Silverlight (30 page)

I
woke up confused, stiff, and in excruciating
pain.

Bars and stone and shackles whirled past as I
raised my head. My left shoulder felt as though it were on fire. A fumbling
exploration revealed something protruding from my back.

An arrow? I fingered the shaft and grimaced at
the sharp stab that circled my ribcage. No, it was too thick to be an arrow. A
bolt from a crossbow? If so, it was very short. I wanted to pull it out, but I
couldn’t reach it.

Memories came fast and hard. I’d been stuck in
the window of the mews. Kymber and I had been working on a way to free me when
the projectile, whatever it was, had slammed into my shoulder.

My world had quickly gone dark.

Now I lay shackled in a dungeon. That meant
someone had caught us. Garai would be that someone, and it meant danger for
Kymber.

“Kymber?” I pushed myself up and blinked.
“Kymber, where are you?”

A naked woman lay in the cell next to me, her
head partially buried under the bedding hay piled in the corner. I caught a
breath and held it. Her gray-blue-green color meant she was dead.

Heedless of the pain, I scrambled across the
floor to the bars separating our cells. “Don’t you
dare
be dead, Oryx.
Speak to me.”

Her toes were splayed and pointed; she was well
into the death rigors. My heart lodged in my throat. “Please, Kymber. Say
something.”

Nothing. I took a closer look at the body.

Her legs were longer and thinner than Kymber’s.
I couldn’t see much of her hair, but it appeared to have a reddish cast to it.
This woman’s buttocks were smaller. Overall, she was less muscular, bonier.

I narrowed my eyes. The dead woman wasn’t
Kymber.

If it wasn’t Kymber, who was it? Where was my
warrior?

I searched my surroundings but saw nothing. On
a whim, I ran my hand over the collar of my jerkin. The shoe nail was still
there. I turned the bottom of my boot over.

That shoe nail was gone.

Gone, though the hole remained.

The scenario was so bizarre, I was unable to
take the next logical steps in my mind. The dead woman was dead because . . .?
Who was she?

It didn’t matter. All I knew for sure was that
Kymber was missing.

Why didn’t she use her own shoe nail?

A sick feeling settled in the pit of my
stomach. Thank the gods she’d had us hide the nails. I pulled the other nail from
my collar and went to work on the shackles. Once free, I made short work of the
lock on the door.

I needed a weapon, but there wouldn’t be
anything down here I could use. Yet I couldn’t go charging through Garai’s castle
without one.

I searched the dungeon and found an old storage
closet. A cracked shield stood just inside the door, resting against the wall.

Good enough. I broke a broom handle over my
knee to use as a cudgel and headed down the dark hallway with my makeshift battle
gear.

G
arai didn’t attend T’hath Academy, but he knew
all the tricks of the trade. For every move I made, he had a damned good
countermove. Despite his limp, the bastard was
fast,
moving around the
room like a ghost.

I pressed against the marble pillar and stared
at Silverlight, gleaming on the wall not fifteen feet away. I needed a weapon
to confront Garai, but I couldn’t get to either of my swords without putting
myself at risk.

I yearned for a miracle, but I wasn’t going to get
one. It didn’t matter that I’d kept him from unlocking the door. His soldiers had
been dismantling it with axes for the last half hour. They’d be in the room
with us soon enough.

Exhausted and hurting, completely out of ideas,
I was not yet out of hope. I didn’t understand why it still burned within me,
but that spark was the only thing keeping me from surrendering to him.

“Are you going to make me chase you around the
room all day, Kymber?” He began to move toward the pillar that hid me, pulling
that foot along. It sounded like he was dragging a dead body behind him.

Those ominous footfalls couldn’t hide the fact
that he was gasping. If I was worn out from our battle, Garai was doubly so. He
was older, injured, and sicker than he let on.

And he was up to something.

Crouching as low as I could, I pulled a dagger
and braced myself.
Hiss, snap, crack.
The end of a whip curled four or
five times around the marble column above me. Had I been upright, it would have
wrapped around my throat.

I swung the dagger and sawed through the thick
leather whip as fast as I could. Snatching up the piece I’d severed, I ran for
the safety of the pews on the left side. 

“Damn you, cunt! That whip was my father’s.
You’re dead!” What remained of the whip hit the wall above me and fell behind
the bench. I snatched it up and examined it. There wasn’t much thong left, but
the handle had a solid metal core. I hunkered low to the floor, all my senses
on alert.

