The Kiss of Deception (26 page)

I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Walther, please,” I said firmly. “You have to tell me what’s wrong so I can help you.”

He looked at me, almost like a child. “You’re strong, Lia. You were always the strongest of us. That’s what worried Mother.”

He was making no sense at all. His gaze drifted away, and his eyes were glassy and rimmed in red. “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “Not for either of them.”

I grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Walther! What happened?”

He looked back at me, his lips cracked, his hair falling in his face in filthy, oily strands. His voice was passionless. “She’s dead. Greta’s dead.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t possible.

“An arrow straight through her throat.” His gaze remained vacant. “She looked at me, Lia. She knew. Her eyes. She couldn’t speak. She just looked at me, knowing, and then she fell forward into my lap. Dead.”

I listened as my brother recounted each shattered piece of his dream. I held him, rocked him, huddled with him in the squalor and mud. When I saw Pauline and Berdi round the corner of the icehouse, I waved them away. My brother, my strapping soldier brother, wept in my arms. He straddled a line between tears and dispassionate belief and told me every detail, unable to separate the relevant from the inconsequential. Her dress was blue. She had braided her hair in a circle around her head that morning. The baby was moving. They were on their way to Greta’s aunt’s house. It was only an hour’s ride in the carriage from her parents’ manor. Her sister and her family were in the carriage just behind them. They were going to have lunch. Only an hour, he repeated over and over again.
An hour.
And daylight.
It was daylight.
They were just about to cross the bridge from Chetsworth into Briarglen when there was a tremendous roar. He heard the driver shout, there was a loud thump, and then the carriage lurched. He was about to look out to see what had happened when he heard another sound, the
thump, thump, thump
of arrows. He turned to shove Greta down, but it was too late.

“They were there to destroy the bridge,” he said. His eyes were wide, his voice numb again, as if he had replayed the scene over in his own head a thousand times already. “We came along just as it was going down. The driver shouted at them, and they killed him. Then sprayed us with more arrows before they galloped off.”

“Who, Walther? Who did this?”

“I took her back to her parents. I knew that’s where she’d want to go. I took her back, Lia. I washed her. I wrapped her in a blanket and held her. Her and the baby. I held her for two days before they made me give her to them.”

“
Who did this?
”

He looked at me, his eyes suddenly focused again, his mouth contorting in disgust as if I hadn’t been listening. “I have to go.”

“No,” I whispered softly, trying to soothe him. “No.” I reached up to push his hair aside and check the gash in his forehead. He hadn’t told me how he got it. In his crazed state, he probably didn’t even know it was there.

He pushed my hand away. “I have to go.”

He tried to get up, and I pushed him back against the carcass of the wheelbarrow. “Go where? You can’t go anywhere like—”

He pushed me away roughly, and I fell back. “I have to go!” he yelled. “My platoon. I have to catch up.”

I ran after him, pleading for him to stop. I pulled on him, begging him to wait, to at least let me wash his wounds, feed him something, clean his blood-soaked clothing, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He grabbed the reins of his tobiano and led him out of the barn. I yelled. I held on. I tried to pull the reins from him.

He spun, grabbed both of my arms, shook me, screamed. “I’m a soldier, Lia! I’m not a husband anymore! I’m not a father! I’m a soldier!”

Rage had made him into someone I didn’t know, but then he pulled me to his chest and held me, sobbing into my hair. I thought my ribs would crack under his grip, then he pushed away and said, “I have to go.”

And he did.

And I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered. I sat at the kitchen table, holding a piece of Walther’s shattered dream. Gwyneth, Berdi, and Pauline sat with me.

I had already told them everything I knew. They tried to reassure me that Walther would be all right, that he needed time to grieve, that he needed a lot of things I couldn’t even hear them saying anymore. Instead my head throbbed with my brother’s cries.
An arrow straight through her throat.

