Threads of Gold (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms Book 6) Read online

  “That is good to hear,” I said. “For truly, although the king has always treated me with great honor, still I must confess to being somewhat apprehensive, for there is such a great span that separates our ages.”

  She patted my hand. Today she wore flashing topaz to match the gown she wore, which was the color of dark, warm honey. “I would think less of you if you were not experiencing such apprehension. It is only natural. But you will find that the king will do very well by you.”

  Because he has already proven himself to be so very honorable, I thought bitterly. To keep me locked up at his whim, then attempt to force me to marry his son, and finally take me for himself when no other alternative presented itself. Yes, I am sure he will be quite the doting husband.

  Of course I did not say any of that. I smiled, murmured that of course she was correct in all her judgments, and guided the conversation to the jewels before us, and the gowns that would soon fill my wardrobe.

  I could only pray that I would never have the chance to wear any of them, that somehow Tobyn and I would come upon the means to get me away from here. We had to. My mind would simply not allow itself to contemplate a future with me as the queen of Purth.

  * * *

  That night I did happen upon a desperate plan, although I knew that Tobyn would most likely have none of it. But I was increasingly approaching my wit’s end, and knew I did not have many escapes available to me. I also worried that perhaps he would not come at all, not after Felinda had almost discovered us the evening before.

  Still, I could give no sign of the misgivings that plagued me. Once again my maids prepared me for sleep, and once again I bade them good night after insisting that the candle next to my bed should remain lit. I pulled the covers up to me and waited, praying to every god who might be listening that Tobyn would not forsake me.

  For truly, what did we share, save an attachment of only a little more than a week? He had never even come out and told me that he loved me. His actions seemed to indicate that he did, but I was, as I had confessed to Lady Shelenna, very inexperienced. He was the only man I had ever kissed. Perhaps I was confusing these strange — but pleasant — reactions in my body with the actuality of being in love. If that were true, it would make sense for him to abandon me now. I was a pleasant diversion, but when that diversion was weighed against the very real threat of reprisals from the king, should we be caught….

  The shadows moved then, and one of them was Tobyn. He stepped toward my bed, hands out, and I immediately pushed back the covers and went to him, let him fold me into his arms.

  “Thank the gods,” I whispered, and he took me by the shoulders so he could gaze down into my face.

  “What, did you think I would not come to you?” he asked, his voice also a whisper.

  “I don’t — I feared — ”

  By way of reply, he bent and kissed me, bringing the sweetness of his mouth to mine. In that moment, I realized how foolish my fears had been, how I had allowed my worry and doubt to tarnish the love I knew we shared. By then the roughness of the scarring at the side of his mouth had become as familiar to me as the sound of his voice. I did not care that he was not perfect, because then I knew he was truly my Tobyn.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, after he finally broke the kiss.

  “Don’t be, my darling. You have been alone here, with no support. Why, has your father even come to see you?”

  “No,” I replied, realizing that his absence these past few days was rather odd. Surely His Majesty would have allowed a father to visit his daughter once the news of her triumphant engagement had spread. “No, I fear he has not. Although I doubt that would have been a very pleasant conversation, so perhaps that is why he has stayed away.”

  “It is precisely why,” Tobyn said, voice a grim mutter. “Far better for him to appear at the ceremony, all beaming pride, than to face the wrath of the daughter who would never have been in this situation in the first place, were it not for his own weakness.”

  Since that seemed a fairly accurate description of my current state of mind, I could only nod. Then I said, “Tobyn, I have thought of a way to stop all this.”

  He went still then, arms tightening on my shoulders. “How? For there are just as many guards tonight, and your maids still sleep next door. And certainly there is no chance of your leaving the palace tomorrow, not with your wedding taking place that same night.”

  “I know.” Here it was. I would have to make the outrageous suggestion, and hope he would not think I had finally gone mad. But it did seem to me the only way. And perhaps the experience would not be all that unpleasant….

  I reached up and pressed my hands against his chest, feeling the warmth of his wool cloak, the strength of the body beneath it. “The king will not marry me if I am not — not pure. So if we are together, you and I…then he cannot make me his wife.”

  Tobyn’s response was immediate. “Are you mad, Annora?” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “Do you truly believe that I would take you in such a way, with no honor, no respect, only doing that which must be done so the king cannot have you?”

  “It would be a gesture of the utmost respect,” I retorted. “Seeing as doing so would keep me safe from the king’s clutches.” My fingers closed on the opening of his cloak, the heavy fabric scratching against my skin. “Is it — is it that you do not want me after all? I had thought, from the way you kissed me — ”

  That sentence was cut off by his mouth descending on mine, tasting me, forcing me into silence. My body heated, for I wore nothing but the lace-trimmed chemise I had put on to sleep in, and my breasts were pressed up against him, his thigh hard against mine.

