The Conquering, page 24:

  The day of Taking came. Varuht spent every day and many nights in the forge and training for months. But man’s weapons did little to wyvern hide without an army—and a dozen wyverns watched from the rooftops that day.

  When they called her name, Varuht’s hand went to his hilt. I caught his arm before he got his blood splashed all over the hem of his beloved’s gown. I had need of a forger, not a corpse.

  “I may know a way to stop them,” I said. For I had long grown ill of being a defect, less than a man.

  Varuht ceased his struggle and turned on me with eyes that shone with unshed tears and unbridled hate. Perhaps he knew, even then, what I was. “How?”

  “If you have the forgery skill and the daring, I have a plan.”

  My back aches as I search for a comfortable position in yet another carriage ride home after a long night of nothing but “yes thank you” and “why yes, I am enjoying myself very much,” and other lies. The boning of tonight’s revealing dress digs into my ribs—a yellow satin one that swirls around my waist with little gaps to reveal gold skin.

  I’ve somehow expected every high society event to be as exciting as the ball. Instead, we’ve spent the week bouncing from dinners to parties and back again without a single sighting of the Prince. It seems every noble family in the city wants us as a guest—or rather, to ogle me. I’ve spent each event smiling politely and almost never speaking. No one, it seems, has any interest in me.

  Clara, on the other hand, grins and taps her fingers on her fan as if she’s replaying the night’s events in her head to great satisfaction. Maurus, indeed, made an offer for me the night of the ball. Clara won’t say what the terms are, but she’s looked too pleased for it to have been unfavorable. I don’t care to press. I don’t need that threat spelled out for me.

  Lilianna sits beside her mother with her head tilted against the side of the carriage, eyelids drooping. We have been traveling exclusively at night ever since the ball, since wyverns don’t fly in the dark. No other sightings have been reported, but Clara doesn’t want to risk it. Fortunately, most events are at night, anyway.

  I, too, long to collapse into bed and sleep for a week, not that I’ll get the chance. Or read more of that peculiar book about Varuht and Kheovaria—our country’s namesake? Instead, I play the ball over and over again in my head as we rattle on home. Dancing with the Prince. The wyvern’s quite literally shattering arrival. The Prince’s arm around my shoulders as we’re bustled to safety.

  The carriage lurches to a stop.

  I catapult forward into Lilianna and clatter to the floor, banging my knees and elbows on the wood.

  Clara catches herself with the door handle. “Driver!” She yanks aside the curtain that shields us from the harsh spring night air and leans her head out. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “Ma’am, something’s blocking the road!” Hammond calls.

  I scramble back onto my bench. The image of the caravan crashed alongside the road that day in the forest flashes across my mind. The bodies of the guards had lain across it in heaps, as if someone had tossed them there and off the road after their murder.

  We don’t even have guards to put up a fight.

  “Clear it then!” Clara settles back beside Lilianna, as if the idea of danger doesn’t so much as touch her mind.

  Heart pounding, I clutch my mother’s yellow sapphire at my neck and nudge the window curtain aside to peer out into the night. I only make out the silhouettes of trees and shrubs, lit by the faint glow of the lantern hanging beside Hammond and the nearly full moon overhead. We’re hardly out of sight of the city, just barely into the thick of the forest. The rebels won’t dare attack so close to the palace, will they?

  “Anyone out there?” Hammond’s wavering voice disappears into the dark.

  A shadow flickers at the edge of the forest.

  Dark figures materialize out of the forest with long, purposeful strides—heading straight for us.

  I jerk back from the window and pull Lilianna to my side, gripping Lilianna’s hands in my own sweaty palms. “Men are approaching the carriage. Don’t scream, Lily.”

  Lilianna’s eyes fly wide and she plasters herself into the corner.

  “This close to the Palace?” Clara says, her voice pitched high, eyes furious. “How dare they! Just wait until the King hears of this.”

  Lilianna lets out a stifled whimper.

  I squeeze her hand. “Shh, it’ll be alright. Don’t let go of my hand.”

  “We’re just friends of the People out for a walk on such a nice evening,” a crisp, clear, placating male voice called from outside.

  I still, the cool trick of dread rolling down my spine. That voice.

  The man from the forest. The one who tried to steal Sebastian. Abel.

  “We don’t want any trouble. Back to the forest with your lot,” Hammond says, his voice overtly shaking now. The carriage rocks with the clunk of Hammond’s boots on the planks as he stands up alone against the threat. Oh, dear Hammond, the eldest of our few servants and not at all in any condition to fight one man, much less an entire group.

