CHAPTER 42
One Year Ago
AFTER RORY’S HASTY CORONATION on the day of their father’s death, Evermore’s borders were safely locked again, but Bomardi militia and spies had already gotten inside the country in that hour Evermore spent without a king. Between the attacks from the inside and the daily losses at the border, Evermore’s size grew smaller and smaller.
Briony had been confined to Biltmore Palace for three years while it was under siege, and even though it was her favorite place in the whole world, she almost sighed in relief when Anna came to tell her that it was time to pack and retreat to the lakeside castle, Claremore.
It was a fortnight’s ride on horseback between the two palaces. Briony refused to ride in the carriage like a royal while five hundred people behind them traveled on foot, especially when Rory chose to ride his horse and greet the villagers they passed on the road. General Meers wanted the court to portal and leave the people in the areas surrounding Biltmore Palace to walk on foot, but Rory refused. Portaling them all was out of the question, not only because it would require Rory to bleed for hundreds of portals, but also because that many tears into the boundary line around Claremore would weaken it. The castle’s fortifications would be gone before they walked through the front doors.
Finola slowed her horse to ride beside Briony’s mare one afternoon in the second week.
“We have about two days left,” she said, tying her blond hair up in a messy twist to keep it off her sweating neck. “The general and your brother
have gone on ahead with a portal.”
Briony gaped. “What? When?”
“Two hours ago. Rory is strengthening the boundary line for our arrival.”
“Why wasn’t I informed? I should be with him,” said Briony.
Panic rose in her. Would Rory succeed in casting the protections if Briony wasn’t pushing her magic to him?
“It had to be done quietly,” Finola said. “There are defectors hiding in every corner these days. Eversuns who think they’ll trade information for their freedom in Bomard.”
“And do they think I am the liability?” Briony scoffed. She straightened the brooch at her clavicle.
“Oh, you know the general.” Finola sighed. “It was privileged information.”
Briony huffed. General Billium Meers did whatever he could to cut her out of the tactical meetings. There had been more than one occasion on this journey when she was barred from the tent used by the strategists’ council.
Over the last three years, Briony had pushed the general to negotiate a safe return of the four Eversun students who’d been taken from the school on the day of the attack, but her requests had fallen on deaf ears. Rory was hestitant to make the wrong move when it came to those captives, so he relied on General Meers’s advice.
“When this is over,” Briony said, “I want you to take me to Southern Camly like you said you would. I want to learn how to be useful to the court and council. I’m tired of being nothing more than a bargaining chip in this country.”
Finola snorted. “Careful, you’re speaking like a Bomardi now.”
“I’m serious.”
Briony turned to look at her cousin. Finola chewed on the inside of her cheek before replying.
“I think the time for that has passed,” Finola said softly. “When this is over, there will be a new peace treaty signed. The countries will need to move forward under similar agreements—”
“And I will be nothing but collateral to a betrothal,” Briony finished for her. “I see.”
Briony looked straight ahead, clenching her jaw.
“It won’t just be you. My sister, Phoebe, as well. The rest of your court, including some of the men, will all need to do their duty to hold the peace.”
Briony’s eyes landed on Cordelia as she rode with Katrina and Didion, fifty feet ahead. “Not Cordelia, though,” Briony said, feeling jealousy flash in her blood before she could push it down.
“Well, if your brother was smart, he’d keep himself available to someone on the line, but that’s a losing battle.” Finola glanced at her. “There is another option for you.”
Briony waited for her to say it, her eyes resting on the back of Didion’s head. “Yes?”
“Didion Winchester would marry you without hesitation,” Finola said.
“And don’t pretend you haven’t been stoking that flame.”
Briony eyed her uneasily. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Finola lifted a brow at her. “Anna says you disappear to the docks at the end of every week.”
Briony gasped and sent a glare behind her to where Anna was riding.
Anna shrugged.
“It is not every week. And ‘the docks’ makes it sound tawdry. We walk together, that is all.” Briony’s cheeks were bright red.
“After midnight?” Finola prodded. “My, what a lovely time for a walk—”
“I’m twenty-four, you know,” Briony said. “I’m not a child that needs to
be watched and reported on.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re an unmarried Rosewood woman, as well,” Briony said, accusingly. “Are you going to tell me that you’ve been virtuous all this time?
That you never sought comfort in Southern Camly?”
Finola gave her a soft smile. “Not in the least. I’m only pointing out that
there is an easy route for you that your brother would happily grant.” She lowered her voice so only Briony could hear. “Unless you were hoping still for something else?”
“No,” Briony said quickly. Gray eyes flickered through her mind, like they often did. “No, I grew out of that fascination.”
