24. Stig

24

Stig

I MISSED TAMSYN. TWO WEEKS WITHOUT HER AND EACH DAY the ache in my chest only intensified.

I could not stop wondering how I might have saved her. What could I have said in her room that might have persuaded her to run away with me? What could I have said to my father to change his mind? What could I have done to stop Dryhten from marrying her, from bedding her?

What? What? What?

The questions kept me up at night. Guilt niggled, pushing down between my shoulder blades, an endless pressure.

I'd failed. Tamsyn. Myself.

The day she left ran through my mind on repeat. Everything, every horrible moment a slow slide of memory I wished I could forget, but I couldn't, because it was carved, a deep scar on my heart. She'd left with him. She was out there alone with those barbarians, suffering indignities I could not fathom.

Footsteps sounded outside my chamber. Loud, discordant shouts, distant and near, alerted me that something had happened.

Someone pounded on my door. The palace was abuzz.

I dressed quickly and grabbed my rapier, attaching it to my belt as I walked in long strides down the corridor, my boots ringing out over the flooring as I followed the din.

I was stoic when I entered the king's chancery. I felt dead inside, and I knew I looked it, looked how I had felt for weeks now. Nothing gave me joy anymore. Nothing filled me with purpose. I went about my duties and training because there was nothing else to be done. I carried on because there was the remote hope, a thin flame of chance, that I would hear from her again, that she would send for me.

The room was alive. People were everywhere. It was chaos. Voices loud and overlapping. The queen looked pale, and one of her ladies helped her down into a chair, rapidly fanning her. My father looked unusually flustered as he talked to the king and other members of the council.

The back of my neck tingled as I made my way to the front of the chamber. I stopped beside my father, and his gaze landed on me, his brown eyes so like my own, except now they were fever bright.

"Stig!" He snapped his fingers several times, and a palace guard appeared bearing a piece of parchment. "A falconer just delivered this."

I took the message. My gaze scanned the words. The unbelievable words. The couldn't-possibly-be-true words.

My body physically rebelled. My stomach dropped, and I feared that my earlier meal might return on me.

"It's not true," I announced in a hard voice, steeling myself against the storm of emotions flooding me. "He's lying. The bastard is lying." I crumpled the paper in my fist and tossed it to the floor, not caring who might still want to read it.

My father nodded grimly, his gaze fixed on me. Beyond him, the king lowered himself down beside his queen, pulling her into his arms, comforting her through her tears of grief.

A single word lifted over the crowd, rippling through the room again and again, on the tongue of everyone.

Dragon.

I didn't believe it. It was a lie. A trick.

My father stepped close. "What do you make of this?"

"He's killed her. There is no dragon. It was him, and he invented this ridiculous story to cover his actions."

My father nodded grimly. "I think you're right." He added in a sneer: "Dragon. He must think us fools. Well. We can't let this stand."

"No," I agreed. Tamsyn was lost. Gone. And I was lost, too.

I would not let it stand. She would be avenged.