Page 55 of Untempered
In the gray of dawn, I spent time looking over the tapestries on the walls, but they were the same styles and settings I’d seen all over the castle. I suspected most had been repurposed from elsewhere—they didn’t feel like her. The long, low chairs, the rugs on the ground, all felt like they’d been pulled from elsewhere, too.
Why hadn’t she been in this area before? Too expensive to staff? Were there no guards he trusted?
Old Gods and the One, how I hated thatIwas more trusted than his own men.
Why had she wanted me to teach her the sword?
I looked up the curling staircase to the next level, where the servant hadn’t gone and dawn hadn’t intruded yet. The staircase was empty, of course, and the tower silent bar the cheerful crackle of the fire in the grate chasing away the worst of the autumn chill.
But Isolde was right there, motionless, on those stairs.
She was totally still—but somehow, she looked like she was coming out of the stone all the same. My feet were like hunks of granite as she started to move, and my brain tried to make me move in response. Every part of me screamedget out of her way.
That level of stealth was inhuman.
Her feet were bare and silent as she moved down the stairs. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, and the air was caught behind my ribs. I was put in the mind of one of the big lions I’d seen stalking prey in the Steppes. Except Isolde didn’t bother trying to disguise herself.
Wordlessly, she walked past me. I stood frozen, my feet like blocks of stone. She moved with the sinuous grace of a predator, and I was the unsuspecting prey, separated from my herd. Staring at me, her blue eyes looked utterly soulless. She curled her fingers around the tray’s edges the way I’d grasp a hilt, with purpose and some expectation of violence or force. Clammy sweat prickled under my arms as she straightened and stalked away, moving past me so closely I held my breath rather than draw her ire. Her skirts brushed against the tops of my boots.
She hadn’t made a single sound. Not a one.
I didn’t breathe properly until I was back in my little airlock, the door barred behind me.
It was one thing to know the woman was Matri’sion. It was another to see it.
I rested my forehead against the wood and wished, with everything inside of me, I could go and tell Kadan about the horror I’d just seen.
Instead, I took the coward’s way out and hid.
Thomas eventually arrived. He talked through the necessary information that Mortemon didn’t want to give me. Apparently, knowing where the bathhouse was located sat lower on the list of importance than having my hair cut. We agreed I’d do nights, at least for the next few weeks, and he’d come by after training in the morning to take the shift during the day.
Leaving the tower, even armed with thorough instructions, made anxiety claw at my throat in a way it hadn’t for years. I skimmed my hand over the hilt of my sword and found comfort in the weight of my shield as I moved through the unfamiliar corridors.
I kept half-turning to check on Kadan out of habit. Finding nothing but gray La’Angi stonework, unfriendly faces, and shadows alive with my own demons, kept my hand close to my sword.
Everything was wrong.
Even back in the tower I had to endure the silence with Thomas as we both stood around, doing nothing, saying nothing. It gave me far too long to compare my current living situation with the one I’d endured as a child.
Later in the afternoon I went to train. In the courts I was pointed silently away from the group of guardsmen who looked to be the equivalent of infantry in the Butcher’s standing army. They met my eyes, sized me up, and then directly me wordlessly toward a much smaller group of men who looked to be finishing up. This area was attended by a woman holding a bucket and scoop. The tide was low in the bucket, her eyes flat and tired as she looked at me.
I saw those tired eyes, not the men in front of me, though they greeted me with big grins and open arms, though they swiped away sweat and jostled for position. I barely even saw the dulled blade I was given.
I’d done it. I’d come full circle. But this time, I wouldn’t let that cycle repeat again.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
AUDREY
“Ideas are only as useful as the actions they cause.” ~ Matri’sion lesson
It took my father only a moon to prepare. The books said it should’ve taken him longer. No one would say why he’d had an army all but ready to march, and it wasn’t because I didn’t ask.
The King’s own advisor had been assassinated. That was a fact. But something felt amiss.
I stood on the battlements of the keep wall, watching them march through the city. The autumn wind tugged at my hair. It held the bite of winter in it, the threat of darkness yet to come. Men marched below us, leaving for war. They marched abreast, their feet rising and falling in perfect time. Their steel-shod boots struck the cobbles so perfectly the sound echoed through the whole city. It made my head ache to hear it. Those reverberations had settled into my bones. I feared I’d hear them even when I lay down to sleep.
Carrion birds circled over us, and I saw Isolde glance up toward them, her expression hard. “Good omen,” I offered, grateful for the distraction. “The One must be smiling on the Duke.”
