“Rian? Give my daughter her rightful seat.”
I watched Rian jerk, astounded by his father’s request. I watched Rian’s face contort in rage, rage toward me, for his greatest fear had just been cloaked in flesh and blood.
The lost daughter had come to take back her inheritance.
I let him rise, just to see if he would do it. And then I lifted my hand and said, “Rian may keep his seat, for now. I would like to talk privately with you, Father.”
Allenach’s eyes—a pale shade of blue, like deceptive ice on a pond—flickered with curiosity. But he must have been expecting I would say such, because he stood without qualm, extended his right hand to me.
I ascended the dais, walked around the table, and set my fingers in his. He escorted me from the hall, up the stairs, down a corridor I had not ventured yet. He took me to his private wing, a vast connection of chambers that were lavishly furnished.
The first chamber was something I would call a parlor, a place to sit with guests and close friends. There was a large hearth, alight with a roaring fire, and several chairs overlaid with sheepskin. On one wall was a grand tapestry of a white stag, leaping with arrows lodged in his chest, and so many mounted animal heads that I felt as if they were all watching me, the firelight licking their glassy eyes.
“Sit, daughter, and tell me what I can get you to drink,” Allenach said, dropping my fingers so he could walk to a bureau that sparkled with bottles of wine, ceramic pitchers of ale, and a family of golden chalices.
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.
“Your mother’s letters,” was all he said.
It turned me about. It dragged me back across the floor to him, where he had set a thick bundle of letters in my chair. It made me reach for them, this tiny remnant of her, the mother I had always longed for.
I began to read them, my heart completely sundered. It was her. It was Rosalie Paquet. My mother. She had loved him, then, even though she had no inkling as to what he had done.
In one of the letters was a tiny lock of hair. My hair. A soft golden brown.
I named our daughter Brienna, out of honor for you, Brendan.
I sank to the floor, my strength leaving me. My very name was inspired by his—this devious, murderous man. I looked up at him; he stood near, watching me absorb the truth.
“What do you want with me?” I whispered.
Allenach knelt on the floor before me, took my face in his hands. Those treacherous hands. “You are my one and only daughter. And I will raise you up to be queen of this land.”
I wanted to laugh; I wanted to weep. I wanted to peel this day back, burn it, forget it had ever happened. But his hands held me steady, and I had to reckon with this wild claim he was making.
“And how, my lord, would you make me a queen?”
A dark light gleamed in those eyes. For one moment, my heart stopped, thinking he had discovered I was carrying the stone. But we were not Kavanaghs. The stone was useless to us.
“Long ago,” he murmured, “our ancestor took something. He took something that was vital for Maevana to remain a queen’s realm.” His thumbs gently caressed my cheeks as he smiled down at me. “Our House has hidden the Queen’s Canon for generations. This very castle holds it, and I will resurrect the Canon to put you on the throne, Brienna.”
I closed my eyes, trembling.
All these years, the House of Allenach had been holding the Stone of Eventide and the Queen’s Canon. My House had destroyed a lineage of queens, had forced magic to fall dormant, had enabled a cruel king such as Lannon. The weight of what my ancestors had done bowed me down; I would have completely melted to the floor if Allenach had not been holding me upright.
“But I am half Valenian,” I argued, opening my eyes to look at him. “I am illegitimate.”
“I will legitimize you,” he said. “And it does not matter if you are only Maevan in part. Noble blood flows in your veins, and as my daughter, you have a rightful claim to the throne.”
I should have denied him right then, before the temptation could set down roots within me. But the Queen’s Canon . . . we needed it. We had the stone, but we also needed the law.
“Show me the Canon,” I requested.
His hands slowly drifted from my face, but he continued to stare at me. “No. Not until you pledge allegiance to me. Not until I know that you fully deny MacQuinn.”
Oh, he was playing with me. He was manipulating me. It made me despise him all the more, that he felt the need to compete with Jourdain. That he only wanted me to flex his own power.
