Traitor (A Crown of Lilies Book 1) Read online

  Shera stumbled down the stairs, a choked cry of alarm escaping her lips at the sight of me, followed by a short exchange of whispers, none of which I could process. Her hands, I could somehow tolerate, and she helped guide me to my bedchamber, Quintin following at a careful distance. As she made to shut the door behind us, my hand seized the frame and I turned. Pale blue eyes watched. Waited.

  “Stay.” It was all the intelligible speech I could manage, something between a command and a plea. I felt like an animal in a trap, tearing myself to pieces.

  With a small nod, he drew one sword and turned to rest his back against the wall beside my bedroom door. I heard the tip of his blade settle on the carpet at his feet as Shera turned the latch. Pulling off my clothes, she threw them aside and tugged a cotton shift over my head before tucking me into my blankets.

  “Hush now, miss,” she crooned reassuringly, though her face remained stricken with concern as she pulled a chair up to my bedside. “You’ll be alright. I’ll be right here.”

  I drew close to sleep several times, only to shoot awake at the memory of a grimy hand or a choked gurgle. Finally, blessedly, I managed to drift off.

  Barely two hours had passed before I bolted awake again, startling Shera out of her slumber, slumped on her forearms at the edge of my bed. When her confusion had cleared, she patted my hand solicitously, sunlight peeking through the curtains.

  “There, now, miss. It’s morning.” Stifling a yawn, she stood. “You’ll feel much better after a bath.”

  As she went to fetch Ellen and Poppy, I caught sight of the edge of a dark brown sleeve outside the door. Sliding from the bed, I made my way toward the threshold, peeking my head around the frame. Quintin stepped away from me and bowed stiffly, sheathing his sword with less grace than usual. He’d been standing there all night, or what little of it had remained.

  “I expect you in the garden in one hour.”

  I recoiled, stung. He could be harsh, but this? This bordered on cruelty. That guarded gaze met mine, and there was something almost kind in it.

  “Trust me,” he added gently, and left.

  Shera was right, the steaming water did help, though it felt wasteful given that I’d need another bath in a matter of hours. A fresh glass of Greta’s tonic, once stomached, removed some of the cacophony from my head. My quiet friend shooed the other maids away and set about scrubbing me with a ferocity she’d not shown since I returned from the garrison. When I was thoroughly scoured, skin and scalp, she ushered me from the water, patting me dry with rough hands. I found it oddly comforting, though I’d no idea why.

  When I was dressed in my breeches and tunic, she fetched my sword belt for me, but I hesitated when she held it out. All the usual softness in her was gone, replaced by something fierce and resolute.

  “You cannot let them break you, miss,” she insisted, thrusting the belt at me. “You cannot let them take you from yourself.”

  “They’re dead,” I informed her, my unused voice hoarse and hollow.

  She didn’t waver, even as tears glinted in her eyes. “They will take you all the same if you let them.” When I still would not accept the belt from her, she stepped forward and shoved it hard against my chest. “You are the heir of Lazerin, and they cannot break you.”

  She let go and reflex forced me to catch the bundle in my arms. After a long moment, I buckled the weapons about my waist, adjusting the sword to sit comfortably on my hip. I felt a little bit better, a little bit stronger, with their weight. Shera gripped my shoulders reassuringly and pushed me gently out the door.

  My feet carried me to the garden as my mind tumbled through the unbridled chaos of my emotions. When I stepped out into the brisk morning air, Quintin was waiting, standing sentry in his usual spot before the fountain. Unmoving, he watched me approach as close as I cared to.

  We stared at one another for a long while, the feel of vulnerable flesh parting beneath my knife haunting my memory. Vindication and horror warred against one another inside the tumult beneath my skin. Every inch of me strained with the effort of containing too much, feeling too much. For once, I envied Quintin his detachment. I wished I could cut all of it out and feel nothing.

  “It gets easier,” he said, breaking our mutual silence.

