“I don’t understand. Why would she be alone? Why would you want me to—” He glanced into the chamber. It took him a moment, but when he realized that it was Keeley on the floor, bleeding, he started to run toward her. But Gemma quickly pulled him back.

“Go! Find Beatrix. She went—” Gemma looked at Caid over her shoulder.

He pointed toward the passage where he’d seen her cape disappear.

“And bring her back, yes?” Samuel asked.

“No. Just find out where she’s going if she’s alone.”

“If she’s alone—”

“Go, Samuel! Please.”

The boy ran and Keran called to Gemma. “We’re moving her!”

Caid pulled away from his sister and stalked back into the chamber.

“I’ll take her,” he said, crouching down beside Keeley.

“Someone should hold her legs,” a witch said. “We’re taking her to the healing chamber.”

Laila held Keeley’s legs and nodded at Caid.

Together, brother and sister lifted the blacksmith and followed the witches deeper into the mountainside.

* * *

After about ten minutes, the passageway Beatrix had taken split into two opposite directions and Samuel had no idea which way to go. He did not want to return to Gemma and tell her he’d lost her sister. Especially if she’d been taken by the Devourer or one of his minions.

As he stood in the middle of the two passageways, looking back and forth, he saw Keeley’s horse coming out of the left tunnel, running up to him.

Samuel reared back. The horse had already tried to pound him into the ground with her front hooves more than once since they’d started this trip. And he had no desire to be found by Gemma as nothing more than a pulpy residue left on the cave floor.

But the horse didn’t attack. She stopped, and when Samuel moved forward a bit, she backed up. By the third time, he understood she wanted him to follow, so he did. Running after her as she galloped down passageways and tunnels and through empty but—thankfully—lit chambers. They traveled down and down until they arrived at an opening that had no lighting and led into the far side of the valley.

Samuel stepped in front of the mare but stayed close to the wall and the darkness in case there was someone ready to take Beatrix and put her into chains.

But that’s not what he saw. He saw a very calm Beatrix simply . . . waiting. She was not in chains and she was not sobbing in despair. She was just . . . standing there.

Then, at one point, she pulled one of her hands out of her fur muff and scratched her face. Samuel gasped in shock. The blood on her hand. Her hand was soaked in blood and she didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

Confused, disturbed, and attempting to rationalize what he was seeing, he started to turn away but Keeley’s horse bumped him with her muzzle. Samuel looked back and saw a carriage with four horses coming through some trees. The carriage stopped in front of Beatrix and the driver dismounted. He opened the carriage door and dropped a small set of stairs. Holding her hand, the driver assisted her into the carriage. The stairs were returned, the door closed, and the driver went back to his seat. With a lash, he sent the horses turning around so they could head back the way they’d come. When the carriage was facing away from him, Samuel saw the crest on the back of the vehicle.

“What the fuck,” he muttered to the gray mare behind him, “did I just see?”

CHAPTER 12

Once Keeley was in a proper bed in the witches’ healing chamber, Gemma was sure that her sister was dead. So much blood had been lost and she didn’t seem to respond to anything. But the witches kept working, making Gemma and Keran leave Keeley and wait in the passageway outside.

Eventually, a panting, sweating Samuel returned, with Keeley’s gray mare behind him, refusing to be led away when several of the witches tried.

When the witches were reassured by the centaurs that the horse would not be allowed into the healing chamber itself, Gemma led her squire down the passageway.

“All right, tell me. Did you find Beatrix?”

“Yes. She was alone.”

“Are you sure?” Keran pushed and that’s when Gemma realized her cousin had followed.

“She was definitely alone.”

“Where is she now?” Gemma asked.

“She left the fortress through a tunnel.”

“A cave tunnel?”

“Yes. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. It led her straight into the valley where a carriage met her soon after she arrived.”

Gemma and Keran exchanged glances.

“A carriage? Are you sure?”

Few people in the Hill Lands had carriages. Except, of course, for the—

“It was a royal carriage,” Samuel replied. “And the crest on the back was the crest of Prince Marius.”