  “Do us a favor, chap, and sit back down,” that voice says, now sharp and edged with warning. And much, much closer. “We’re not here for your kind.”

  The carriage sags to one side and another heavy boot thuds on the step to the driver’s seat.

  Lilianna gasps.

  I clap my hand over her mouth.

  Hammond cries out. Boots clatter and scuffle on the planks. Hammond’s yelp muffles into silence and the eerie sound of something heavy slumping over follows. Skies, no.

  “You people sit in your manors among piles of riches, willingly oblivious to the surrounding poverty,” that voice calls out, as if he speaks on a dais like the King at High Court. “But mark my words, the backs of the poor on which you build your thrones are breaking and it is you who have the furthest and most painful fall to come. Consider this moment a warning and a small payment for your misdeeds against the people of this land you have named as common and stand over as if you are gods. The monarchy and all those who support it. Will. Fall.”

  The carriage door latch rattles and Lilianna screams under my hand.

  Clara sits frozen, staring incredulously at the door, as if she can’t fathom it opening, that any of this is happening. I shift to shield Lilianna with my body, one arm twisted behind my back to keep a hand clasped over Lilianna’s mouth.

  The door wrenches open and a short, broad-shouldered man with a masked face leans into the carriage, eyes wide and savage. “Ahh, we’ve got some decorated ladies in here,” he drawls. His eyes rove over us, stopping at my chest for a long pause. My stomach twists. “Emeralds maybe, heh.”

  My free hand flies to my mother’s necklace. Not that. Anything but that.

  “Good, bring them out,” that commanding voice calls.

  “How dare you treat us this way? We are noblewomen!” Clara’s voice rises to a cracking shriek. “On the King’s land, no less. I demand that you release our carriage at once!”

  The wide, short man in the doorway hesitates, as if her demand startles him.

  A laugh breaks across the silence, mocking and merciless. A taller masked figure steps into view at his comrade’s shoulder. Long, wild dark brown hair. A swagger to his step. Mask taut over his nose and mouth. He is unmistakable.

  Abel.

  “Noblewomen, what a ridiculous concept,” Abel says. “What can possibly be noble about you?”

  Other men outside laugh and jeer.

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  “You nobles who think you do charity by paying your staff coppers, then treat them like slaves. You nobles who think you own these lands. You nobles who think the villages and their people are beneath you. Well, mark my words, nobles, we’re coming for your jewels and your coins and, if you’re lucky, we’ll be so noble as to spare you your lives. Remove them from the carriage.”

  I scan the interior of the carriage. There’s nothing to protect ourselves with. Nothing. The rebels have never been so brazen this close to the palace before. Yet, we might’ve thought to take some kind of precaution if I’d told Clara what I saw all those days ago, if I hadn’t been so concerned with keeping my own secrets.

  The shorter man at the door reaches inside, straight for me. Lilianna screams again.

  The lantern rocks overhead. I lunge for it.

  Just as my fingers close over its handle, the man clamps onto my arm and yanks. The lantern’s handle catches on its hook and the metal bites into my fingers. I twist my arm as hard as I can and the handle pops free.

  The man drags me roughly out of the carriage and I tumble into the dirt road, knees buckling. He yanks me upright and I use his own momentum to swing the lantern with all my might.

  Glass shatters. Flames and hot oil splatter everywhere.

  The man screams and jerks away. Fire leaps up his sleeve.

  A fleeting rush of exhilaration fills my lungs. I turn to the carriage, intent on grabbing Lilianna and making a run for it, but another dark-clad, masked figure steps between me and the carriage. Skies Above, we’re surrounded.

  Abel methodically beats the flames out until darkness shrouds us again, eased only by the monochromatic cast of moonlight. He then stalks towards me. “I must admit, I’m impressed.”

  I scramble back, catch the hem of my gown, and fall hard onto the dirt road. I pat around in the grit and dust of the road, hot oil stinging my fingertips, until I brush the smooth, flat edge of a glass shard. Pain lances my hand, but I hold it aloft as I scramble to my feet.

  Mocking eyes fix on mine, as if I am his singular interest. His posture—the broad set of his shoulder, the high tilt of his face, the confident stride of his gait—marks him an entirely different opponent than the first. “Clever girl, but that isn’t much of a weapon.”

  His comrades laugh.

  I raise the glass shard a little higher.

  Abel’s hand clamps around my wrist before I even register a flicker of movement. With a painful squeeze of his hand and a jerk, the glass thuds uselessly into the dirt. I try to twist away, but he catches both my forearms and holds me before him, inspecting his prize.