  I watched him, a pit of understanding opening in my gut, and wished he was a better liar. “No, it doesn’t.”

  His nostrils flared with a heavy exhale. “No, no it doesn’t.”

  All my hard work, all my training, amounted to naught. I’d thought I was safe, untouchable, capable.

  Imbecile. Weakling. You froze you froze you froze. If Quintin hadn’t been there, your corpse would be feeding rats in an alley. Maybe it should be. Stupid, worthless girl.

  “What now?” I asked, trying to escape those hateful voices in my head.

  He watched me battle from behind his careful mask. “Now you have your reason to train, to work harder, to be better.”

  Spoiled little girl likes to play pretend. Desperate tears burned my eyes.

  “I can’t.” Swallowing them forcefully, I let my frustration take the lead. “I’m not like you.”

  Not a soldier, not a fighter, just a stupid girl.

  “You are what you choose to be,” he said with infuriating simplicity. “What you mold yourself into.”

  As the cruel voices cackled inside my head, I gestured angrily at my body. “I will always be this! Weak and frail and pathetic. Prey for the nearest set of sharp teeth.”

  He started toward me, eyes flashing, and panic gripped my chest. “Only if that is what you decide,” he growled, advancing on me with intent.

  “Stop,” I protested meekly as I stumbled backward away from him. “Don’t.”

  Fear. So much fear, coursing through my veins, tangling around my limbs. I couldn’t control it. Couldn’t control any of it. Couldn’t control me.

  “Make your choice.” He didn’t hesitate, didn’t slow, every step bringing him closer.

  “Stop,” I choked out, retreating.

  “Is that what you are?” he challenged as my back collided with a stone pillar in the arcade. A few more steps and he would be on me.

  “Please…”

  “Is it?” he demanded, slamming one fist against the stone above my head, his face halting mere inches from mine.

  Not just halting – freezing. He stiffened suddenly, eyes widening a fraction before they darted down toward his left side, to the vulnerable gap in his leather breastplate. A careful step back dislodged the tip of my dagger from between the laces, a good inch of the steel painted red with blood. I couldn’t remember drawing it.

  “Thought not,” he muttered, backing away.

  The blade trembled in my hand, my knuckles white around its hilt. I stared and stared at it, at that smear of crimson on its point, disbelief puncturing the lingering terror in my veins.

  “Why would you do that,” I whispered, voice cracking.

  “It’s fine. Doesn’t even need a bandage.”

  “Why?”

  “To prove a point. You are no one’s prey.”

  “A dog has as much instinct as that,” I snarled, tearing my eyes from the knife to throw their stinging fury his way.

  “A dog cannot wield a blade. You can.”

  “I’ve spent years trying to learn the sword.”

  For all the good it’s done you. Coward. Weakling.

  He tilted his head in reproach, his even tone overruling the constant stream of venom inside my mind. “You spent three months at the garrison two years ago.”

  “I kept up my training.”

  “Unsupervised and uncorrected.”

  “You’ve seen me with a blade.”

  “I have,” he agreed. “And with some proper training, I think you could learn to handle yourself.”

  A sharp edge of bitter sarcasm crept into my voice. “Samson’s captains tried to teach me. Ask James how that went, sometime.”
/>   “There is no better teacher than experience.”

  “Experience!” I gasped, a harsh laugh escaping me. “So far, my experience has been to freeze and tremble like a mewling child.”

  He jabbed a finger at me. “You acted when it mattered.”

  “Would I have, if you hadn’t been there? They would have passed me around like a wineskin and left me for dead in some alley.”

  It’s what you deserve, worthless girl.

  I ground the heel of my free hand into my eyes, the brigand’s likeness emerging from the blackness behind my eyelids.

  “And I can’t stop seeing his damned face.” My hand shot to my side once more, fist clenched as though I could punch the air and his now-rotting sneer would feel it. “I had every reason – every right – to kill that…that…” My mouth twisted in a furious struggle to find a word awful enough.

