22. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

A week before

Missing Gray, while slightly more manageable with every passing day, was a feeling that didn't abate merely because Rory had realized how many mistakes he'd made with the man he loved. Still, he couldn't stay in bed, feeling sorry for himself, or stare moodily out the window and not attend to the mountain of paperwork heaped upon his desk. Still, he made time—time he realized he should have been making all along—to summon Marthe to his office.

"Your Majesty," Marthe said dipping into a quick, economical bow.

"I told you that you needn't bother," Rory said, but Marthe's lips compressed into a stubborn line.

"You are my king, and I am your general," Marthe said. "Anything else would be unseemly."

And even though she would continue to resist, Rory knew he would continue to ask, and maybe someday, she might relent. Probably not though, Rory thought with an internal grin.

"You've summoned me?" Marthe asked.

"Please sit," Rory said, indicating a chair opposite his own. "I wish to discuss tradition with someone I trust. Someone who knows the nobility, but isn't a member of the court."

Marthe's gaze sharpened as she sat down. "You are thinking of changing things," she said, and Rory was pleasantly surprised to see that she looked delighted at the possibility.

"I am," Rory admitted. "I . . . perhaps for other men, or other women, ruling a kingdom isn't overwhelming, but I am still learning, and still want to make many of the decisions myself. So I find myself with more work than I know what to do with."

"I know Your Majesty wishes to stay involved," Marthe suggested, "but there are some that would be willing to assist."

"Some?" They both knew exactly who she was referring to, but just like Marthe refused to concede to informality, Rory wasn't going to make this easier on her.

"I know Prince Graham was raised and educated to be the King of Ardglass, and you trust him completely. Perhaps you could share some of the burden with him."

Rory smiled. "I could, unofficially. But what if I wished to make such a division of labor more formal?"

She didn't reply immediately, and Rory knew that now he'd surprised her. "You mean," she asked slowly, "to give him some of the power traditionally held by the throne?"

"I mean to marry him," Rory said simply, "and upon our marriage, elevate him to kingship, alongside myself. Some decisions, those impacting the whole of the kingdom, would be ones we would need to make together, but others . . . I was thinking of splitting the traditional duties in half."

"I . . . I was not expecting this, Your Majesty," Marthe finally admitted.

Rory stood and wandered over to the window overlooking the courtyard. "I haven't found many references to such action in the past. But even more than myself, I know you to be a scholar of history, especially of Fontaine. Is there any precedent?"

"I . . ." Marthe hesitated. "Whether there is precedent or not, this will not be popular with the nobles and with the court."

Rory turned. He knew he was still too pretty, still too young, to have a truly kingly bearing, but he was working on it. He drew up to his full height—wished he had a few more inches—and leveled his most royal look at Marthe. "This throne is my responsibility and my birthright and those who oppose me should take care to remember that."

Marthe had known him since he was a young child, bookish and quiet, and he was pleasantly surprised to see how astonished she looked. "Of course, Your Majesty," she said. "I do not know of any precedent, though if I remember correctly, there were some ancient documents, from the beginning of this kingdom, giving you the permission to do so."

"I have read them too," Rory said, returning to his seat and leaning forward, capturing her gaze. "I was hoping you would say so, and that we could agree on this particular interpretation."

"Your Majesty." Marthe took a deep breath. "Rory. You are the King. You are free to do whatever you wish. Your aunt saw fit to do the same, but while she was clearly corrupt and sold her soul for the use of dark magic, she did so without the kingdom knowing. Plainly speaking, to the majority of your subjects and your court, she was a decent regent. There is no saying once she held full control that she would have maintained fair and just rule. The common people, they do not care who holds the throne as long as they are treated well, and as your aunt treated them well, there is belief that you will do the same. For the nobles, however, it is different. She cultivated many of them, elevated them, spoiled them with power and riches. They are not so easily persuaded to support you, especially when they never knew she was an evil sorceress."

"She was power-mad," Rory said. "It would have shown eventually, but you are right. It was not evident to the country when she was killed, and that hurts my own position."

"The kingdom does not trust Prince Graham yet. Ardglass is not, and has never traditionally been, an enemy of Fontaine, but the court sees him as a prince from another country—one you are very close to, one whose bed you share."

Rory drummed his fingers on the table. "I'm not trusted."

"Perhaps an exaggeration, but there is a current of distrust, and I am sure you know of whom I speak, but there are those who curry that distrust, to their own benefit."

"Count Aplin, and the Duke of Rinard," Rory said bluntly.

Marthe nodded.

"It would be a great benefit to me and also to Gray if I could somehow expose my aunt's treachery and dark magic to the court," Rory thought out loud, "but it cannot be as simple as merely saying so."

"There needs to be evidence," Marthe agreed. "Evidence they can see with their own eyes."

"They must make the decision that she would have been a poor ruler themselves. But . . ." Rory smiled. "Perhaps we can lead them there."

"I have yet to do much investigation of the catacombs underneath some of Beaulieu. You knew there was an existing structure, when your great-great-great-grandfather began the construction of the existing castle?"

"I was aware," Rory said, "though I was under the impression those areas had been sealed off."

"They were, but I have long held the belief that Sabrina opened some of the rooms and used them as a secret lair to experiment with her dark magic."

"Why would you think so?"

Marthe held out her hands. "Have you found any evidence of dark magic in the castle proper? I have not, and I have searched. Yet we know unequivocally that she had it. I was hoping to leave the place where it was kept buried, deep in the ground, but perhaps we should expose it—and her, along with it."

