18. Rehn

EIGHTEEN

REHN

B ursting out of the royal guard house, Rehn was ready to strangle the life out of that cursed sorcerer with his bare hands. If he had done the same to Drystan in the first place, none of this would have happened. The threat to the kingdom and to his mate would have been smothered in the crib before it could have harmed anyone else.

"Where is Altair?" the king bellowed. His fingers itched for violence. The man had to die. His inner beast agreed, rippling just under his skin.

"Hold yourself, My King," Idris called out, rushing to catch up with Rehn.

His formality shook Rehn from his rage, but only just. The beast inside yearned for the blood of the sorcerer who put his mate in danger. Idris moved in front of him, hands up hoping to calm him.

"I will take you to the sorcerer, to Altair, but you need to calm yourself. You are the king. You can't go around tearing your subject of life and limb," Idris said. "There are protocols to follow. A trial, evidence."

"I have all the evidence I need." Rehn held up the wicker charm Chaniel matched with the magical signature in the cell. "Don't worry, I will get my answers from the man before he takes his last breath, but I am done with half measures. If I did what I wanted to, no, what I needed to do when I had Drystan in my hand, none of this would have ever happened. The kingdom would be safe. Leila would be safe."

Idris's head nodded slowly and he let out a long breath. He might have been Rehn's closest friend and advisor, but he itched to push past the man, to do what both he and his inner animal wanted more than damn near anything at that moment.

"None of this would have happened, yes?" Idris asked, head shaking slowly. "Would you really prefer that? Is there nothing that has happened recently you would mourn not occurring?"

Those words chilled the king's fury, even quieted the beast within. He'd argued with Leila over the potential dangers of her powers, of the ability to change the past and how that would change the present and future in unknown ways.

If Rehn killed Drystan when he had the chance, the madman would have never led him and Idris to the Sorcerer's Academy. That would have protected Leila, sure, at least for the moment, but Rehn would not have met her. From the way she spoke of the place, she hardly left and had never come to the castle before. Rehn hardly ever found himself there either.

Not only would they not have met when they did, it was quite possible Rehn would have never met his mate at all. His bear roared at the thought. And Drystan was not working alone. He had Altair, a sorcerer on his side, working with him or as the man in charge of the whole conspiracy. Leila would have been safe from Drystan, but not Altair. Without his protection, what would have come of her? The realization chilled him.

"It seems you've seen sense," Idris said, slapping his friend's shoulder. "What say we interrogate our prisoner, My King?"

Rehn nodded and Idris started walking around the main keep with the king beside him. Their path took them toward the mountainside cliff where the castle's man-made walls reached the bottom of the granite cliff rising high into the clouds. The first keep, built here in time immemorial, sat right against that granite wall. Rehn's ancestors had carved tunnels into that rock, the first dungeons and the perfect place to stash a prisoner like Altair. Rehn had almost completely forgotten about them.

He followed Idris through the wrought iron gate and down the stairs carved into the mountainside itself. While not used for hundreds of years, countless people had walked these stairs, leaving ruts in the rock.

The temperature dropped the lower they went. After a few flights' worth of descent, the spiral stairs opened into a narrow chamber with a low ceiling. Two royal guards sat at a table near the entrance. Seeing their king and his closest advisor, they jumped to their feet and saluted, standing at attention.

"As you were," Idris said. "How is our guest?"

"He lives, but I don't think he is enjoying the accommodations, sir," one guard said, then his eyes darted to Rehn and he bowed. "And, Your Majesty, sir."

Rehn waved him off and followed Idris past the guards. Doorways hewn out of the rock itself opened off the narrow chamber. Most held no gates at all, the metal having long rusted to nothing or been repurposed centuries ago, all except for one. Fresh steel bars blocked passage through the last door furthest from the only escape outside fifty feet of granite.

Altair lay inside the cell, hunched over with his wrists and ankles bound in manacles chained both together and to the wall behind him. He couldn't move from his bent-over position and only looked up, watching the newcomers through a tangled forest of his own grease-smeared hair.