  “They will all haunt you.”

  “Why?” I demanded, abandoning my search.

  “Because that is the cost,” Quintin stated plainly. “It is the Mother’s grace alone that breathes us into being. When you extinguish life in this world, you dare to tread in the gods’ domain.” Tuvrian dogma. Why was I not surprised? He ignored the blasphemous retort I muttered under my breath. “There is a price for such hubris. To carry every life you take, every face, to the end of your days.”

  “It is unfair.”

  “Fair or not, you will pay it all the same.”

  I was adrift in my rage, my self-loathing, my despair. “And you?” I grasped for an anchor. “How many faces do you carry?”

  He hesitated for the barest moment. “Eight.”

  The number thundered in my head, reverberating down my bones and making my own outrage feel small and petty. Eight faces. Eight lives. Two of those were at my behest. Or was it three? I may have buried that knife in the brigand’s throat, but Quintin had been the one to pull it free, to put an end to it. Was it possible to share such a burden?

  The voice that slipped from my lips was surely too quiet, too subdued, to be my own, considering the mess of hateful emotions writhing beneath my skin.

  “How do you live with them?” it asked.

  He leveled those pale eyes at me, no trace of my merciless commander in sight. “With the knowledge that each of them would have gladly killed me. That today may be the day someone takes on my face to carry for the rest of theirs. That each dawn, each breath, each meal is a sacred gift, and I have paid the price required to understand how truly precious they are.”

  A sacred gift?

  I felt empty, hollow, drained. His words steadied me, giving me a patch of ground to force under my feet, a lantern to lead me out of that crushing darkness.

  “Now put that away,” he added quietly, gesturing at the knife still clutched in my hand. “And let’s get to work.”

  It was a light practice, focusing mainly on breaking down the one-handed drills I’d learned at the garrison and practiced a thousand times. I thought it would make me even more bitter, to have all my shortcomings cataloged, but I was wrong. Quintin corrected without condemning, for once, demonstrating slowly some of the intricacies of specific sections and explaining why they were important. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, I felt some of the tightness and the trembling leave my body. My mind stilled, the cruel voices vanishing as I focused on each swing, each pivot, each block.

  After two hours, Shera appeared in the doorway to call us to breakfast and every small step I’d taken back from the edge of my suffocating despair was immediately undone. The thought of facing my parents filled me with renewed panic, a rush of visceral memory and anchorless emotion returning to crush my chest from the inside out.

  “Miss,” Quintin called me back from the tumult of my thoughts as he stood watching me squirm in my own skin.

  “I should go wash up.” My voice shook.

  “No,” he said firmly. “No, I don’t think so.” He crossed the distance between us, careful not to touch me.

  I didn’t retreat, this time.

  “Come on.”

  I followed him into the house and down the hall to the dining room, where my parents sat talking quietly with the rest of our household. Their conversation ceased when we entered and Quintin herded me to my chair, taking the one beside me, far closer than his usual self-imposed isolation at the opposite end of the table. Our weapons clattered softly against the wooden furniture. He’d not even allowed me time to remove my sword belt, so I sat, feeling foolish and filthy in my breeches and tunic. My parents exchanged a glance but made no comment. Gabe and Preston eyed us in confusion. Shera, Ellen, and Poppy stared, wide-eyed and speechless, utterly scandalized by the scene before them. Ignoring them all, Quintin began filling his plate. After a long moment, my father finally broke the awkward silence.

  “I see your training is continuing apace.”

  I couldn’t speak, all my shame and doubt whispering inside my head. Instead, I forced my trembling hands to pluck a roll from a nearby basket.

  They’ll see. They’ll see right through you. They’ll see that you’re broken. Weak. A disappointment.

  “She struggles with the weight of a proper targe,” my wheat-haired commander replied in my stead. “I’ve a mind to see her fit for a Freyjan shield. I think it would suit her better.”