Their voices were soft, tentative, quiet, trying to help me through this. But how could Walther ever be all right?
Greta was dead.
She fell open-eyed into his lap. Walther didn’t leave here as a soldier, he left as a crazed man. He didn’t leave to go join his platoon—he left to get his revenge.

Gwyneth reached out and touched my hand. “It’s not your fault, Lia,” she said as if she could read my thoughts.

I pulled my hand away and jumped up from the chair. “Of course it’s my fault! Who else’s would it be? Those packs of hyenas are ranging right into Morrighan now because they’re no longer afraid! All because I refused to marry someone I didn’t
love.
” I spit the last word out with every bit of the revulsion I was feeling.

“No one knows with certainty if an alliance would have done anything to stop them,” Berdi tried to reason.

I looked at her, shaking my head, thinking that certainty didn’t matter in the least anymore. Guarantees weren’t even part of my universe right now. I would have married the devil himself if there had been even the slimmest chance it could have saved Greta and the baby. Who would be next?

“It’s only one rogue band, Lia, not an army. We’ve always had those. And the attack was on a remote border,” Pauline argued.

I walked over to the fireplace and stared at the small flame. She was right on that count. But this time it was something more. I could feel it. It was something gray and grim slithering through me. I remembered the hesitation in Walther’s voice.
We’ll keep them out. We always do.
But not this time.

It had been brewing all along. I just hadn’t seen it.
A crucial alliance
, my mother had called it. Was sacrificing a daughter the only way to achieve it? Maybe it was when so much distrust had been banked for centuries. This alliance was meant to be more than a piece of paper that could be burned. It was to be an alliance made of flesh and blood.

I looked down at the tiny white lace cap in my hands that I had planned to give to Walther and Greta. I fingered the lace, remembering the joy I had in buying it. Greta was dead. The baby was dead. Walther was a crazed man.

I tossed it into the fire, heard the hushed murmurs around me, watched the lace catch, curl, blacken, flame, become ash. As if it had never been there.

“I need to go wash up.” My legs were still caked in mud.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Pauline asked.

“No,” I answered, and quietly closed the door behind me.

On the far side of death,

Past the great divide,

Where hunger eats souls,

Their tears will increase.

—Song of Venda

CHAPTER FORTY

Thunk.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Thunk.

I had been standing in the meadow for two hours, throwing my knife over and over again. It was a small stump, and I rarely missed anymore. I had trampled the wild mustard down into a straight neat path from going to retrieve the knife. There were only a few stray throws when I had allowed my mind to wander.

Thunk.

Thunk.

And then the
whir
, the
chink
, the
swish
of it missing its mark and disappearing into the tall grass behind the stump. Walther’s words, Walther’s face, Walther’s anguish wouldn’t leave me. I tried to sort it all into something that made sense, but there was no sense, not when it came to murder. Greta wasn’t a soldier. The baby hadn’t even drawn a first breath.
Savages.
I went to find my knife, lost somewhere in the grass.

“Lia?”

I turned. It was Kaden. He swung down from his horse. I knew by his manner he had heard something, probably from hushed voices in the tavern.

“How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

The meadow bordered the road leading out of town. I supposed I was in full view of anyone passing by.

“Berdi said you and Rafe went out early this morning. Before sunup.” I listened to the flatness of my voice. It sounded like it belonged to someone else.

“I don’t know where Rafe went. I had some arrangements to take care of.”

“The duties you spoke of.”

He nodded.

I looked at him, his hair blowing in the breeze, a white burnished gold in the bright midday sun. His eyes rested on me, sure and steady.

I kissed his cheek. “You’re a good person, Kaden. Steadfast and true to your duty.”

“Lia, can I—”

“Go away, Kaden,” I said. “Go away. I need time to think about my own duties.”

I turned and walked back through the meadow, not waiting to see if he listened to me or not, but I heard his horse trot off. I retrieved my knife from the grass and threw it again.

Her dress was blue. The baby was moving.

I have to do something, Lia. I have to do something.

