The Queen's Rising(89)

I sat in the chair closest to the fire, shivering against my wet dress. “I am not thirsty.”

I felt him glance at me. I kept my gaze to the dance of the fire, listening as he poured himself a drink. Slowly, he walked back across the floor, sat in the chair directly across from mine.

Only then, when we were both still, did I meet his gaze.

“Look at you,” he whispered. “You are beautiful. Just like your mother.”

Those words angered me. “Is that how you knew it was me?”

“I thought you were your mother at first, the moment I saw you step into the royal hall. That she had come back to haunt me,” he replied. “Until you looked at me, and I knew it was you.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No. I need proof, my lord.”

He crossed his legs and took a sip of wine, but those shrewd blue eyes of his never broke from mine. “Very well. I can give you all the proof you desire.”

“Why don’t you start by telling me how you came to know my mother.”

“Your mother visited Damhan with your grandfather for one of my hunts some eighteen years ago,” Allenach began, his voice smooth as silk. “Three years before that, I had lost my wife. I was still grieving her death, thinking I would never look at another woman. Until your mother arrived.”

It took everything within me to conceal my scorn, to suffocate my sarcasm. I held it at bay, forcing myself quiet so he would keep talking.

“Your mother and grandfather lodged here for a month. During that time, I came to love her. When she left with your grandfather to return to Valenia, I had no inkling that she was carrying you. But she and I began a correspondence, and once I learned of you, I asked her to return to Damhan, to marry me. Your grandfather would not allow it, thinking I had ruined his daughter.”

My heart was beginning to pound deep in my chest. Everything he had shared could be taken for truth—he had mentioned my grandfather. But still, I held quiet, listening.

“Your mother wrote to me the day you were born,” Allenach continued. “The daughter I had long waited for, the daughter I had always wanted. Three years after that, all your mother’s letters ceased. Your grandfather was gracious enough to inform me that she had died, and that you were not mine, that I had no claim on you. I waited, patiently, until you were ten. And I wrote you a letter. I figured your grandfather would withhold it from you, but still I wrote to you, asking you to come visit me.”

When I was ten . . . when I was ten . . . when Grandpapa had flown to Magnalia with me, to hide me. I could hardly breathe. . . .

“When I still failed to hear from you, I decided that I should grant your grandfather a little visit,” Allenach said. “You were not there. And he would not tell me where he had hidden you. But I am a patient man. I would wait until you came of age, until you turned eighteen, when you could make your own decisions. So imagine my surprise when you walked into the royal hall. I thought you had at last come to meet me. I was about to step forward and claim you until one particular name came off your tongue.” His hand tightened on his chalice. Ah, the jealousy, the envy, began to tighten his face like a mask. “You said MacQuinn was your father. I thought perhaps I had mistaken it—perhaps my eyes were fooling me. But then you said you were a passion, and it all came together; your grandfather had hidden you by passion, and MacQuinn had adopted you. And the longer you stood there, the more certain I was. You were mine, and MacQuinn was using you. So I offered to host you here, so I could learn more of you, so I could protect you from the king. And then that skittish dog confirmed my suspicions.”

“Dog?”

“Nessie,” Allenach said. “She has always hated strangers. But she was certainly attracted to you, and it made me remember . . . when your mother was here all those years ago, one of my wolfhounds refused to leave her side. Nessie’s dam.”

I swallowed, told myself that a dog couldn’t have known. . . .

“Why let me return to MacQuinn, then?” I asked, the words too hot to hold any longer in my chest. “You let me reunite with him, only to tear me away.”

Allenach tried not to smile, but the corners of his mouth revealed his twisted pleasure at the thought. “Yes. Perhaps it was cruel of me, but he was trying to wound me. He was—still is—trying to turn you against me.”

How wrong Allenach was. Jourdain hadn’t even known whose daughter I truly was.

And then I stared at his hand—his right hand, holding his chalice—and remembered. That hand had cut down Jourdain’s wife. That hand had betrayed them, brought their wives and daughters to their deaths.

I rose, my anger and distress a marriage of horror in my blood. “You are mistaken, my lord. I am not your daughter.”

I was halfway to the door, the air squeezing out of me as if iron fingers had wrapped about my chest. The Stone of Eventide felt it, spread a comforting warmth against my middle, up to my heart. Be brave, it whispered, and yet I was all but running from him.

My hand was reaching for the door handle when his voice pierced the distance between us.

“I am not finished, Brienna.”

The sound of it stopped me short, sealed my feet to the floor.

I listened to him as he stood, as his tread moved into one of the adjoining chambers. When he returned, I could hear the rustling of papers.