I will not rush into this, I thought.
So I took a deep breath, and said, “Give me the night to ponder this, my lord. I will give you my answer in the morning.”
He would respect that. He was Maevan, and a Maevan’s word was their vow. Valenians had their grace in etiquette and politeness, but Maevans had their words. Simple, binding words.
Allenach helped me to my feet. He called for a warm bath to be drawn for me back in the unicorn chamber and left me for the night. I soaked in the water until I was wrinkled, staring at the fire and hating my blood. Then I rose and dressed in the sleeping shift he had provided for me, since I had left all of my belongings with Jourdain.
I sat before the fire, the stone and locket hidden beneath the soft wool of my nightdress, and I fell captive to my own horrible thoughts.
I had arrived to Damhan tonight believing Allenach was taunting Jourdain with his claims on me. But now I knew better. . . . I was blood of his blood, a stag leaping through laurels, a cruel man’s only daughter.
And he wanted to make me into a queen.
I closed my eyes and began to draw my fingers through the tangled web that had become my life.
In order to resurrect the Canon, I would have to pledge myself to Allenach.
If I pledged myself to Allenach, I would either follow him, let him place me on the throne, or betray him and take the Canon with me to Mistwood.
If I refused to pledge myself to Allenach, I would not recover the Canon. I would still ride to Mistwood with the stone, as planned. That is, if Allenach didn’t lock me away in Damhan’s keep.
“Brienna?”
I glanced to the right, saw Cartier standing in my chamber. I had not even heard him enter through the secret door, so lost was I in my own dark contemplations. He came to my chair, knelt before me, set his hands on my knees as if he knew that I was drifting, as if he knew his touch would bring me back.
I watched the firelight kiss the golden threads of his hair, and I let my fingers rush through it, his eyes closing in response to my caress.
“He’s my father,” I whispered.
Cartier looked at me. There was such sadness in his eyes, as if he felt every blister of pain within me.
“Did you know it was him?” I persisted.
“No. I knew your father was Maevan. I was never told his name.”
I let my fingers slip from his hair and I leaned my head back in the chair, stared up at the ceiling. “He has the Canon. And he wants to make me queen.”
Cartier’s fingers tightened on my knees. I brought my gaze back to his; his eyes revealed nothing, even as I spoke betrayal. There was no horror, no greed in his eyes. Only a faithful shade of blue.
“Cartier . . . what should I do?”
He stood and pulled a chair close to mine, to sit directly across from me, so I had no other place to look but at him. I watched the fire spill light over one side of his face, shadows on the other.
“Four months ago,” he said, “I thought I knew the best path for you. I had come to love you, so deeply, that I wanted to make sure you chose the branch that would keep you close to me. I wanted you to go with Babineaux, to teach as I had done. And when summer’s end came, when I discovered you had disappeared without a trace . . . I realized that I could not hold you, that I could not decide for you. Only when I let you go did I find you again, in the most marvelous of ways.”
He grew quiet, but his eyes never left mine.
“I cannot tell you what to decide, what is best,” he stated. “That is for your heart to choose, Brienna. But I will say this: no matter which path you choose, I will follow you, even unto darkness.”
He rose, his fingers gently tracing my hair, down the sharp line of my jaw to the tip of my chin. A touch of promise, a touch of consecration.
I will follow you.
“You know where to find me, should you need to,” he whispered, and then left before I could so much as breathe.
I waged a war that night, for my heart was divided. Which father should I betray? The one bound by passion, or the one bound by blood? Did Jourdain hate me now, knowing whose daughter I truly was? There were some moments I thought my patron father had come to care for me, had come to love me. But he might never look at me the same, now that he knew.
I was the daughter of the man who had destroyed him.
I battled all night . . . pacing, doubting, agonizing. But when dawn breathed lavender light upon the windows, when the morning stole into my room, I had finally chosen my path.