“Prince Marius . . . ?” That didn’t make sense to Gemma. Why would her extremely smart sister ever get in a carriage with one of the Old King’s sons? They would just kill her, wouldn’t they? As the Devourer had already tried to do.

“That makes no sense,” Keran said, shaking her head.

Samuel had been Gemma’s squire for nearly two years and she’d learned to read his silences because he was often scared to death to tell her things.

“What else?” she finally asked him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He let out a shaky breath and focused on the ground.

“Samuel, spit it out!” she snapped.

“She had blood on her hands.”

Gemma blinked. “She was wounded?”

“No. I . . . I don’t think so. And she was very calm. And patient.”

“Patient? You mean she was waiting for that carriage?”

“I think so.”

“Wait,” Keran cut in, “what are two saying?”

Gemma knew what she was saying but she didn’t have time to inform Keran because the healing witches began barking orders at one another, some ran out of the chamber, and others ran in.

Pushing past Samuel, Gemma tried to enter the chamber to see what was wrong. What might be happening with her sister. But several witches pushed her out.

“We do not need your kind of help, War Monk,” one of them said. “You can wait outside.”

Not willing to risk her sister’s chances of survival, Gemma respected the witches’ demand and returned to the passageway. And that’s where all of them waited.

* * *

The carriage pulled to a stop where Marius waited with several of his men. He glanced up at the suns again to gauge the time and wished his mother would hurry up. Most people he wouldn’t waste his precious time waiting for, but when it came to his mother . . .

She had proven herself to him in ways others had not. And not merely by being his mother. Marius didn’t believe in automatically giving respect to someone just because she had expelled him from her body as a million other women had done through time.

No, his respect came from the brilliant guidance his mother had given him over the years. With that, she had earned his loyalty. But still . . . he had more important things to do right now than meet some woman his mother would like to see him marry.

The driver opened the carriage door and lowered the steps. Maila stepped down and immediately moved to him, kissing him on both cheeks.

“Come along, my dear,” she said. “Don’t keep my son waiting.”

The small woman, bundled up in a fur cape, stepped down from the carriage. She pulled the hood of her cape back to reveal her face, and the men beside him gave polite coughs or began to shuffle their feet. All of them looked down or away.

She wasn’t hideous, but she wasn’t worthy of a king either.

Speaking from the side of his mouth, Marius said to his mother, “She’s a little plain, isn’t she?”

His mother sighed. “Marius—”

“It’s all right,” the woman said. “I don’t get insulted.”

With a straight back and a confident walk, she came to stand in front of Marius.

“So you’re . . .”

“Beatrix.”

Marius stared at the muff she had her hands stuffed in. “Is that blood on your fur?”

She glanced down, cursed. “I’ve been trying to get that out.”

“Were you injured?”

Maila took Marius’s arm. “Let’s go inside and—”

“I don’t mind answering,” Beatrix said. “I killed my sister. This is her blood.”

With a smile, she entered his tent.

Marius locked his gaze on his mother.

“Really?” he asked.

“I promise there’s a reason. A good one!”

“Uh-huh.”

* * *

Beatrix studied her fur muff. Studied the blood on it. Her sister’s blood. It was strange . . . she felt nothing. She’d thought she’d feel exhilaration. She’d taken her first human life, and she’d always read that such a thing was exciting. But no. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as she’d dreamed.

Then again, her sister had not cried out. She had not fought back. She had done nothing.

Not like those cats. The barn cats they used to have. Her father and Keeley had blamed the demon wolves from the woods for the cats’ deaths, but it had been Beatrix. Because she wanted to see what it was like to take a life. She’d been three at the time and the little cats had put up such a fight. Even the kittens.

Gemma had seen the scratches on Beatrix’s arms. Tried to blame her for the cats’ deaths, but Keeley wouldn’t hear it. She always protected her. It was a shame she’d had to kill her.

Especially because that hadn’t been the plan. It was Gemma she should have left bleeding out on the floor. The one greeting their ancestors. But gods-damn Keeley wanting to help everyone with their back problems had created this dilemma as much as anything else.

And now having the War Monk still living after seeing what she could do in battle was . . . troubling. But it was too late for regrets.