Page 34 of Crown of Darkness
“And then we’ll discover what your mother is hiding at Clydain.”
* * *
I findBaylor sitting outside Lysander’s cell, his knuckles clasped together and his head bowed. My feet are silent on the stairs—an old habit—but he looks up as I approach, his golden eyes flaring amber for a second before they return to normal.
“Princess.” He shifts to stand, but I wave at him to stay where he is.
“Are you all right?” I murmur, slipping onto the stone bench beside him.
Baylor leans back against the bars. Inside the cell, his brother’s body lies still beneath a white sheet. “He will rise with the moon.”
That’s not what I asked.
A shrug slips through him but I insist upon squeezing his shoulder. Baylor’s the quietest member of my husband’s loyal court—still waters running over stone—but that doesn’t mean he can’t be hurt.
And it hurt him today to drive a sword through his brother’s chest.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “For saving me.”
Despite everything that has come between Andraste and me, I know exactly how that would feel. She’s my sister and we loved each other once, before my mother turned us against each other. There’s a part of me that will always love her, and I have to hope that her warning today meant something.
“He would never have forgiven himself if he hurt you,” Baylor finally says. “I know you barely remember him, but the two of you…. You were close friends.” A muscle tightens in his jaw. “To see him like this, so twisted by hate and rage…. It’s the worst thing the queen could have done to him, for my brother is love and laughter. We were born from the same womb, but he was always the one that others loved more.”
It’s an arrow straight through the heart, because I feel that too.
My mother’s people adore Andraste. She inspires confidence wherever she rides, because she’s the perfect princess. She’s better than I am with a sword. She’s dared to argue against my mother in court for the rights of some minor lord, whereas I never had that lenience. She proffers wise counsel, and she makes the court laugh.
She is the sun and I am the moon, and somehow, I never truly fit into the Asturian court.
“Some are easy to love,” I tell him quietly, “because they shine so brightly it’s difficult to look away. But others…. We don’t love them any less, Baylor. Because they are steadfast and true. They are solid rock beside quicksilver, but they will not break when quicksilver is too soft. It is a different kind of love. Steadier, perhaps.”
Thiago taught me the truth of that. And I’m learning to love myself—or trying to love myself as much as he does.
“Do you think he’ll remember himself when he rises?”
I won’t pretend I’m not a little nervous about meeting Lysander again.
“Dying hurts,” Baylor replies. “Sometimes it takes time to remember who you are and where you are.” He looks toward his brother. “I don’t know what he’s been through this past year.”
“Thiago told me about Clydain.”
What sort of weapon would my mother be keeping in the far north of Asturia?
Could it turn the tide of war?
“Do you think he found something?” I whisper.
Baylor stares blankly at the wall in front of him, running his knuckles back and forth over his knee. “I think he found something,” he finally rumbles, “though whether he’ll remember it is another matter.”
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Chapter Six
“Ineed to go into the city,” Thiago murmurs the next morning. “Do you want to come?”
“I thought you’d be holed up with Eris and Baylor, plotting a counterattack against my mother?”
There’s a touch of leashed violence about my husband this morning. “An attack is what your mother expects. It’s what she wants. As someone pointed out, the border lords aren’t entirely in her favor. They will be if I strike now. No.” A thoughtful look comes into his eyes. “I won’t play into her hands. When I strike back, she won’t be expecting it.”
