Chapter 12 - The Enemy at the Gate
They returned to the capital under darkness.
Not through the roads.
Through the sky.
Mara had never ridden a dragon.
She decided within thirty seconds that she hated it.
“Stop moving!” she shouted at Kael.
“I’m not moving!”
“The dragon is!”
“That is generally how flying works.”
Elara, wrapped against Mara’s chest, squealed happily.
Mara glared down at her. “You are enjoying this far too much.”
Below them, the city looked wounded.
Fires burned in three districts. Barricades blocked the main streets. Isolde’s white banners hung from the palace walls.
Rowan flew beside Mara on a second dragon, looking equally miserable and pretending otherwise.
They landed inside an abandoned bell tower.
Lucan’s loyal guards met them there.
“We have maybe two hundred men,” Garrick said. “The queen mother has eight hundred, plus the priests.”
Rowan shook his head. “Then we don’t fight a battle.”
Tessa smiled. “Finally, a king says something sensible.”
Their plan was simple because complicated plans died quickly.
Lucan would create a disturbance at the north gate.
Tessa would free prisoners held beneath the cathedral.
Rowan would enter the palace through the old aqueduct.
Mara and Selene would go below.
“No,” Rowan said immediately.
Mara stared at him. “You don’t get to say no.”
“I am your husband.”
“That title has had a very bad two days.”
Kael coughed to hide a laugh.
Rowan looked at him. “Do you want to keep breathing?”
“Very much.”
Mara touched Rowan’s arm.
“Varrik is connected to me. I’m the only one who can reach him before Isolde does.”
“And Elara?”
“She stays with you.”
Rowan’s face changed.
“You trust me with her?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
He took the baby carefully.
Elara stared at him.
Rowan whispered, “Hello.”
She sneezed fire into his hair.
Mara burst out laughing.
Rowan patted the smoke from his head. “She gets that from you.”
Then the cathedral bells rang.
Not seven times.
Once.
A single deep strike.
Selene went pale.
“What?” Mara asked.
“That bell only rings for a royal execution.”
They looked toward the palace square.
A giant wooden platform had been raised beneath torchlight.
Someone knelt at its center with a sack over their head.
A priest stepped forward and shouted for the crowd to hear.
“For treason against the crown, the prisoner will die at midnight.”
He tore away the hood.
Mara stopped cold.
It was Lucan.
But Lucan was standing right beside her.
The prisoner raised his face.
May you like
Lucan whispered one word.
“Father.”
