The Devastation (Unexpected Circumstances #7)(27)

I glanced over at him, looked into his eyes, and felt more pity for him than I expected. He was going to die, and he knew it. There was nothing that he or anyone else could say to change that. However, knowing my wife and son were healthy and warm inside my bedchambers, what happened to this wretch seemed much less important to me than it would have before the war.

“Kill him,” I said with a shrug.

“I assumed as much,” Dunstan said with a nod, “but I think we need to check out the area south of Sterling first.”

Dunstan and the other two guards proceeded to tell me how Sir Leland was not alone when he approached Sterling Castle but was with two other men—both calloused and dirty worker-types, one of whom was killed as he tried to flee. The other nearly escaped and was killed far enough into the woods that my men had found a path nearly wide enough to be a road. The entrance to it was hidden behind the trees to the south of the castle.

Intrigued by Dunstan’s tale of Sir Leland’s accomplices, I sent a messenger back to Alexandra to let her know of my parting, and we left for Sterling immediately with Leland still our prisoner. He was not forthcoming with any information during the journey, but I could see him becoming more and more agitated as we passed Sterling Castle and headed into the forest just beyond it.

There was, in fact, a road there, just beyond the first line of trees. It had not been there when I was a child or even later in my life. It must have been built after the first war when Edgar took over Sterling lands. Sir Leland was secured to a tree and left with a guard as the rest of us continued on.

We followed the road cautiously. After only a few minutes of trotting, we heard the sounds of men working and talking. We left our horses and moved with more stealth through the trees until we came to a clearing near a hillside. There were four men, one of whom was obviously in charge. He stood at the entrance to a cave near a group of rocks in the side of the hill. I knew him as soon as I heard his gruff voice and strange cadence that showed him to be from a land far away.

“Move, you dogs!” Yagmur commanded the handful of workers who exited the shaft with sacks on their backs. “Do you think I want to wait for you all day?”

The dark-haired, stocky man waved a cane around when he wasn’t leaning against it. Though I recognized him right away, he had changed much in the years since I had last seen him. His hair was still dark but thinner, and his beard was speckled with grey.

The three men he yelled at were younger and scruffy—definitely the kind of men who were used to doing hard labor. They took turns going inside the small cave as Yagmur verbally assaulted them to move faster. Soon after one man went into the dark recesses, he came back out, carrying a sack. There was a good-sized collection of similar, bulky bags lying in a stack on the back of a cart hooked up to a mule.

“How many are left?” Yagmur barked at one of the men.

“Maybe fifteen,” the worker replied as he added another bag to the pile.

“Good!” Yagmur turned and looked toward the woods where we crouched behind trees. “Sir Leland should have been back by now. We do not have time to wait for him though. If he has been discovered, it is our gain, yes?”

The men laughed darkly.

“We will leave as soon as the cart is loaded.”

Yagmur began to hobble across the grass toward the cart, and Dunstan looked at me with a nod. I signaled the other men with us, and we ambushed the lot of them. They were unarmed and easily subdued by the small handful of soldiers accompanying me. Within a few minutes, they all had their hands bound behind their backs. Dunstan lined them up next to the cart as I pulled one of the bags closer to me. When I reached inside the bag, I felt cool stones amidst my fingers. I slipped my hand out, and the sun caught the stones lying in my palm, causing them to sparkle.

“Gold!” Dunstan said, astonished. “Right there and nearly in sight of the castle! Did you know it was here?”

“I had no idea,” I replied as all the pieces of the puzzle slowly dropped into place. This was the reason Edgar was so bent to the point of war on marrying me to Whitney. He wanted Sterling lands for the gold within the southern hills. Once he had control of the castle, he had to locate the one piece of evidence that would prove his guilt before anyone else discovered the secret. If it was found and he was implicated, the royals would have demanded the lands—and also the gold—be returned to me.

But how would Edgar have ever found such a thing in the foothills of my father’s castle?

I turned to Yagmur and gazed upon his face with narrowed eyes.

“You are the one who found it,” I said slowly. His eyes answered me when his mouth would not. “You could not take it for yourself because it was found on Sterling land, so you struck a deal with Edgar.”

He scowled and looked away from me in guilt. I laughed without humor, shook my head, ordered the executions of Yagmur and Sir Leland, and headed back home. Once I returned to Silverhelm Castle, I went immediately to my own chambers to seek out my wife and son. When I told Alexandra what we had discovered, she also understood immediately.

“Whitney wanted you,” Alexandra said with a nod, “but Edgar wanted the lands around Sterling for their gold. Once he had the lands, he no longer needed you, but she still expected to be the Queen of Silverhelm.”

“With her brothers ahead of her in line for the throne, she would never be more than a princess in Hadebrand,” I said with a nod.