"I too would rather leave it buried but . . ." Rory could not help but think of Gray's soft expression on the early morning of his departure, and the desolation in his eyes when Rory had turned down his proposal. He could not lose him, no matter what the cost. And this plan of his, where they married and shared the ruling of the kingdom, was instrumental to their future. "We must find it and we must show it to the court."

To Rory's surprise, Diana came to fetch him, short of breath and with panic in her eyes, the very next morning. "Marthe needs you," she said, giving Rory a quick, perfunctory bow that made Rory's heartbeat accelerate with uncertainty in his chest. The only one of his guard who was more of a stickler for protocol than Marthe was Diana. So the fact that she essentially eschewed it this time in favor of speed did not bode well at all.

"Is everything alright?" Rory asked as he and Diana, with an accompanying Anya, hurried in the direction of the throne room.

Diana's expression was grim. She led them past the throne room and they stopped in the hallway, where they had entered Beaulieu six months ago, trying to surprise Sabrina and defeat her before any of the armies could engage. The grate had been pulled open, and Rory could see the flickering of torches in the dark tunnel below.

"You must see what we discovered," she said, and refused to say anything further as she held out an arm to assist Rory in descending down to the tunnel below. Within moments, Anya and Diana had followed him, and his eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dim light from several torches, posted a few dozen feet apart down the length of the dank sewer.

"Follow me," Diana said, and picking up one of the torches from the makeshift holder, led them in a direction that Rory was fairly sure was opposite of the one they'd taken that fateful day.

"How did you find it?" Anya asked.

"We started here, in the sewer, as that seemed the most obvious method of entry from the castle itself," Diana said as they picked their way down the waterlogged stone. "It did not take us very long to find it." She shuddered, and Rory was sure, with a growing sense of dread, that it wasn't because she was cold, even though there was a distinct chill in the air down below.

Finally, they emerged into a central meeting of several of the large pipes, and there, at the very end of the most forward tunnel, stood Marthe, a bleak look on her face.

"Your Majesty," she said, inclining her head. "I have found what you requested." She gestured, indicating the large metal door that had blocked Sabrina's lair off from the rest of the tunnels.

"Should we not go inside?" Rory asked.

Marthe hesitated. "Your Majesty, we can collapse this tunnel and everything in it, and ensure that the likelihood of it being found and anything inside it ever being used again would be extremely slim."

"But you said earlier, just yesterday in fact, that you thought we should use it to expose Sabrina as the dark witch that she was," Rory objected. He'd been hoping that with the execution of her plan, he could enact his own, and ensure that his and Gray's future was as happy and joyful as he'd always hoped it would be. But now instead Marthe wished to close all the evidence away? Hide it?

"Before you make the decision, you should see inside," Marthe said, her voice as hard as the stone walls surrounding them. "And we should hurry."

Anya placed a hand on the sword hilt on her belt and Rory began to comprehend why Marthe might have changed her mind.

He followed Marthe, pulse thudding dully, into the darkened chamber, secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) terrified of what he would find.

The room itself was fairly basic and non-threatening, with no corpses lying around or blood splashed along the walls. Merely a few old, battered wooden tables, covered in glass jars filled with a creepy assortment of animal parts and some rather more innocuous-looking herbs, and parchments scattered every which way. An enormous deep black cauldron stood in the middle of the room, its interior crusted with burned-on bits that had Rory shuddering.

"This, Your Majesty," Marthe said, pointing to one of the tables, "was what concerned me the most."

Rory stepped over to the table. On it was a vial of some substance, and it was open and clearly fresh, as it had not yet dried out in the container. Next to it was a large stone mortar with a matching stone pestle. Rory put a single fingertip inside, and felt the wetness of whatever mixture had been in process. "You interrupted someone," Rory said softly. "Someone knows about this place and has been using it since Sabrina's demise."

"Or it could be Sabrina, back from the dead," Diana piped in fearfully.

"She's dead, Gray burned her to ash," Anya answered flatly. "But this is clearly one of her sycophants, trying to continue her evil work."

"Unfortunately," Marthe added, "the person fled before we could get a good look, and it was so dark and the terrain so uneven, it was impossible to follow them. However"—she pointed to a scrap of parchment next to the mortar—"they were using one of her recipes. You know it's not her, because look, see the handwriting?" Rory peered closer, and made out his aunt's distinctive handwriting, though he did not recognize the language, and then the very different notations that had been made next to some of the lines.

"Someone is trying to take her place," Rory said in a hard voice. "No, we cannot expose this. We must destroy it. Everything in it. And I must go get Gray, now."

Marthe frowned. "Is it such a good idea to leave the castle at this time of unrest? Surely we could send a messenger to bring Prince Graham back to Beaulieu."

Rory had known she would suggest that; after discovering this lair, she wouldn't want him to leave the relative safety of the castle. But was it truly safe when someone within the walls was attempting to practice Sabrina's particularly warped version of magic?

"We will be quick. I will travel light, with only a small guard. After all, the person who opened this chamber will be here, and not in the Valley." Rory could see Marthe was unsure, but she finally nodded her approval. He hadn't necessarily needed it, because he was the King, after all, but it was certainly easier if she agreed.

"Hopefully we caught whoever was here mid-spell, and they will be unable to complete it," Anya said ominously.

"Hopefully," Rory repeated, but he did not feel particularly hopeful. He felt afraid, and until Gray was back, safely within these walls, and they were again united, he wouldn't sleep easy.