  I’m caught. I’ll be taken, bled, cut up for my gold. I avert my eyes downward.

  He tsks and lowers his voice. “Hello, my little forest liar. You don’t look much like a servant tonight. I like to think I’d recognize a Gallant anywhere, but you nearly had me in the forest, Lady Aubrey. At least, until your little… mishap.” He raises my bare wrist and twists it so the offending patch of gold glints in the moonlight.

  My head snaps up. Why in Skies would this brute be able to recognize a Gallant anywhere? My father’s been dead for eight years.

  He releases one hand from my wrist to reach for my neck and I flinch. He traces the necklace, rough fingertips brushing over the delicate skin of my collarbone.

  I squeeze my eyes shut against the crawl of goosebumps in the wake of his touch. I want to scream, to bite and claw. “Please,” I whisper. “It was my mother’s. She’s dead. It’s all I have left of her.”

  “Funny thing, that is,” he says, and warm knuckles brushed my skin as his fingers curl around the stone. “Do you know where this came from?”

  My eyes fly open. “My father gave it to my mother, for their engagement.”

  “No,” Abel says, his voice low and sharp. “Your father gave your mother a single leather cord for their engagement—leather can be broken, you see? He never intended to chain her. He wanted her to always be free.” The night breeze tosses a strand of dark hair across his masked face. His grip on my arm loosens enough that I can probably pull away, yet those eyes, glinting with reflected moonlight, hold me transfixed.

  And his words… Father never actually told me anything about the necklace. Only Clara had.

  “Boss,” a voice interrupts, though I still can’t tear my gaze from Abel’s. “A guard comes from the north.”

  Abel’s gaze is just as steadfast. He releases his grip on my arm and raises it to silence the man. My necklace gripped in his fist is my only tether. “This pendant was a gift from the King and it is a far longer, more complicated story. If you’d like me to tell it to you, including why your father died, then—”

  “Boss,” comes another voice, this one edged with significantly more concern. “It’s the High Guard.”

  Abel’s eyes flare, but his mask pulls taut with a smile. “It would seem we’ve run out of time. I would have liked more.”

  The faint thud of hoofbeats fills the air.

  “What do you mean ‘why my father died’?” I know why he died. Because of me. Saving me.

  “If you want to know the rest of the story—including the truth of why he was killed—don’t run from me the next time I find you.” He withdraws his hand from my necklace and steps back. “Let’s go, boys. We don’t rob Gallants, however unpleasant their present company.”

  “Gallant?” one of the faceless black shapes says, her voice distinctly female. Impossible. A female… fighter?

  “His daughter, must be,” another says, almost reverently. That makes even less sense. Why would any rebel hold respect for a deceased High Guard?

  A horn bellows out of the darkness and my head snaps in its direction. A white horse, lit almost to a glow by the near full moon overhead, appears at the bend of the road around the trees far beyond our carriage.

  “Scatter,” Abel says, his tone now laced with urgency.

  His rebels peel from the road, each taking a separate path into the forest.

  Abel’s fingers curl around the sword’s hilt at his hip as he watches the approaching white horse. Will he take on the High Guard? Call his men back in an ambush? They’d easily outnumber a single man.

  The red shoulders and the silver of the royal family crest on his chest nears, the angular shape of his helmet glinting in the moonlight. Armor I once knew so well.

  Abel’s dark, dangerous eyes crease at the corners—amused, confident, mocking. He bows deeply at the waist, even as the hoofbeats grow thunderous. “Until we meet again, Lady Aubrey.”

  Then he steps off the path and disappears into the black of the forest as swiftly as he’d come.

  I stand beside the carriage, numbly frozen as the white horse approaches at a gallop.

  The rider reins in the horse. Her hooves send up a plume of dust lit eerily pale by the moon. The rider swings from the saddle before she even comes to a full stop. His momentum carries him forward several paces and he doesn’t bother hanging onto her reins.

  Hand on his hilt, he scans the now-vacant road—except for me and the carriage. Apparently satisfied the danger is gone, he releases the hilt and removes his helmet.

  The same grotesque scars I saw from the Venon’s fireplace cover his face. My pulse ratchets. I could’ve sworn he saw me, yet… he couldn’t have or he would’ve acted, right? It’s his job. Still, I can’t stifle the dread that he might intend to blackmail me when he sees fit.

