The Secret World of Briar Rose(85)
Tears sprung from Briar’s eyes as she nodded and grabbed her bow and arrows. Corin handed her the oars and stepped onto the ledge. Ocean waves churned below them like snapping piranhas. As Corin jumped, memories triggered her mind to long unanswered questions. What thoughts had raced in her father’s mind during his own fatal plunge? Did regret course through him in that last breath before the water claimed him?
And had he realized, in that final split second, that he had wanted to live, after all?
CHAPTER 36
ALMOST 100 YEARS AGO
AMELIA PROMISED HER godmothers she and her father would return before midnight so they could celebrate her eighteenth birthday and watch the moonflowers bloom. In truth, she had no idea how long her father’s excursion would take. She followed him through the forest, their shoes crackling dead leaves on damp earth. Autumn proved itself foggy at night. Even with three soldiers trailing after them, she could hardly decipher chain mail from gray clouds.
“How could you abandon Gyldan? Abandon her?” Amelia cried. She could not tolerate any small talk about her father’s trip, even though the flat mouth of his expression indicated his search for an heir was unsuccessful. His journey had been interrupted by news of Lilith’s affair, yet nothing could justify throwing her to the dungeons.
“I do not need insolence from my child for doing the very same thing,” Victor replied. He took a sharp turn down a hidden path, barely discernible amidst undergrowth, where the trees looked like carved faces.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you expect me to believe a demon abducted you for almost a year? Your godmothers may be easily fooled, but not me.” He shook his head. Weariness made the bags under his eyes sag further. “Where were you, Amelia?”
She swallowed the lump down her throat. “I will tell you if you release Lilith,” she lied. “I know the godmothers told you Lilith seduced the prince, but that’s their version of the story—”
“She’s already been released.”
Amelia pictured Ezran sneaking to the dungeons, only to be met with empty cells. “Where is she?”
Moonlight filtered through a thinning canopy and illuminated the narrow trail. Familiarity prickled her skin as she recognized the area. Her father had taken her down this same path years ago when he tried teaching her how to hunt. She recalled the faint scent of decay and damp earth, the tightening of her throat as she cried, the arrow that missed the deer she could never kill.
“Do you know why I wanted to bring you to the woods long ago?” he said. “It’s because I knew you’d learn more here than any of those idyllic days you spent with Lilith in the library.”
With a steady hand and focused gaze, he reached for the sling that carried his bow and arrows. The pointed weapon looked sharp enough to cut into cloth and pierce skin.
“I was pleased to find, during my visit to Zilar, that their king enjoyed hunting as well. A conqueror in nature is as much as a conqueror in his kingdom. He took his son on trips and made Ezran keep a hunting journal. I was impressed, flipping through the pages, by how he recorded deer movement and behavior. He took great interest in tracking animals near Gyldan. So much so, that I started to wonder if they were truly animals at all.”
The air around Amelia thickened with something sharp and metallic, as if she’d bitten her lip and tasted the blood spilling down her throat. She couldn’t breathe as they reached the end of a narrow path, where thick trees blocked the clearing. No one from afar would have spotted two bodies hanging from their stakes.
“I chain mail to return home and find my answer,” Victor said, gaze fixed on the man bounded by rope. “Who is the hunter, and who will be the hunted?”
Fresh bruises marred Ezran’s cheeks, evidence of his failed venture into the dungeons that led to his altercation. While he made noise through the rag stuffed in his mouth, far from his reach was a limp body that no longer moved. Amelia gasped, vision swimming with tears before her mind could process the sight. Lilith’s eyes were shut, her limbs tied by rope around the stake. Her skin, once golden, was as white as the pearls scattered near her feet. Splotches of red dried in the dead patch of grass where she hung. Ezran had only recently been caught, while it had been hours since they tied Lilith there.
Amelia lunged forward, but the rough arm of a soldier restrained her. A scream tore from her throat, so primal she couldn’t recognize the wail was her own. She clawed at chain mail as if she’d gone mad.
“They are traitors,” her father said. “Our blood and gold are so valued that we cannot trust those beyond borders and at home. I brought you here to understand the consequences of deception. It’s why we hunt: to show who has power and who is merely prey.”
Ezran continued thrashing against the rope, his yells muffled behind the rag stuffed in his mouth. The bruises on his face welled up, shiny and purple. No matter how severe his injuries were, he didn’t tire resisting. A soldier removed the cloth from Lilith’s mouth, then Ezran’s. Lilith remained still while Ezran spat blood in front of their feet.
“I had higher expectations for you to at least commit to a public execution. But I suppose that would start a war with my father, and Gyldan’s not as powerful of a kingdom as you’d like to portray,” Ezran snarled, teeth gleaming red. “The only people who know of tonight are three of your most trusted soldiers, while you let the rest of the kingdom fill in the stories for themselves. So who shall take the blame in this story? A wicked queen, deemed at fault by status of being a common woman, while their king hides in cowardice?”