“Good.” Finola breathed deeply, changing the subject. “You and I will set the shelter wards tonight in your brother’s absence. It will have to be done quietly so no one suspects Rory is gone.”
Briony nodded at her. The Rosewoods were known for their shielding magic. Rory had done it every night of their journey, with help from Briony, unbeknownst to him.
Finola kicked her heels against her stallion and urged him forward, leaving Briony to contemplate the lie she’d just told.
The name whispered in every meeting of the strategists’ council was Hearst. Orion could perform Heartstop on two hearts at once—an unheard-of skill—and rumor was that his son was just as talented. Toven’s name was next to his father’s in every report from the front lines, though no reports had come through about his abilities with Heartstop yet. Briony wondered what had happened to the boy who’d tried to help her escape the Bomardi school— the boy who hesitated when his father told him to leave her there. She hadn’t seen Toven since that day, but she’d heard stories of his deadliness on the battlefields.
When the caravan stopped to camp for the night, Briony shared a tent with Cordelia, as she usually did. As the cooks began dinner and the soldiers began building campfires, Briony and Finola met at the center of the camp and moved outward and away from each other, expanding a wall around all five hundred that traveled with them. Briony walked among the tents, pushing the shield to the edges.
Didion found her at the far end of the camp.
“Are you stuck doing Rory’s shields in his absence?” he asked.
Swallowing back her annoyance that Didion was granted information on the king’s movements, Briony nodded. “Finola and I both.”
Didion cleared his throat and moved closer when she finished her casting.
“I was wondering if maybe we could disappear for a bit ourselves,” he suggested quietly.
Briony forced herself to match his shy smile.
She’d tried to fall in love with Didion. Every two weeks for the past year, Briony met him near the docks at midnight for conversation and sometimes more.
But even now, as she smiled softly at him, Briony couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t her future husband, no matter how easy Finola made it seem.
“I was thinking,” she began slowly, “that maybe we could pause our meetings until the war is over.”
His face fell, but to his credit, he recovered quickly. “All right.” He cleared his throat. “I understand. The retreat to the Claremore must be very stressful.”
“It is,” she said, latching onto the suggestion. “Things are far too fragile now to be...indulging in frivolities.” She winced at the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but she wouldn’t take them back, even as Didion swallowed and looked at the ground.
It did feel frivolous. Perhaps it felt like more to him, but to her, it was an unnecessary indulgence.
“The eclipse is in a year,” he said with a sad grin. “Your brother shall prove he is the Heir Twice Over when ‘the sun shines at night,’ so we can revisit all of this then.”
“Didion, you don’t have to...to wait for me.” She bit her lip. “I don’t expect you to, I mean—”
“I would wait millennia for you, Briony Rosewood.”
His eyes were clear and his voice soft. And though it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her, she felt nothing.
Didion kissed her cheek and left her staring into the trees. She stood for a long moment, wondering why she couldn’t just accept Didion’s affections and live comfortably with him.
Briony shivered against the growing dusk. She’d turned to take the long
walk through the camp back to the tent she shared with Cordelia when a light caught her eye in the trees.
It bounced like a fairy, slowly moving toward her. It was a navigator flame.
Briony held her hands splayed to cast, standing on the safe side of the shield. She would be undetectable to anyone on the outside of it.
As the flame came closer, she recognized the young woman wandering behind it. She was a merchant from outside Biltmore Palace. Her mother ran the fish market and always made comments about her daughter’s indigo-dyed hair. Briony loved her rebelliousness.
She was alone in the woods, looking lost and worried.
Briony stepped forward so the blue-haired woman could find her. “Did you get separated?”
The woman jumped, grabbing her chest in shock. “Oh! Miss Rosewood!”
Her eyes were wide and haunted. “My brother was sent for firewood and didn’t return. My family and I went looking for him and couldn’t find our way back.”
Briony searched behind the woman, the glow of the navigator flame revealing no one with her. “Did you find him?”
She shook her head tearfully. “I don’t know where any of them are. I lost them all.”
Briony cast a shield around the two of them. It wouldn’t make them undetectable like the one around the camp, but it would ward off magical attacks. “The woods can twist you around. I’ll help you find them.”
The woman sobbed grateful tears. “Thank you, Miss Rosewood!”
“You may call me Briony.”
“I’m Delilah,” the woman said and led them back the way she came. She moved fast, stumbling in the dark past the reach of Briony’s shield and looking at the trees.
“It’s your brother and who else? Your mother?” Briony sped up, trying to keep both of them under the bubble of protection.
“My mother, my father, and my uncle. We all spread out looking.”
Briony was about to tell her they should form a search party if the family
was spread in different directions, but the caw of a crow above her head stopped her.
She looked up, finding a beady eye watching them.
Magic sizzled the air, and Briony felt something bounce off her shield.
