Page 57 of A Kiss of Flame

If the knights found out…

Wren glanced at the two men to find them deep in a conversation of their own, a hushed and hurried argument from the looks of it.

An admission like that in Pelias was liable to get Carlotta locked away, or handed over to the Maidens of the Aurum for the rest of her life. If that was all she would be lucky. No wonder she had been terrified when Wren had thoughtlessly dragged her into the Sanctum behind her.

‘I need you to stay here and be safe,’ she said urgently to Carlotta. ‘Watch for us coming back. And if we don’t, you go and tell Lynette everything, all right?’ And that might be as dangerous a mission as their own. Lynette would be furious. And then Lynette would tell Ylena. And who knew if anyone would survive that.

Wren turned to the others. ‘Anselm? Are you ready?’

‘You should stay here as well,’ Olivier told her, but he didn’t seem quite so adamant now.

‘You know what I am, what I can do?’ she said bluntly. ‘You know it better than anyone, don’t you? Were you born with magic?’ He sucked in a breath to hear that. Well, it was almost as shocking as Carlotta’s had been in its own way. Then he nodded slowly.

‘I gave it up, to the Aurum. As all men must.’ It was their tradition she recalled. Women joined the Maidens of the Aurum and men surrendered what little magic they had in them back to the flames. Most became knights. Others just left. There didn’t seem to be any choice in the matter but none of them seemed to care about that.

‘I… I’m sorry.’

Olivier frowned, clearly baffled. ‘Why? I’m not.’

She had to keep reminding herself that she was not only her powers. That she controlled them and not the other way around, just as Maryn had said. She closed her hand around the little charm and felt its shape imprint on her palm. He might have given up the magic he was born with, but she never would. She couldn’t. But that didn’t mean she should let them control her. Or expect anyone else to welcome such powers.

They left the palace in silence, leaving Carlotta as promised at the unmanned gate. If there were normally guards there, they were gone now, whether with Sassone or Roland. Anselm took the lead. ‘He’ll be keeping her in his dungeons.’

‘And torturing her?’ Wren had to force herself to say it.

His stalwart expression faded. Something else ghosted across his face. ‘Yes. I expect so.’

‘Why, Anselm?’

He shook his head as if to say he didn’t know. ‘We ruled this city once, my family, warlords and robber barons, long before the Aurum was brought here. He wants to go back to that, and as regent he had a taste of it. And more than that… I think he truly believes what he says, that Queen Aeryn deserted and betrayed us all. He knows her to be a traitor and he will not listen to reason. Her trial didn’t go as he intended and the Aurum forgave her any transgressions. He’s going to try to prove it wrong, by whatever means necessary.’

There wasn’t really anything to say to that, Wren decided. She didn’t know what had happened all those years ago, no more than she knew why Elodie had never returned, preferring to live in the wilds of Cellandre rather than wear her crown and rule, why she had preferred the life of a hedge witch to that of a queen.

‘We should hurry,’ she told him and that was that.

Thankfully, Anselm didn’t argue anymore and Olivier followed his lead.

They trailed after him out into the city. To his father’s halls. To Elodie.

CHAPTER 30

WREN

The lower city was eerily quiet in the aftermath of the knights’ charge through it earlier.

People hid indoors, Wren realised, which was not a good sign. The same people who had thronged the streets to see their queen come home now hid from her knights in terror.

It was not good. Not good at all.

The last time Wren had come this way, the streets had been strewn with flowers and streamers. They passed the remains of the market, stalls shattered to kindling, and Anselm turned down a side street, and along a winding laneway. Up ahead, they could hear a growing noise, the sound of a huge number of men and horses.

‘Have you seen them?’ someone hissed out of a doorway and Wren spun around to see a woman peering out through a crack in the door. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Stay inside,’ Anselm told her briskly, as if he had all the authority of the knights still to back him up. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

‘Have the knights gone mad?’

He winced. ‘No. Lord Sassone has. He kidnapped the queen.’ The way he said it, so calm and factual… no one would have guessed he was talking about his own father.