Dark Triumph

His warning is like a pail of frigid water in my face. Of course, he is right. And even now I have no idea how many are blindly loyal to d’Albret or simply follow him out of fear.

As I straighten, I glance at the seneschal. Is that only concern over my well-being I see in his eyes? Or is there a trace of slyness as well? And the others. I glance around the courtyard at the men-at-arms. There are nearly a dozen of them, and they all appear relaxed enough. If they have been given any orders concerning me, the instructions do not seem to include restraining me on sight.

Avoiding Beast’s eyes, I compose my face and stand up. “I am overwhelmed by the dearness of the gift my brother has left me,” I tell the seneschal. “And tired besides. I would like to retire to my room, if I may. Oh, and our riders follow behind us. When they arrive, see that they and their horses are cared for.”

“But of course, my lady.” Just then, a serving woman bearing a tray comes into the courtyard, and I recognize Heloise. She greets me joyfully as she hands me a goblet. I take a sip and act as if it refreshes me. “See to the Baron de Waroch’s comfort, if you please. We would both like to rest ourselves after our travels.”

At the very least, I need to wash the taint of my brother’s message from me, so that I am clean when I set out after my sisters.

For all the staff’s faults and questionable loyalties, they are well trained, and the holding is in excellent order. My own room is as if I had never left it. “Put the baron in the south guest chamber,” I instruct Heloise. It is one of the finest and will confer a certain amount of prestige upon him, and it is close by mine—a mere two doors away.

Once I’m settled in my chambers, Heloise directs two young maids to prepare a bath before the fire, then comes to help me undress. “How did you find my brother, Heloise? Was he in good spirits? I know my lord father is much distracted of late.”

“Oh yes, my lady. Lord Julian was in g*y spirits and overjoyed to see his sisters once more. Indeed, his pleasure at their reunion reminded me of how much pleasure he always takes in your company.”

Her words are spoken innocently enough, but they cause my stomach to shrivel into a tiny knot. “And Louise? How is her health of late?”

There is a tiny pause, one that sets alarms clanging in my breast. “She has not grown any stronger, my lady, that is for certain. But hopefully, as spring comes, her health will return.”

I turn to look at her so I may see the truth of her answer in her face. “Was she well enough to make the trip?” As I stare into her brown eyes, I can see a shadow of doubt lurking there.

“Of a certainty, Master Julian thought so. I made sure they placed extra blankets and furs around her and instructed him to be certain she had warm bricks at every opportunity. Lady Charlotte promised to look after her as well.”

And she would, of that I had no doubt, but she was only ten years old and a mere child herself.

After I have bathed and dressed, I send my attendants from the room, claiming I need rest. Instead of resting, however, I begin pacing in front of the fire, trying to determine the best way to free my sisters. Will I have any allies on the inside? If Julian is only acting on my father’s wishes, I could most likely coax him into giving me aid, but I fear that he may well have acted on his own, for how else to explain the locks of hair?

And even once I have them free—assuming I do not get us all killed in the process—where will I take them? Where will they be safe?

The convent. The answer comes to me like a whisper on a breeze.

But will they be safe there? What of the abbess? I think of Charlotte and Louise, so different from me, and then I think of all the younger girls at the convent and know they will be safe enough. Even I was safe for a few short years.

It is only the most rudimentary beginnings of a plan, but it is something.

I glance out the window, heartened to see that the sun has dropped low in the sky. The sooner night comes, the sooner I can depart. Even so, as the shadows lengthen in my room, old memories awaken. Dark memories. Having no wish to be alone with them, I decide to go in search of Beast. It is time for him to hear the last of the secrets between us. Perhaps it will make him as eager to be off as I.

I rap on his door, then let myself in. Beast is just pulling a clean doublet over his head and is scandalized. “Sybella! You cannot be in here. Your servants—”

“Shhh,” I tell him. “You forget that these are d’Albret servants, much accustomed to all manner of indiscretion and wickedness. They would be more surprised if I did not visit your room.”