"I have all the proof I need to condemn you, Altair," Rehn said, sneering at the sorcerer's name. "You're still breathing only because my closest advisor urged my restraint, to learn what we can from you, but this is only a stay of execution. You will pay for your crimes."

"My crimes?" Altair asked, voice a raspy rattle. He coughed but his voice remained strained. "I am unaware of any crimes I might have committed. Care to enlighten me?"

The defiance rankled Rehn's inner beast. It rumbled, itching to come out and strike the man down, if only for the danger this conspiracy put his mate in. His head remained cool, though and he held up the wicker charm. The condemned man blinked and stared at it through narrowed eyes.

"Taking up basket weaving? Wouldn't imagine a king would have time for such frivolities," Altair said.

Did the man want Rehn to kill him here and now? It took all the king's willpower to keep his inner beast restrained. Even Idris beside him let out a low growl, his own restraint tested.

"We took this protective charm from the door to your cottage," Rehn said. "Just now, the academy's best tracker of magical signatures confirmed your signature matched that left in the prison when Drystan was freed. The game is done. Tell me what you had planned."

"You took that from my door? Not much protection if anyone can just walk up and take the charm from my home, is there?" Altair shrugged the best he could while chained. "I don't weave my protections so haphazardly. They are in the boards and stones of the house itself. I've never seen that before in my life."

That didn't sound like a lie and sent Rehn imagining what would have happened if he had just killed the man, likely the wrong man. They'd think the danger passed when the real conspirator remained somewhere in the shadows waiting to strike, to take his mate.

"Where were you yesterday?" Idris asked.

"That, I can answer," Altair replied. "I went to the Sorcerer's Academy. I lent a book to an old friend last week and he had yet to return it when he said he would. I don't like losing track of my books, so I went looking for it."

"I assume this old friend knows how particular you are with your books? Would he know you'd come looking for him?" Rehn asked.

"You think he's involved? Maybe he tried to frame me?" Altair laughed, a dry wheezing rake that turned into a cough.

Rehn wasn't laughing, though. It made sense. If Altair had never seen the charm, it had to have been placed after he left his cottage in the woods. It was placed conspicuously, something Altair claimed he wouldn't do with a protection charm, and who knew when Altair would be gone? Whoever borrowed one of his precious books.

"Who borrowed your book?" Rehn demanded.

"Xanthus Gahyred," Altair replied.

"Xanthus Gahyred," Rehn repeated.

He didn't have all sorcerer's names memorized but that one rang a bell in his head. Then, he thought to Leila and his eyes widened. He was her mentor at the academy, a well-regarded scholar from what she'd shared with him.

"Are you seriously thinking Xanthus would have done this to me?" Altair asked. "The man is a mentor to almost all sorcerers at the academy, a friend to everyone. He wouldn't hurt a fly let alone frame a man he's known for decades. This was the first time he had ever been late returning a book of mine."

"Did anyone else know your plans? That you were leaving for the academy to retrieve your book?" Idris asked while Rehn's mind raced. "If so, they could be the true culprit."

"I enjoy a solitary life with my research and experiments," Altair replied. "There is no one to tell of my comings and goings, but I tell you, Xanthus would not do this. He is as far from a villain as possible."

"Most villains do not think of themselves as malevolent," Rehn said. "They want to believe they are in the right and justify their evil for the greater good. If he's willing to throw you under the cart, try to frame you, there is little he wouldn't do."

Rehn wanted to rush out of the ancient prison and find his mate, ensuring she was safe, but it wasn't like anyone could harm her here in the castle. Still, it didn't calm his bear, which was growing more and more restless the longer he was away from Leila. Turning back to continue the questioning, he stopped, hearing footsteps rushing down the granite stairs. The guards faced the stairwell, glancing between each other, then back to Rehn and Idris.

"Hold, it is Yaldred," Idris said, hand up.

That did little to calm the king. She should be with Leila. Why would she come here now? Was Leila injured? His inner beast raged at the thought.

Yaldred jogged off the staircase and hurried past the two guards, stopping in front of the king, panting. She took a moment before she spoke.

"Leila just left to go back to the Sorcerer's Academy," she said.