This time I saw more than Walther’s face. More than Greta’s.

I saw Bryn. I saw Regan.

I saw Pauline.

I have to do something.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

RAFE

It was twilight when I returned. I hadn’t eaten all day, and my head was pounding. I led my horse to the barn and unsaddled him, feeling the burn of wind and sun on my skin from a long day of riding. I was tired, still trying to sort the timing of everything out. How would we pull this off? I raked my fingers through my hair. I hadn’t planned my trip well, but after the late night with Lia, I’d had little sleep.

“We need to talk.”

I looked over my shoulder. I was so preoccupied I hadn’t heard her come in. I heaved my saddle onto the rack and faced her. “Lia—”

“Where did you go?” Her shoulders were stiff, and her tone curt.

I took a hesitant step toward her. “I had some business to take care of. Is that a problem?”

“An out-of-work farmhand with business?”

What was wrong with her? “I told you my lack of work was temporary. Supplies needed to be ordered.” I threw the horse blanket still in my hands over the stall wall and closed the space between us. I looked into her eyes, wanting to kiss every black lash, wondering how this had happened to me. She reached up and pulled my face down to hers, pressed her lips hard against mine, then slid her hands down my neck to my chest, and her fingers dug into my skin. It wasn’t desire I heard in her breaths, but desperation. I pulled back. I stared at her and touched my lip where her rough kiss had nicked my flesh.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

“I’m leaving, Rafe. Tomorrow.”

I stared at her, not quite understanding what she was saying. “What do you mean,
leaving
?”

She walked over to a bale of hay in an empty stall and sat, looking up at the rafters. “I have to return home,” she said. “I have an obligation I need to meet.”

Home? Now? My mind raced. “What kind of obligation?”

“The permanent kind. I won’t be back.”

“Ever?”

She stared at me, her expression blank. “Ever,” she finally said. “I haven’t told you everything about my family, Rafe. I’ve been manipulated and lied to my entire life. I’m not going back because I want to, but one fact remains—I’ve caused them and others a lot of pain through my disloyalties. If I don’t go back, I may cause far more. I need to return to live up to my duty.”

Her voice was rigid and unfeeling. I rubbed my chin. She looked so different. A different Lia than I had ever seen.
Manipulated and lied to.
I glanced away, my eyes darting back and forth, unable to focus. I tried to sort through what she had said and refigure my own thwarted plans at the same time. I looked back at her. “And your family will give you this chance?”

“I don’t know. But I have to try.”

Tomorrow.
I’d thought I had more time. It was too soon. The plans—

“Rafe?”

“Wait,” I said. “Let me think. I have to figure this out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out.”

“Does it have to be tomorrow? Can’t it wait a few more days?”

“No. It can’t wait.”

She sat stone still. What had happened while I was gone? But it was obvious her decision was made and final.

“I understand about duty, Lia,” I said, trying to buy time and think this through. “Duty is important.” And loyalty. I swallowed, my throat dry with road dust. “When will you leave tomorrow?” I asked.

“In the morning. Early.”

I nodded, even as my mind reeled. That gave me very little time. But one thing I knew with certainty, I couldn’t let her go back to Civica.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

There wasn’t much to pack. Everything I had would fit into a double-sided saddlebag with room to spare. I wasn’t taking the new clothes I’d bought. I’d leave those here for Pauline, since I couldn’t wear them in Civica anyway. I’d take some food too, but this time I’d be staying at inns along the way. That was one of the concessions I’d made when Pauline angrily threw the pouch of jewels I had given her back in my face. We had argued all afternoon. There had been words with Berdi too, but she finally accepted that I had to go. As for Gwyneth, I think she knew all along, even before I did.

But Pauline had become fierce in a way I had never seen. She finally stomped off to the tavern when I pulled my bag from the wardrobe. I couldn’t tell her that hers had been one of the faces I had seen in the meadow. A face like Greta’s, open-eyed but not seeing, another casualty if I didn’t do something.