He blinks, not sure what to say to that, and I see drops of water still cling to his lashes. He is quiet for a moment, then ask, “With no one else to hear, will you tell me the significance of the locks of hair?”

Just thinking of them is like a fist to my belly. “It is a message. From my brother Julian.” My throat closes around the things I want to tell him. Instead, I say, “He carries a lock of my hair entwined with his in the hilt of his sword. It is a message . . .” And here I falter, for I cannot bring myself to say out loud what I fear it means.

But Beast is no fool, and when his large hands clench into fists, I know he has puzzled out the meaning. Now. I must tell him now before my courage fails me yet again.

“There is something you must know. My sister Louise—she is Alyse’s daughter.”

Chapter Forty-Four

BEAST STARES MUTELY AT ME, as if he has not heard a word I said. Color begins to rise in his face. “What did you say?” he whispers, his gaze fastening to mine like a starving man to a bone.

“Louise is your sister’s child.”

Beast stares at me a moment longer, his thoughts scudding across his face like storm clouds. Hope, as he realizes some small piece of Alyse still exists, then dismay—nay, anguish—as he realizes that she, too, has been taken from him. By yet another devil-spawned d’Albret. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”

“I had to be certain that you could accept that part of her was d’Albret. Once it was clear you did not hold that against me, I decided it was safe to tell you. I think I had some nascent thought about spiriting them away to safety. Louise, at least. To your own holding, perhaps? But once again, I am too late.” Of a surety, my love is as good as a death sentence.

“You think he means to kill them straightaway?”

“There are other ways to hurt her,” I say softly.

His head jerks around, his face gone white. “Like they hurt you.” It is not a question but a moment of realization. His expression grows thunderous, and his eyes take on that feral light. A low rumble begins deep in his chest, but he chokes it back. Instead, he turns and slams his fist into the casement at the window, causing the leaded glass to rattle.

I wait, holding my breath, uncertain which part of him has control.

When he glances back at me, the fierce light has gone from his eyes, but his face looks as if it were set in gray stone. “I will kill them. All of them.”

“I do not think the girls are in any true danger, not yet.”

Beast’s brows shoot up and he growls his disbelief. I take a deep breath then, for this is not a secret I ever planned to share with him. “Julian—Julian loves me, in his own twisted way. I think he simply sees them as a way to get my attention. Besides, what lies between my brother and me is as much my fault as it is his.”

I move over to the window to stare out into the courtyard. Dusk is falling, and the castle retainers are making ready for the coming night. “It was my brother Pierre’s fault, as most things often were. When I was but eleven years old he began scratching on my bedroom door, wanting to prove he was a man full grown. At first I thought it was ghosts, but then I realized it was Pierre, and his pinching, probing fingers and hungry mouth frightened me far more than any ghosts.

“The first night, I hid under my covers, wondering how I could keep him away from me. Then I did what I have always done to protect myself. I gave Fortune’s wheel a mighty spin and decided to use his own move against him. The next night when he came scratching at my door—more loudly and insistent—it was Julian who called out, ‘What do you want?’

“Of course, we nearly ruined the effect by bursting into a fit of giggles, but we pressed the pillows against our mouths to stifle them.

“You have to understand, Julian was my dearest friend as well as my brother. My first memory is of skirts—coarse woolen or linsey cloth skirts as I toddled in bare feet on the stone kitchen floor. But my second memory is of Julian. Of his small, four-year-old hand taking hold of mine and pulling me into the family proper. Of his kind eyes and a face that always held a smile for me. Of hours spent hiding and playing our secret games, games that no one else understood, or cared to. It was Julian who risked much to hide me from the harm and cruelty of this household, and has since we were old enough to walk.

“So he was my friend first, before all else. We had always been stronger together; I thought this would be no exception.

