The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

“She needed to know, boy,” Sven said. “Better to hear it from you than have it spill out at an inopportune time.”

I looked at him, incredulous. “She’s going to address the assembly today. Now is a bad time.”

“So there was no good time. It still had to be done. It’s behind you now.”

It would never be behind me. Her dazed expression when I told her cut a hole through me.

I shook my head trying to blot the memory out. “It’s not an easy thing to tell the girl that you love more than life itself that you’re going to marry someone else.”

Sven sighed. “Easy things are for men like me. The difficult choices are left to kings.”

“The general’s a conniving bastard,” Orrin said, yawning, “who needs an arrow in his tight ass.”

Jeb sat up and grinned. “Or I could take care of him quietly. Just say the word.” He made a clicking sound—the snap of a neck—as if showing how quickly it could be done.

It was only a show of solidarity. I knew neither would ever assassinate a legitimate officer of Dalbreck, nor would I let them—though it was tempting.

“And what would you do about the general’s daughter? Kill her too?”

Orrin snorted. “All she needs is one look at my pretty face, and she’d call it off with you. Besides, I’m an archer. I bring home dinner. What do you have to offer?”

“Besides a kingdom?” Sven mumbled.

“You could call it off and try to weather it out,” Tavish offered.

Sven sucked in a breath, knowing the consequence. My position in Dalbreck was precarious. Weathering it out was a risky option. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. The betrothal was the general’s victory and my own private hell—the cost of saving Lia’s life. And while the general played his games, his daughter was caught in the middle of it. I remembered the fear in her eyes, and her trembling hand as she signed the documents. The girl was afraid and wanted no part of me, but I had ignored it because I was desperate and angry.

“Let’s move on,” I said. “What happens between me and Lia isn’t something that needs to be on the table. We have an unbeatable army marching this way.”

“You don’t believe that,” Sven said, finishing off his pie, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I got a look at the troops this morning, and it’s worse than we thought. Azia called it pathetic.”

Sven grunted. “Pathetic is a strong word. The few I saw seemed astute and able.”

“The few you saw is exactly the problem. It’s not that they lack skill or loyalty, but their ranks are depleted. This is their biggest training post, but they’ve been dispersed all over Morrighan in small units. Only a thousand are stationed here right now. Gathering them all back here will take weeks. Even then, it won’t be enough.”

“The Vendan army may not all be headed this way. Dalbreck is a closer target. We’ll sort it out. First things first. The assembly this afternoon. Strategizing a plan after that.”

A plan. I had decided not to tell Sven what I had done. It would either work out or it wouldn’t, and telling him would only incur a blistering lecture about being impulsive. But it hadn’t felt impulsive when I rode to the camp outside the city gates where the handler was ensconced with the Valsprey. After I gave him the messages, I looked back at Civica, and the weight of its history settled over me. I felt the centuries of survival. This was the beginning, the first kingdom to rise after the devastation, the one all the other kingdoms were born from, including Dalbreck. Morrighan was a jewel the Komizar hungered for, a validation of his own greatness, and once he had it, along with its abundant resources, no kingdom would be spared. My doubts vanished. He was coming here first.

Sven eyed me suspiciously, as if he could see the inner workings of my mind. He set his papers aside. “What did you do?”

We had been together for too many years. I sat down in an overstuffed chair and threw my feet up on the table. “I added a request in my message to the colonel at Fontaine.”

“A request?”

“An order. I told him to send his troops to Civica.”

Sven sighed and rubbed his eyes. “How many?”

“All of them.”

“All of them as in all of them?”

I nodded.

Sven jumped to his feet, jarring the table and spilling his cider. “Have you lost your mind? Fontaine’s our largest outpost! Six thousand soldiers! It’s our first line of defense for our western borders!”