The Queen's Rising (Untitled Trilogy #1)(87)

So the guards were eavesdropping. I nodded and chattered about the grandeur of the castle as I began to write.

I have the stone.

Jourdain and Luc read it at the same moment, their eyes affixing to mine with a joy that made the stone hum again.

Where? Luc hastened to write.

I patted my corset, and Jourdain nodded, and I thought I saw the silver of tears line his eyes. He turned away before I could affirm it, to pour me a cup of water.

Keep it there, Luc added to his sentence. It is safest with you.

I accepted the cup of water Jourdain handed me and nodded. Luc took the paper and set it in the fire to burn, and we sat before the hearth and talked of safer, inconsequential things that would bore the guards who listened beyond the walls.

The following day, I swiftly learned that being under a strict house guard was stifling. Everything we said was capable of being overheard. If I wanted to step outside, the eyes of the guards followed me. The greatest challenge would be the three of us overtaking the twelve of them when it was time to ride to Mistwood in two nights.

So that afternoon, Luc wrote out a plan, which he gave me to read. He and Jourdain had arrived to Maevana completely weaponless, but I still had my dirk strapped to my thigh. It was our one and only weapon, and after I read the plan of escape, I set my little blade into Jourdain’s hands.

“Did you have to use it?” he whispered, tucking it away in his doublet.

“No, Father,” I said. I still had yet to tell him about the stabbing incident. I began to reach for the paper, so I could write it all down for him to read. . . .

There was a knock on the door. Luc jumped up to answer it, returning to the hall with a basket of food.

“Lord Allenach has been quite the generous host,” my brother said, rummaging through loaves of oat bread, still warm from the oven, a few wedges of cheese and butter, a jar of salted fish, and a pile of apples.

“What is that?” Jourdain questioned, noticing a flash of parchment tucked among the bread.

Luc plucked it from the linen as he bit into one of the apples. “It’s addressed to you, Father.” He handed it to Jourdain, and I saw the red wax that held the parchment together, pressed with a leaping stag.

Distracted from writing about the stabbing, I joined Luc, exploring the basket of food. But just as I was unpacking the bread, I heard Jourdain’s sharp intake of breath, I felt the room grow dark. Luc and I turned at once to look at him, watched him crumple the parchment in clawlike hands.

“Father? Father, what is it?” Luc quietly demanded.

But Jourdain did not look at Luc. I don’t think he even heard his son as he set his eyes to me. My heart plummeted to the floor, breaking for a reason it didn’t even know.

My patron father was staring at me with such fury that I took a step back, bumping into Luc.

“When were you going to tell me, Amadine?” Jourdain said in that cold, sharp voice that I had heard only once before, when he had killed the thieves.

“I don’t know what you speak of!” I rasped, pressing harder against Luc.

Jourdain took hold of the table and hurled it over, spilling the candles, the basket of food, the paper and ink. I lurched back as Luc cried out in surprise.

“Father, return to yourself!” he hissed. “Remember where we are!”

Jourdain slowly fell to his knees, that parchment still caught in his fingers, his face pale as the moon as he stared at nothing.

Luc rushed forward to snag the paper. My brother became very still, and then he met my gaze, wordlessly handed the letter to me.

I didn’t know what to expect, what could infuriate Jourdain so swiftly. But as my eyes moved over arches and valleys of the words, the world around me cracked in two.

Davin MacQuinn,

I thought it best to tell you that I extended your life for one purpose, and it has nothing to do with how well you begged yesterday morning. You have something that belongs to me, something that is precious, something that I want returned unto my care.

The young woman you call Amadine—who you dare to call your daughter—belongs to me. She is my rightful daughter, and I ask that you relinquish whatever binds you have on her and allow her to return to me at Damhan. The coach will be waiting outside the door for her.

Lord Brendan Allenach

“It’s a lie,” I growled, crumpling the paper in my hands, just as Jourdain had done. “Father, he is lying to you.” I stumbled over the apples and bread to kneel before Jourdain. He looked as if he had broken, his eyes glazed over. I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “This man, this Lord Allenach, is not my father.”

“Why did you keep this from me?” Jourdain asked, ignoring my impassioned statements.

“I kept nothing from you!” I cried. The anger bloomed in my heart, crowding it with thorns. “I have never seen my blood father. I do not know the man’s name. I am illegitimate; I am unwanted. This lord is playing a game with you. I do not belong to him!”

Jourdain finally focused on my face. “Are you certain, Amadine?”

I hesitated, and the silence pierced me, because it made me see that I was not at all certain.

I thought back to the night I had asked the Dowager to conceal my father’s full name from Jourdain. . . . She had not wanted to, but yet she had, because I insisted upon it. And so Jourdain had believed—as I had—that my father was a mere servant beneath the lord. We had never entertained the idea that he might be the lord.