She flinched and spun in a circle.
The man from the attack on the Bomardi school stood ten paces away, yellow teeth smiling at her from under a crooked nose.
Reighven.
Briony’s heart galloped. In the years since she’d seen him last, his name had become synonymous with terror and dark magic on the battlefields, and his face had taken up permanent residence in her nightmares.
“Stones, what luck we have tonight,” Reighven said, his voice like gravel.
“The princess herself.”
Briony heard shifting in the trees. She reached for Delilah’s wrist to bring her into Briony’s protection shield, but before she could, Reighven cut his arm through the air. Blood blossomed across Delilah’s chest.
Briony gasped and stretched her shield further to cover them both as Reighven and whoever else was in the trees began an assault on her shield.
Briony lowered Delilah to the ground, pressing her fingers to the slice across her chest and trying to bring the skin back together as the magic ricocheted around them.
Briony gripped the thread in her mind and pushed with all her might.
Reighven and another man stumbled, their magic ceasing momentarily. She reached for a tree and brought it down on them, the crack of the trunk heavy in the dark night. As Reighven and the other man dove out of the way, she cast up purple sparks into the sky like a firecracker. A distress call for Finola.
She glanced at Reighven as he righted himself and saw the other man for the first time: Toven Hearst.
The world slowed and abruptly sped forward as his cold eyes met hers.
Briony refocused on her shield as they moved toward her, hoping she only had seconds until the Eversuns came to her aid. She turned back to Delilah as twigs snapped under hasty footsteps. Color was just returning to her cheeks now that her wounds had been sewn up.
A hand reached through the wall of Briony’s shield and grabbed the front of her dress. She gasped, eyes wide, as Reighven slammed her up against the nearest tree.
She hadn’t thought of physical violence, only magical. Her shield was useless against his hands.
“Princess, let’s go have a little talk. See if we can’t find out how to lure your brother out of that camp, huh?” Reighven grinned at her, and then cast a portal five feet to the left.
Briony panicked, her mind nothing but white noise and her skin trembling. Her eyes caught Toven’s as Reighven tugged on the front of her dress, as though to pull her toward the portal. His lips were pressed into a thin line, but he made no move to stop Reighven.
Briony kicked and clawed, screaming for the camp to hear her.
“Hey!” a voice called from the trees behind them. Reighven paused.
A man in Eversun merchant clothes stood in a clearing of trees. The woman who ran the fish market stood next to him, as well as two brawny men who looked like them. Delilah’s family. Briony thanked the waters for their timing.
“You can’t just take her!” the man yelled. “She’s coming with us!”
Briony had half a second to ponder his choice of words before Delilah came to her feet, hands raised to cast.
Delilah’s body flew into the trunk of a tree, and her head cracked on the bark. She crumpled.
Behind her, Toven Hearst lowered his hand, his eyes still cold. “She’s not going anywhere with you,” he said.
The mother screamed, and Briony barely had time to put up a shield before the magic sizzled around her, like being thrust into the center of a bonfire.
She ducked as Reighven let go of her to cast. Pulling herself around a tree, she caught her bearings on which way was back to camp as the screams and grunts of a battle broke out behind her. She couldn’t run back to the camp.
She couldn’t lead them there, shields or not.
A pale hand with strong fingers grabbed her wrist and tugged. Briony fell
forward against Toven’s chest. She shoved him backward as he began to
draw a portal.
“Don’t,” he warned her, voice deadly.
A spell flared over his shoulder, and he howled, curling over in pain and releasing her. One of Delilah’s relatives stood twenty paces away with his hands outstretched.
“Thank you! Run!” Briony screamed at him.
She took off to the north, running through the trees, leaping over roots and fallen branches.
The zip of a spell flew past and into the tree in front of her, and she curled in on herself, veering right.
There was a river half a mile ahead. If she could get there, she could channel the water’s magic into a stronger shield.
A spell slammed into her back and she fell, cracking her chin on the ground. Stars spun in her head. She pulled herself up just as a knee pressed into her back, hot breath on her neck.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” Reighven growled, taking her wrists and pushing them into her back. “I think I’ll make you my new pet. We can chase each other for hours.”
Briony focused her mind on the earth beneath her. The fear and adrenaline spiked her magic, and the forest floor began to split apart underneath her.
Reighven rolled, taking her with him. She struggled under him until he was straddling her, pinning her wrists down.
Then Reighven screamed. He grabbed for his head, his fingers scrabbling across his skull, then his chest as he screeched in excruciating pain.
She didn’t delay. She slipped from under him and kept running, hoping she’d hear the river soon to help guide her direction.
She got her answer when one of the merchant men jumped into her path.
She skidded to a halt.
“Miss Rosewood!” he said. “The camp is this way!”