He stalked me on the outside, slowly, his foot
dragging more than usual. Was he making more noise to hide the fact that he was
gasping? I cut the rest of the thong from the whip handle and waited.

He hesitated on the other side of the bench,
giving me a few precious seconds to react. Gripping the whip handle in my right
hand, I swung at his legs, connecting solidly with his kneecaps.

He screamed, hoarse and shrill, then staggered
and fell to his knees. There was no time to waste. I scrambled over the benches
and struck him a hard blow across the back of the head. He listed, but he
didn’t collapse. I was about to hit him again when he struck like a snake,
snatching the handle from me and pitching it aside.

The sound of our labored breathing filled the
room. I stared, mesmerized by the sight of him. I hadn’t ever seen him on his
knees.

His murderous expression turned my blood to ice.
I was too close, well within his reach no matter what weapon he held. I pulled
a dagger, but I couldn’t make myself use it. All I could do was stare into his
stormy eyes, a mouse caught in a predator’s gaze. Even on his knees, Garai was
dark and strong and competent in ways I was not.

 “You give up too easily,” Magnus had said. Yes
and no. Maybe and obviously. I didn’t want to die, but I was too fucking tired
to think about my next move. It was only a matter of time before the rest of my
blood soaked into these stone floors.

The soldiers broke a hole through the throne
room door just as I completed that last thought. Their triumphant shouts only
partially shook me from my stupor.

Garai struggled to his feet, his eyes swirling
with hues of gray and green, and extended an open hand. “You’ve played your
little game with me, but it’s over now. You’ve lost. Hand me the dagger, and
I’ll give you a merciful death.”

“Liar,” I snarled. “There’s not a merciful bone
in your body.”

“You know me too well, sweet.” A vicious smile
spread across his face. He stepped to my right side. My weaker side, still out
of my range.

Once he moved, I saw it, like the clouds
parting to reveal the sun. The only chance I had left to me.

I tossed the dagger, catching it by the point,
and threw it at his head. I nearly hit him too, but it skimmed through his
wispy hair when he ducked to one side.

I whirled before the blade hit the floor and headed
for the swords on the wall, already reviewing what I needed to do. Praying I
wasn’t shaking too badly to do it.

My feet churned to an ancient rhythm in my
head, faster, faster, faster, until the throne loomed large before me.

I leapt into the air, my right leg parallel to
the ground, and aimed my foot at the crest rail, right where the Pentorian coat
of arms was carved into the wood. Momentum and determination pulled me forward.
I hit the crest dead center with my boot and every bit of my body weight.

The throne tipped, wobbled and resettled, then
tipped toward the wall again. Back and back and back, until it hit and stuck. The
toe of my left boot dug into the throne’s velvet-cushioned back as I launched
myself upward.

For a moment, I was flying, flying with nothing
but hope for wings. I focused on the wall above me and reached, stretching my
right arm until sharp pains shot down to my shoulder, trusting I wouldn’t miss,
because Garai was right behind me, ready to shove his blade into my back if I did.

Which sword to finish the job? Bloodreign was
too high on the wall and too heavy. Not my sword.

Silverlight sang me a love song, and I wanted
so badly to take her up, but she was an unknown. I didn’t remember her weight,
her grip, or how it felt to swing her.

So I made a choice as I sailed, allowing my
eyes to settle on salvation. She didn’t sing as sweetly as Silverlight, but she
hadn’t yet broken a promise. I accepted what she offered.

I hit the wall with my knees and stuck for a
moment, just long enough to grasp Promise in my fully open right hand. I pulled
hard; the hooks that bound her there fell away.

Her grip, familiar. Her weight, sure and solid.
I pivoted my upper body as I fell, twisting to face forward, finally securing
my feet upon the velvet cushion beneath me.

Garai was there. Oh yes, he was right there
with hatred burning in his eyes and his sword angled over his shoulder. Fear
was a living thing inside me, but it was the kind of fear that demanded action.
I met his gaze and angled the tip of my sword to greet him.

He was moving too fast to stop himself. I
watched with relief as he impaled himself upon my blade. It slid in beneath his
breastbone, eager for blood. I twisted it twice for good measure.

“No. Noo!” Eyes bulging, Garai screamed. His
shriek soared into the rafters and echoed off the walls.

I held his horrified gaze and absorbed the
moment. I’d done it. I’d faced him as an equal and won. He wouldn’t recover
from this wound.

