Last Stand (The Black Mage #4)(2)

They believed the Crown would save them all.

I couldn’t consider them fools. I had shared the same dream just hours before.

And now your life will never be the same.

Darren caught my frown and squeezed my hand, mistaking the reason for my discontent. “I’m sure your parents would be here if they could.”

I glanced down to where his fingers interlocked with mine and swallowed. I needed to say something. The longer I remained silent, the more his worry would grow.

I wet my lips and cleared my throat. “It would have been too painful.” It didn’t matter that it was their only daughter’s wedding—and to a crown prince of Jerar. After Derrick’s death, they refused to set foot in the capital ever again—not after their youngest had been strung up from the palace rafters, branded a traitor to the world.

My parents might not have blamed me with their words, but I’d seen it in their eyes. Their child was gone, and I should’ve found a way to save him.

They weren’t wrong.

But how was I to know? Not even Derrick had guessed how far the Crown’s treachery had gone.

I’d been so busy defending the boy I loved that I’d forgotten to look to his brother. And why would I? Blayne had played his part well, so well that after years of cruelty, he had still managed to convince me there was something of the boy he used to be. I had believed him to be somewhat good. A man whose horrible past had hardened his edges, but still left him capable of kindness. Benevolence. Regret. Better than his tyrant of a father.

That had been my biggest mistake of all. The two children might have been raised in darkness, but only one was capable of light.

As I adjusted my seat, the yellow silk ruffles of my dress shifted, and I prayed Darren didn’t notice the small splotches of red staining their base—my blood from just an hour before.

“We can visit them on our way, if you’d like.”

I swallowed, my mouth as dry as sand. “That would be nice.” As soon as the weeklong celebrations were over, the two of us would be tasked with hunting the rebels. I wasn’t surprised by Darren’s decision to go north; he’d been discussing it for weeks.

Marius, the former Black Mage, had already scoured the south during the last ten years of his reign. It had made sense at the time. All the attacks and sabotage had taken place in Jerar’s southernmost towns—primarily the Red Desert, Port Cyri, and the salt mines in Mahj, wherever a shipment was due. Why wouldn’t the rebels have been stationed nearby?

Unfortunately, the new Black Mage had other theories as to why the rebels had never been found—theories that would eventually lead to Ferren’s Keep and my brother and friends.

To the rebels.

Panic squeezed my lungs as I took a shaky breath.

It was up to me to lead Darren astray. I knew full well this act would cost me my prince in the end.

It was the only way. I had seen the bond between brothers. Even now, the two beautiful boys cracked jokes during our procession across the city, neither quite aware that the girl beside them was bleeding out from the inside, screaming for help.

Gods, I had lived out my own choice just two months before. Given the choice between Derrick and what was right… I had chosen my brother, not that it had mattered in the end. I had acted too late, and that was still before I had realized the nefarious ploy of the king, before I had realized Derrick had been telling the truth all along.

Back then I had believed my little brother to be a traitor to the Crown. I had known full well that, should he escape with the information he had stolen, hundreds of lives would be the debt to pay, possibly—definitely—more. And yet I had been willing to risk them in the end, anything to save my brother from a horrible fate at the gallows, and I knew Darren would do the same.

It wouldn’t be my husband’s fault if he made the same mistake for Blayne. Darren’s father had groomed the second-born son as his brother’s protector through years of abuse, and when one spent so many years protecting someone they deemed a victim, it became impossible to see them any other way. Even after everything Blayne had done—assaulting my best friend and tormenting me all throughout the apprenticeship when he thought I was just some pitiful lowborn that had caught his brother’s eye—I had still pitied the heir.

Besides, there were some choices one should never have to make, and I never wanted to give Darren that choice. I didn’t want to let him choose wrong. I didn’t care how selfish that made me. If he went to his brother first, if he gave Blayne a chance to explain, the evil king would have the whole world up in flames before Darren had a chance to recoup his mistake. Two of the country’s most powerful mages were nothing against a king’s army. Everything would burn and shatter, and every one of the rebels would be put to death at the crack of dawn.

Not me, of course. Blayne was too shrewd, too calculating. He disliked me from the start, and yet he had made me a part of his plans. As sick and twisted as the king was, he cared for his brother and wanted his support. Until Blayne could turn Darren against me, the king would have me rotting in a cell. And once he’d succeeded, then he’d take my life.

And then the king would go to war—a pointless, costly war that his father had been staging for countless years, all part of an elaborate scheme to portray Jerar as the victim and Caltoth as the aggressor. The other two countries in our nation’s Great Compromise would break with King Horrace, and Jerar would become the country with the biggest army, and the wealthiest.