  The High Guard claps his fist over his chest and his gaze jump from my face to each gilded arm. “Rahiid Venon, of the High Guard. Are you alright, my lady?”

  I can’t contain my recoil. Rahiid Venon? The youngest of the Venons. A half-son, if I recalled correctly. The product of some scandal between the late Lord Venon and a servant woman—Clara told me the story in passing once as a lesson on the importance of keeping unattractive staff.

  This man can not have seen me in the fireplace. Even a half-Venon would not have allowed me to remain unscathed.

  “No—Yes, I’m alright.” I shake my head, trying to rid myself of swirling, confusing thoughts. I glance at the black of the forest, unable to see that rebel—Abel—but feeling his eyes on me, anyway.

  The carriage door cracks open. Clara’s pale gaze falls on the High Guard. She throws the door wide and clambers out. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here. Rebels attacked us! Nearly kidnapped my daughter!” She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “She is the Lady Aubrey, you know, quite highly favored by the Prince just now.”

  Stepdaughter, I correct in my head.

  His eyes sweep only once over Clara before fixing upon me again. “Are you injured?”

  “How dare they,” Clara says, completely ignoring his question. “We’re only just out of the sight of the city, I’d have never thought—”

  “Oh!” My stomach lurches. How could I not think of Hammond immediately? “Our driver! I think they might have hurt him.” I start for the carriage, but Clara’s arm around my shoulders holds me back.

  The High Guard crosses to the carriage with long strides, and steps up onto its front. It sags under the weight of his armor. He helps Hammond’s slumped form sit upright, the poor man’s arms and legs contorted and tied behind his back. The High Guard pulls a rag from the old man’s mouth.

  “Oh, thank you, sir knight,” Hammond gasps. “Thank you, there was so many of them. I tried my best to protect the women. I tried my best.”

  I flinch at Hammond’s improper use of the High Guard’s title.

  “You did well, good sir. They’re unharmed. Settle and I’ll cut you free,” the High Guard says, apparently not taking issue with his misspoken title.

  When the High Guard finishes, he hops back down onto the dusty road, the clacks of his armor ringing out in the night's silence. “He’ll be alright. A few days’ rest will do him good. I’ll escort your carriage home.”

  Clara turns to the High Guard. “Aren’t you going after those savages? Where’s the rest of your guard? Don’t you patrol in groups? Shouldn’t someone send word to the palace about this attack? Surely they can’t get away with this kind of behavior!”

  Rahiid reaches for his mount’s reins. “It’s too dangerous to pursue at night. They’ll have scattered throughout the forest by now. Please, ladies, back inside your carriage. The sooner we get you home safely, the better.”

  Clara sighs and climbs into the carriage, muttering something to herself about incompetence these days.

  I glance one last time at the forest. I can just make out bootprints from the edge of my skirts in a path from the forest. Rebel footprints. My heart still thunders in my chest, yet… I want to know the rest of Abel’s story. Every word of it.

  I grip the handle beside the carriage door and place my foot on the step, but something cold presses against my knee. I stumble back and feel around over my skirts for what touched me. Had I torn that large a hole in my dress? My fingers find an area of chilled wetness over the right side of my skirt. In the moonlight, it only looks ambiguously dark.

  “M’lady, are you alright?” The High Guard’s boots crunch on the grit of the road as he approaches.

  “Yes, it’s just…” My voice trails away as I rub my fingers together, slick and wet. I turn over my palms.

  A thick line from my right hand drips a dark liquid with a metallic sheen. A throbbing ache blooms across my palm and I am consumed by the memory of gold blood splattered across the grass that day. Father’s roar as he charged the beast rings in my ears, along with Abel’s claim: the truth of why he was killed… Killed. Father died saving me from a wyvern. I am the why… aren’t I?

  Cool leather grips my hand. “You are hurt,” the High Guard says.

  Skies, I can’t have this man knowing I bleed gold when Clara’s been selling illegally. I try to pull my hand away.

  His gloved fingers tighten on my hand. “There’s been rumors of gold blood circulating dark corners of the market,” he says, his voice icy and low. “Given the rarity of the phenomenon, I should hope you’ve no involvement.”

  I stare up at dark, bottomless eyes that show no emotion at all, neither kindness nor threat—and that terrifies me even more than if I knew what I was up against. “Don’t all gold-marked bleed gold?”

  “No, and I suspect you know that.”

  I do.

  He presses a cloth into my palm, closes my fingers over it, and releases my hand.

  I stumble back. Rahiid Venon—Maurus’s half-bother—knows our secret.

  I want to vomit.