 He lifted his sword to strike at me, but he
seemed to lose all his strength at once. His blade slipped from his fingers and
clattered to the floor. I savored the look on his pale gray face: mouth slack,
lips blue, eyes moist and bulging.

“This was not a game to me. It was
never
a game. The decision to come for Silverlight wasn’t made on a whim.” He grunted
and gave a sharp squeal when I angled Promise upward, hooking him like a fish.
“She belongs to me, a gift from my father. Killing you is a bonus.”

He tried to reply but blood poured past his
lips in a torrent. My long nightmare was over. I had no doubt his soldiers
would kill me once they broke through, but their king would already be dead.

“How about that? All those years you thought I
was the weak one.” I backed him off the dais toward the wall. “Now you can die
on the end of my sword, knowing I wasn’t. You didn’t break me. I survived you.”

“Did you?” Garai laughed, spraying blood all
over both of us. The rest of his comment was garbled.

“Speak your last words, you fucking tyrant.” I buried
Promise two inches deep into the soft stucco of the wall, effectively pinning
him like an insect specimen.

“You’ll never get out of here alive,” Garai
whispered.

“So what? You won’t know. You’ll be dead.
I
survived you.
”

“I should’ve…killed you when I had the…chance.”

“Too late now.” I had more to say, but he
shuddered once and sagged forward on my sword.

I withdrew Promise from his body and dropped
him. Perfect timing. The battered door had fallen in just as he’d breathed his
last.

And the first one through was Magnus, the bolt
from the crossbow still lodged in his back.

“W
hat are you doing
here?” I rushed into Magnus’s arms and crushed him against me. “How did you get
out of the dungeon?”

“Deductive reasoning,” he said airily. “When I
saw the dead woman in the next cell, I–”

“Just about pissed down your leg, thinking it
was me,” I finished for him.

“Exactly.” He laughed. “Then I noticed the
horseshoe nail I’d pushed into the bottom of my boot was gone.”

A wave of soldiers spilled through the open
door. I pulled my remaining blade and turned Magnus to face them. “We may have
to fight our way out of here.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“What?”

 “They’re your soldiers now.”

“
My
soldiers?”

“Yours. I hid while they chopped the door down.
Then, when they broke through, I forced them all back with my trusty broom
handle and my shield and told them to have a care. Pentorus’s crown was about
to change hands, and they’d better not harm their queen.” Magnus glanced at Garai
and grinned. “I’ll be damned if I wasn’t right.”

“You did this?” My eyes narrowed with the
question.

“Of course not. You know how this works.”

I ran one hand over my head and aimed the
dagger at the soldiers. “How what works?”

 “You’ve claimed the throne of Pentorus by
right of conquest.” Magnus laughed. “You’re their new queen, and they know it.”

“But…I’m not queen material.”

“You’ll have to be.” A fussy, gray-haired man
in a long blue and burgundy robe parted the soldiers and stepped between us.
“As you are now Queen Kymber of Pentorus.”

“Who are you?”

 “I am the Minister of Law and Regulation, Your
Majesty. Sint Seromith is my name.” The man bowed.

It took me a moment to understand that “Your
Majesty” was me. “What? No! I don’t want to be . . .”

I let the words trail off. The soldiers lowered
their heads in a gesture of respect as they waited for me to work through my
shock.

There was danger in Sint Seromith’s narrowed
eyes. An outright refusal suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

I looked up at Magnus. “Is this true?”

“It’s true in Pentorus.” I saw apprehension in
the lines of his face. “You’ve earned the throne by killing Garai.” His gaze
flicked to Seromith then back to me, acknowledging my thoughts with a bob of
his head.

I had to think fast or we’d never get out of
this place.

“Well, then. I suppose we’ll have to prepare
for a coronation.” I faced Seromith. “Magnus and I need a moment alone.”

“But…” Seromith frowned.

I held up a hand to silence him. “I insist,
Seromith. I want a healer sent to us as soon as you can find one. And you’ll
see that two horses are fully packed with provisions for us.”

“You can’t leave,” Sint Seromith said. “It’s
the law.”

If I had any doubts about his intentions, he
laid them to rest with his tone, an icy wind blowing over already frozen
ground. He
would
hold us against our will if I couldn’t sweet talk him.

I swatted his arm. “Well, of course I’m not
leaving. Who wouldn’t want to be the queen of such a fascinating land? This is
just so…so unexpected. Surely you won’t begrudge me a trip home, so I can get
my affairs in order.”