  I glanced at him. It was nothing he’d mentioned to me. Afraid to draw attention, I focused on my breakfast, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “I wasn’t aware you’d studied the Freyjan style,” my father replied skeptically.

  “I haven’t,” Quintin admitted, “but it’s similar enough to a buckler in function that I think I can reasonably adapt the same techniques.”

  Father eyed him a moment across the table, considering the proposition thoroughly. “An interesting idea,” he replied at length. “I’ll see you’re properly funded.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  I could feel eyes on me and dared to look up from my plate. My mother sat disturbingly still, her penetrating gaze boring into me from the far end of the table.

  “Waste of good coin,” Greta muttered under her breath as she circled with a pitcher of juice.

  I wasn’t the only one who heard. Across the table, our three maids exchanged nervous looks, coming to a silent agreement that pretending not to hear was the best choice of action. Greta continued to grumble as she circled and filled our glasses, only bits and pieces discernable amongst the endless string of discontent coming from her until she fetched up beside me and snatched my glass off the table.

  “Not proper, for a lady to be dressed so,” she groused, making a point not to look at me.

  Quintin, apparently eager to bring the wrath of the seven hells down upon his own head, set aside his fork and turned a stone stare her way.

  “How is that, madam?”

  She glared back at him, seemingly unleashed by the acknowledgement. “Dressed as a man, stinking and filthy at her father’s table! And armed like any common garrison rat!” Her gaze flicked to Gabe and Preston, who traded glances at each other’s sword belts. “No offense, boys.” They both raised their hands in an innocuous gesture, neither one daring to speak. “She ought to have outgrown this nonsense by now,” she added stiffly. “You lot do her a disservice, encouraging it like you do.”

  “Greta,” my father’s voice warned half-heartedly.

  She plunked the glass down hard in front of me, a bit of juice sloshing over the side. “She ought to be practicing that lyre collecting dust in the drawing room. Or learning to paint like the other young ladies of standing.”

  “And which of those skills would save her life?” Quintin challenged beside me, his voice just as detached and impassive as ever. Across the table, Gabe and Preston froze, the latter nearly choking on his water. Greta drew herself up indignantly and stormed out of the room, muttering under her breath about uppity young men.

  When breakfast was finally ov
er and I excused myself, Quintin followed me into the hall. Itching in my skin from the interminable humiliation of it all, I turned on him, remnants of my volatile anger barely held in check.

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “She was disrespectful.”

  “So it’s only okay when you insult me,” I countered dryly. The barest flicker of remorse flashed behind his cool composure. “Stop it!” I snapped, a sharp, shrill sound breaking free from my fragile restraint.

  “I didn’t say anything” he replied flatly, though by the guarded look on his face, he knew full well what I meant.

  “I don’t want your pity,” I spat.

  “I’m just trying to help you-”

  “That!” I exclaimed, jabbing an accusatory finger in his face. “Stop being nice!”

  “You want me to be mean to you?” he scoffed incredulously.

  “I want you to stop pretending like you give a damn! You hate me, remember? A month ago, being assigned to me was a disgrace! A punishment!” I hurled the words at him, anchorless fury straining for any outlet. “Trailing a spoiled noble whore-”

  “Hold your tongue, woman,” he snarled, the full weight of his Tuvrian pride brought to bear.

  We were not in the garden, but I ceded to him out of habit, inexplicably consoled by that familiar disdain. Blue eyes glinted angrily as he pointed back the way we’d come.

  “As long as you hide from them, you’re only playing pretend. Eat and sleep and breathe as you are, as you want to be.”

  “That is not the world we live in,” I countered bitterly.

  “In this house, it damn well will be.”

  CHAPTER 21

  I was soaking in the bath when my mother burst into the room, her eyes filled with quiet rage. “Tell me who,” she demanded. Shera squeaked in surprise, dropping the scrub brush onto the tile floor with a clatter.

  “I don’t-”