“Would that I could swim back through time or somehow pour the sand through the hourglass backwards. To live one brief moment differently, make a different choice, set my life on a different path. Surely if gods or saints truly existed, they would have given me some warning, some inkling that my actions would send my life down a road I had no wish to take.

“Such was the moment when I invited Julian into my room, for I did not reckon on Julian’s own ripening body, or that mine would affect him so. He had always had my best interests at heart, and I never imagined this would be any different.”

Beast is still looking out the window, which makes it easier to continue. “But immediately it went wrong—horribly, deeply wrong. Inside, I felt as if some rot had taken hold of my soul. And yet, it made Julian so happy, and it gave him the courage to face down Pierre in all the challenges d’Albret set them. And I had not realized how beholden I felt to him for all the times he had saved me. So while I did not say yes, neither did I tell him no.

“Julian’s fingers were not poking or prodding, but gentle, teasing—awakening sensations that I had never experienced before. And I had not imagined that I could ever hold such power over a man—I, who had been at their mercy since I was born.

“But I had not foreseen that our relationship would take a twisted turn and come close to erasing all the good that once lay between us.”

I glance up at Beast’s face, which is contorted with—horror? Despair? I cannot guess what he is thinking or feeling. He looks down at his enormous, scarred hands. “How you must hate us all,” he says.

I stare at him, trying to understand what game he is playing. “But it was my fault,” I whisper. “My weakness and my—”

His head snaps up. “Your need to be loved? Protected? And for that, your brother demanded such a tithe? That is not a price anyone should have to pay for such things. And so I say again, it is a wonder you do not hate us all on sight.”

Marveling at how easily he has absolved me, I step forward and take his big hands into my own. “Not you, for you are as different from them as day is from night.”

Something in my words has struck him as forcefully as his words did me, and I can see that he wants to kiss me. But he does not, and I—I cannot bring myself to kiss him, not while the confession of such wantonness and wickedness still clings to my lips. The moment draws out into a palpable awkwardness, something that has never existed between us.

Unable to bear it, I turn back to the room and begin straightening the bed curtains. “We leave at first light?”

“Yes,” Beast says. “Do you think they are being brought to d’Albret’s encampment in front of Rennes? Or to Nantes for safekeeping until he returns?”

“I suspect Nantes, for even d’Albret does not want the inconvenience of girl children on his battlefield.”

“Very well. We leave for Nantes at daybreak.”

Leaving Beast to his window, I pace the small chamber, forming a mental list of all the preparations we will need to make before we go. There are not many. Provisions and fresh horses. I will not even have to alert the holding that we are leaving; we can simply be gone when they arise in the morning.

“Is Alyse buried here?” Beast asks, still staring out the window.

My skin pulls tight across my bones. “Yes.”

He turns from the window, his eyes bleak. “I would like to see her.”

I can think of a thousand places I would rather go, for the idea of visiting that place fair sets a wild clang of alarm bells ringing inside me, but I cannot refuse him this chance to visit his sister’s final resting place. “Wait here,” I tell him. “I must fetch the key.”

We step out of the castle into the raw spring evening, both of us quiet and lost in our own thoughts as we cross the inner courtyard and then go through the gate to the outbuildings beyond. Thick gray clouds scuttle across the sky, and I pray they will release their rain tonight rather than tomorrow, as a storm will greatly hamper our progress.

The closer we draw to the castle’s cemetery, the more my muscles twitch and spasm, desperate to avoid this place. My knees tremble with the effort to keep walking and not turn and run.

I lift the latch on the old rusty gate and push it open, its rarely used hinges squeaking in protest. My heart begins pounding and my breath comes faster, as if I have just run some great race. Beast looks at me in question. “There,” I say, pointing to the large mausoleum set near the back.

It is a grim and frightening place, not meant to bring comfort but to invoke all the demons of hell and damnation; that is what d’Albret is certain his wives deserve for having failed to please him in some way.