses, and a dark flame flares to life in his blue eyes.
My breath catches.
“Perhaps I will make a counter-offer,” Thiago purrs. “I will give your mother Eidyn….”
What?
“In exchange for?” Andraste asks boldly.
“Clydain. And everything within it.”
Clydain? My gaze snaps toward him. Clydain’s an old rotting border keep with a broken waterwheel. Half the lower garrison is flooded. Nobody lives there anymore. The place is supposed to be haunted, and frankly, it holds no strategic value.
But he may as well have thrown a serpent directly into my sister’s lap.
“It’s a rotting old keep in the far north of Asturia,” she says. “And it borders Mistmere. It’s miles from your kingdom.”
“True,” Thiago replies. “But then, I’m not interested in the keep.”
And everything within it, he’d said.
My mind races. This has something to do with Lysander. He’d said the reason Lysander was sent to the northern forests of Asturia was to hunt for a weapon my mother was rumored to be keeping.
“Clydain and the surrounding forest is haunted, Your Highness.” Andraste loads her voice with scorn. “You may forgive me if I think this a trick, for Eidyn is a treasure trove, and Clydain is… a moth-eaten old cloak.”
When on the back foot, attack….
“Unless, of course, you want to gain a foothold in Mistmere,” she suggests.
“It’s my final offer,” Thiago tells her. “Tell your mother I will trade Eidyn for Clydain and everything currently within it as of this moment. And I will take her gift back home with me, provided there are no further tricks.”
“No tricks,” Andraste murmurs. “Mother says if you can tame him, then he is yours.”
I don’t trust this.
They’re too polite. And Andraste keeps staring at me.
“If you can tame him.”
It has to be that.
Mother thinks Lysander is uncontrollable. It’s a gift with a bite, for if we can’t control him then…. What? Thiago won’t kill him—he can’t be killed—and Thiago doesn’t turn his back on his loyal subjects.
Baylor pauses an inch from his brother. There’s no anguish upon his face, but I feel it within him. “Xander.”
He reaches out and touches the beast. Lysander towers above him, thick matted fur clinging to his body.
“How did you recapture him?” I ask.
Andraste tears her gaze from Lysander. “I thought he was dead. The last I saw him he was buried in the woods near Briar Keep, until rumors came of a beast stalking the northern forests—”
“Andraste.” Edain places a hand over hers.
Clydain. Lysander was going back to Clydain.
Even broken and curse-twisted, he was trying to fulfill his final quest.
“Xander.” Baylor takes another step, his palm soothing his brother’s fur.
He’s not looking at him.
No, he’s looking at me.
The humanity in the beast’s eyes vanishes as amber fury rolls across them. A quiver starts in its shoulders. “Prinshess,” it whispers, and its hackles rise.
“Get these fucking chains off him,” Baylor demands.
Edain tenses. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“The problem, whore,” Baylor says, as he tears one of the chains from his brother’s throat. “Is that you think he will fight us. This is my brother. And he is loyal to Evernight.”
“Vi,” Andraste warns with a little shake of her head.
Baylor smiles for the first time I think I’ve ever seen. And his hand grips another chain. “Don’t worry, Princess. His teeth aren’t that sharp. If you have treated him well, then you have nothing to worry about should we unleash him.”
Another chain breaks.
Andraste’s gaze flickers to me.
And then I realize her finger is tracing a pattern on the arm of her chair, over and over again. A symbol of a language the pair of us created when we were seven, so we could speak without any of Mother’s court chastising us.
I haven’t seen that symbol in many years, so it takes a second to realize what she’s—
“Run,” it says.
Grabbing a fistful of his brother’s hair, Baylor turns the bane’s face toward his, completely unafraid. “Hear the whisper through the trees,” he breathes, as his hand curls around the last remaining chain. “Feel the moonlight on your skin. Listen to the thump of her heart.” Both of their golden eyes turn to lock upon Andraste. “You can almost taste it, can’t you?”
“I don’t think we should break his chains,” I whisper, taking a step back as muscles bunch within the beast’s form.
“Don’t worry about your sister,” Baylor assures me with a nasty smile. “It’s not as though my brother will hold a grudge. It’s not as though she tried to kill him.”
And the chain snaps.
But it’s not Andraste the beast lunges for.
It’s me.
Chapter Four
“Traitor!” The bane snarls as it smashes Baylor off his feet.
Thiago is slightly quicker to react, his hand dropping to his sword, but I see a second of conflict on his face—what is he doing?—before Lysander crashes into him.
“Vi!” Thiago yells, staggering backward.
Run.
I take Andraste’s advice.
Shoving past her guards, I slash a hole in the back of the tent with the knife I carry up my sleeve and then glance behind me.
Lysander swipes at one of her guards, his claws raking off scaled armor. He sees me again and bellows with rage, before her