  “I do want you,” he said, the words rough. “All the gods only know how much I want you. But as my wife, as the woman I want to spend the rest of my days with. Not in a hurried tumble whose only purpose is to prevent the king from taking you himself.”

  Joy rushed through me in a warm wave. So he did want to marry me. Perhaps he had held off from speaking of love and marriage because he still had not quite reconciled his own beliefs about his scarred face and form with my obvious need for him.

  “But that ‘tumble’ is the only thing which might keep us together,” I pointed out quietly. “I will admit that I am inexperienced, and therefore don’t completely understand what is it that I am asking of you, but better that we have our tumble now so you may show me the proper respect due a wife at a later date. Otherwise, there will be no later date. Don’t you see?”

  My voice had raised on those last few syllables, and I cut myself off there, lest we give ourselves away. Up until that point, we had been speaking in whispers and soft murmurs, for I was still all too aware of how Felinda had almost discovered us the night before.

  A long silence. Tobyn stood unmoving as I held onto his cloak and gazed imploringly up into his face. Or rather, into the shadows where his face should be. A little shiver went over me then. If I was able to convince him to do this, then I would see him at last. He could not keep that cloak on the whole time, could he?

  “My love,” he said at last. “This is not how I imagined us being together for the first time. I had hoped to ask you to marry me, and then there would have been no impediment to our being together. No impediment except this face of mine.”

  “I already told you, I do not care about that.”

  “You say that, Annora.”

  “I say it because I mean it. Just as I am saying that we should be together now. You can pretend I am your wife, if that will make you feel better about the whole thing. And you have already as much as asked me to marry you. So yes, Tobyn Slade, I will be your wife. Let me be your wife in body now, and I can be that in name later, once I have been freed.”

  For the longest moment, he hesitated. I sensed the war he fought within himself in every tense muscle of his body. Then his arms slipped under me, lifting me from the carpeted floor so he might carry me to the bed. Despite the fierceness of his embrace earlier, he lo
wered me with exquisite care to the mattress, then bent to kiss me on the mouth again before his lips traveled to my throat, moving ever lower, igniting such a fire within me that I wondered why I did not burst into flame then and there.

  And he was kissing the bare skin of my chest where the neckline of the chemise parted, featherlight touches of flesh to flesh. My back arched as I moved up to meet him, my hands seeking the clasp that held the cloak at his throat so I might release it, free him from the shroud he hid himself within.

  But even as my fingers closed on the cool metal, the door to my bedchamber banged open, and I heard Felinda gasp, “So there was someone in here!”

  All heat within me was replaced by icy fear. Tall figures crowded the room, two of them grasping Tobyn by the arms and yanking him roughly away from me. A third man lowered a pale cloth over his hood and pulled it taut against Tobyn’s mouth, effectively gagging him.

  Gagging him? But why…?

  So he cannot cast the spell that would send him forth from this chamber, my mind told me coolly. True, I had never heard him actually say any of his spells out loud, but once or twice I had overheard the softest of whispers, as if those syllables had escaped his lips as he mouthed the words to himself.

  And how was it they knew that he could even use such a spell?

  From behind the guards that flanked Tobyn, a man and a woman stepped forward. Candlelight glistened on skirts of dark honey, and I looked up into Lady Shelenna’s face. She wore a smile of triumph, and glanced up at her companion. Shocked, I looked from her to the man who stood at her shoulder, and realized he was none other than Lord Edmar.

  “You see?” said the duchess. “I knew she was hiding something.”

  The duke nodded grimly. “Take him away,” he ordered the guards, who hustled a struggling Tobyn out of the room. Then his gaze fixed on me, and his mouth tightened even further. “And you, Annora…I believe the king would like to have a few words with you.”

  Chapter 16

  Perhaps the king did want to speak with me, but it appeared that he intended to do so on his own time. After Tobyn was taken away, both Lord Edmar and Lady Shelenna departed, but not before I saw them order a pair of burly-looking guards to stand watch outside my bedroom door. What difference that would make, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if I could have gotten past the four who guarded the entrance to the suite itself.

  They would have done better, I thought bitterly, to have posted someone at my window, to ensure that I did not fling myself from it.

  For despair rose in my breast, threatening to drown me. All my thoughts were for Tobyn. Where had they taken him? What sort of punishment would he face, for the high crime of attempting to defile the king’s affianced bride?

  I did not know. But I doubted they would be gentle.

  The hours passed, and I fell into an exhausted slumber, one in which I was tormented by nightmares of being chased through the halls of the castle until my legs threatened to give way beneath me. Sometimes my tormentor was the king himself, sometimes Lord Edmar. During one particularly harrowing episode, my pursuer wore my father’s own face.