Briony caught her breath, staring in the direction he was pointing. Was she really so turned around? If she had four guesses on which way was east, that would have been the last.
A spell sizzled past her ear, and the man was blown back off his feet.
Briony curled into herself, running for a nearby tree for cover. As she spun around it, Toven Hearst was advancing toward her.
She dragged her hands together, and two tall trees were pulled off their roots, crashing down in front of him. Toven jumped back and she ran the way the man had pointed—toward camp.
By now Briony didn’t care who else was alerted to her location. She needed Finola and the army to find her and the merchants. She started lighting trees on fire as she ran past them.
A bush caught on fire to her left. She hadn’t lit it. Briony swerved around it, listening to a pair of heavy boots chasing behind her. A tree fell in her path, and she was forced to veer right.
Toven was running alongside her through the trees, twenty feet away, and felt sick as she remembered how they used to race to the willow tree. How much faster he’d always been than her. How racing him used to thrill her.
She shoved her magic at him to keep him away.
He brought another tree down in front of her, and she had to twist to avoid it.
He was playing with her. Herding her. Forcing her to go in the direction he chose.
She glanced over to him as he kept pace with her, and just before she could cast against him, a spell slammed into his shoulder, and he tripped and rolled.
The sounds of a magic fight hissed behind her as she kept running. She heard the merchant woman scream again, the same keening cry she’d made when Delilah’s body had crumpled to the forest floor.
Briony wanted to go back for them—the merchant family who was fighting off Toven and Reighven with her when they could have just run —but she needed Finola and the army to find them first.
A large twisted tree trunk was dead ahead of her. It was actually two trees grown into each other, with a hole at the base. She slid against it and caught her breath, taking stock of who was chasing her and where exactly she was.
The three trees she’d lit on fire were starting to light up the area. She
could see the illumination of them fifty feet away.
She watched through the undergrowth as spells zipped past one another.
There were five figures scattered throughout the trees, moving and casting.
And then suddenly it was quiet, without so much as a scream.
Briony blinked into the growing light of the forest, waiting for movement.
When nothing came, she rose to her feet, casting a shield to protect against all kinds of violence this time, and crept to the edge the clearing.
One of the merchant men lay on his back, twenty feet in front of her. His eyes were open and glassy, and his hand was clenched over his heart.
Heartstop.
Briony scanned the trees before moving forward again. In another ten feet, she found Delilah’s mother and the other two men on the ground in similar positions. Tears pricked her eyes, and her stomach churned, hating how cowardly she’d been to hide and wait while they died.
Briony’s hand covered her mouth as she knelt over the woman’s body, remembering how she’d always argued with Delilah about her blue hair.
She glanced through the trees. She had to get out of the forest.
A flare of purple sparks lit the sky to her left. Finola, guiding her in.
Briony gasped to see just how close she was to the camp, wondering how she’d found her direction through the chaos.
She began to carve a path through the trees but stopped cold when she
saw another body in the underbrush.
One with pale gray hair and long limbs.
Her feet moved to him before her brain could think.
Toven Hearst lay on his side, unmoving. Her ribs seized, and she choked on a gasp.
He’d hunted her, toyed with her, and still she shook as she approached, begging the waters for his heartbeat.
Coming around his body, she found his eyes open, staring straight ahead, past her.
When a breath rattled from his throat, and a tear slipped out of his eye, Briony almost sobbed in relief.
“Briony!” a voice called from a distance. Maybe half a mile away.
The Eversuns were coming for her, but Briony dropped to her knees at Toven’s side.
He was too exposed. That was the only thing Briony thought as she levitated a few fallen branches to cover him from her army.
Toven’s gaze was far away as she hid him. He fought for air, in intense
pain.
She heard her name called again.
Briony took one last second to reach for his hand, pausing as she looked down.
Both of his hands were curled into fists. Both of his arms were outstretched in the direction she’d come from. In the direction of the four
dead bodies in the grass.
Heartstop.
And not just Heartstop. A split casting, like his father. No. Worse than his father.
Briony scrambled away from him, coming to her feet. He’d killed four innocent people because they were in his way—because they were between himself and her.
And four lives in one breath? He was shivering and struggling for air because the Heartstop had torn his heart open four times over. And she’d coddled him for it.
Killing four people with two hands was utterly unheard of. Not even Orion had such talent.
Her legs shook as she stared down at possibly the most dangerous man in all Bomard.
One day, he’d be able to do it without blinking. Without a gasp for air.
She wondered if she should kill him now, before he had a chance to do it again. Before he learned to take six lives. Eight.
Toven Hearst shuddered on the ground, his eyes beginning to flicker.
Briony hardened her heart and ran into the night, hoping Toven Hearst would rot there under those branches.
