Glorious, luminous light broke through the clouds to bathe the vast, open countryside, the hills and valleys, in pale sunshine, and it sparkled off the water droplets nestled within the russet golds of the autumnal leaves. I heard the crackle and crunch of twigs and leaves under the hooves of our horses. I wished I could be here with Devyn. My heart dragged at the pain of it. Where was he? Had they crossed over into Cymru yet? Had he heard the sing-song voices of his home?
“Did you know?”
“What?”
Marcus stood leaning against a tree behind me as I surveyed the open world before us.
“Did you know?” He hadn’t spoken of this morning’s revelations all day.
I lifted my hands as if I had an answer and then let them drop helplessly to my lap. I had known nothing, suspected nothing.
“How could I?”
“You knew who he was.” He spoke of Devyn.
“I knew bits and pieces,” I admitted. “That Devyn came to Londinium looking for a girl, a Briton, who had been stolen away somehow. But I didn’t know she was…”
The truth sat in my mind, waiting for me to summon up the nerve to say it out loud.
“The Lady of the Lake,” he supplied when I didn’t.
“Exactly.” I was no happier with him saying it out loud, if I was honest. “How could I suspect? As far as I… as far as any of us knew, she was safe and well in Mercia. Could you imagine if the praetor had known? No need for his crazy plan with us. He could have ridden out and crushed the Britons at any time.”
I paused, my breath snatched as if someone had punched me in the gut. It was true. If the Empire had known, they would have destroyed the Celts. It was the threat of magic that kept the Empire confined to Londinium. Without the main source of that power, with the lady gone, they would have been practically defenceless.
“They wanted a baby they were fairly certain would have magic. What luck to have found me.” I stopped. You make your own luck. Was this what Calchas had referred to? Sentinels had taken me from my mother’s arms. Chance? Coincidence?
“It wasn’t luck,” I said finally.
Marcus looked at me in confusion.
“Calchas knew exactly who I was,” I breathed.
“Of course he knew. Marrying us, the York line and the Lakes… Imagine the power he would have held.”
“But he was going to execute you… No, not Calchas.” I thought it through. “He never planned to pour that power into the sand. He never planned for you and me to die. He sentenced you to a beating. The governor forced his hand. The governeor was the one who wanted us dead.”
What if Calchas hadn’t finished playing his hand? Master manipulator of the mob, would he have conceded defeat to Actaeon so easily? His plan had been decades in the making.
How could he have spun it to save Marcus and me? I’d seen him do it time and again at the Metes. Justice was doled out to victim and villain alike, according to how he framed it.
But it had been over. We had already been sentenced as Codebreakers, as the villains of the piece. Unless he had planned to reframe it with a new villain, making us the victims somehow, as he had done with Oban and countless others. But how? Nothing would have changed by the time we took the sands the next day. A night in the tower would…
Wait.
“Calchas sent me to that room after he took my charm away. I didn’t want to be there. Devyn had been dosed with the bridal tea and he was all over me the moment I walked into the room.” I picked through his strategy, and the details of how it had actually played out. “He didn’t know that Devyn’s proximity cut through the handfast and that I would come to my senses. If things had played out as he expected them to, then the scene would have gone very differently.”
“My bride being taken against her will by a Briton,” Marcus finished for me.
I nodded, stunned. “Right. Did anything happen? Did he say anything to you when you talked? He must have had a plan to reprieve you too in the eyes of the mob.”
Marcus shook his head.
“How did you find me? How did you break free of him?”
“I… My father put something in his drink.”
“But if things had played out according to Calchas’s plan, what would have redeemed you?”
“Killing your Briton attacker?” Marcus suggested.
I nodded. If I had managed to get away… No, not that. If Calchas had taken Marcus’s wristband from him, my match would have come for me. It would have been easy to arm him, to show him the way.
“Win-win,” I said. “I’m redeemed. You’re redeemed. Calchas has the mob in the palm of his hand, and we’ve just proven our loyalty. Actaeon couldn’t have us executed then.”
‘If all that is true, then why haven’t they come out to crush us already? Why didn’t they follow you?” Gideon slunk out from the cover of the trees.
My eyes narrowed in annoyance at his eavesdropping; I got an innocent look in reply. Or at least as innocent as his darkly handsome, scarred face could pull off.
“If he knew what he held in his hands, why didn’t they chase you through the borderlands? If they had finally figured out how weakened we are, why wait?”
“I don’t know. Actaeon hates Britons.” I caught my breath. “He doesn’t know. Actaeon doesn’t know. Calchas is the one pulling the strings. He’s the one who wants to control everything.”
“Then why didn’t he follow you?”
Put like that it seemed