  Needless to say, I did not get much rest.

  Felinda and Vianna came to prepare me the next morning, both of them silent and avoiding my gaze. Just as well, because I had never in my life wanted to reach out and shake someone as I did Felinda. Perhaps she truly believed she was merely doing her duty. But in that moment, I could only think of how she had ruined my life.

  Tobyn’s life.

  At least I would not have to wear that hated wedding gown, hanging in pale rose-colored splendor from the door of my wardrobe. Still, the two maidservants dressed me in one of my finer dresses, the crimson one with the golden trim, although the pendant Tobyn had made for me was conspicuously missing from my jewel box. Had Felinda or Vianna taken it, or had perhaps the duchess slipped it into her bag when I was not watching? Clearly, she had guessed at some connection between Tobyn and me, although how she had managed to put the clues together, I had no idea.

  Not that it mattered now. We had both been caught, and now I must go to meet my fate.

  The guards who had been standing outside the door to my suite moved to flank me as I exited. None of them gave any direction as to where we were going. Not that I needed it. I knew this would be no scolding in the king’s royal apartments. He would want to make sure I was humiliated in front of as many unfriendly eyes as possible.

  I was marched down several levels to the audience chamber, which, as I had feared, was packed with twice the number of people who had been there during my former sojourn to that room. Indeed, the place was so crowded that some of the onlookers had actually spilled out the doors and into the wide hallway that led to the chamber.

  A host of curious, unsympathetic faces watched my passage down the aisle to the front of the room, where the king sat on his throne. To his right was Prince Harlin, who appeared more bewildered than anything else, and behind the prince stood his wife. She studiously avoided my gaze as I glanced at her. No doubt she was praying that I would make no mention of the conversation we had shared a few days earlier.

  But then I saw Tobyn, who knelt in the open area before the dais, two guards standing beside him. They had not removed his cloak; the hood still dropped low, concealing his face. I would have been glad they had allowed him that small dignity, except I knew they had not done so out of the kindness of their hearts.

  The king stood. Glacial blue eyes fixed on me. “Annora Kelsden.”

  I could do nothing but move forward at his command. When I was a few feet from the dais, I stopped. I did not curtsey, for I owed this man no honor. “Your Majesty,” I said coldly.

  A muscle in his cheek twitched. “You are very bold, Annora, for someone who would so openly disrespect your king, the man you were to marry.”

  “That marriage was arranged through no choice of my own, as you well know, Your Majesty.”

  The hall filled with shocked murmurs at my audacious reply, but I ignored them. Surely no one present actually believed I truly wished to wed someone of the king’s advanced years, no matter what his station.

  “And so you saw no reason to be faithful?” He descended the steps of the dais and stopped a few feet away from me. This close, I could see the pouches under his eyes, the broken veins that framed them. It did not seem as if he had spent a much more restful night than I.

  “I was being faithful,” I retorted. “To the man I love.”

  That remark made him set his jaw. Eyes glittering, he said, “Indeed? That sorry specimen over there?” His gaze flicked in Tobyn’s direction and then returned to me. “Do you even know what it was you fancied yourself in love with?”

  “He,” I said, “is Tobyn Slade, a master goldsmith. His station is similar to mine, so why should I not have bestowed my heart upon him? Surely it is a much more logical match, especially since he is only a decade older than I, not almost four.”

  “So I suppose you have seen his face?”

  “I — ” Here I could lie…except it seemed as if the king was anticipating my answer, waiting for it, so he could spring the trap he had set. So I said simply, “No, Your Majesty, I have not. I would hope that I am not such a shallow woman as to give my heart to someone based purely on his appearance, rather than the truth in his heart and soul.”

  “Ah. That is very noble, to be sure. But I think perhaps you should see what it is that you have been letting into your bedchamber every night.”

  The king gave a curt nod at the guards who stood next to Tobyn. Only then did I notice that the heavy silver clasp which usually held his cloak shut was missing. Because of that lack, it was easy enough for one of the men to grasp a handful of the heavy black wool and jerk it backward, revealing Tobyn’s face.

  For one long, agonizing moment, I could only stand there and stare, even as the watching courtiers gasped. He had warned me that he had been scarred badly by the pox, and so I had not been expecting perfection. Far from it. But
the ruin I saw now could not have been caused by that fell disease. One half of his face was pulled and twisted, livid with scar tissue. It continued to his mouth on that same side, which explained the roughness I felt whenever we kissed, and even traveled down his neck.

  Despairing green eyes met mine. As I forced myself to look at him, I realized that the more or less unharmed side of his countenance would have been considered handsome, with the fine strong brow and nose, the heavy dark fringe of lashes around his eyes. His hair, too, was thick and black, although it seemed some of it grew patchily on the same side of his head where his face was scarred.

  So much worse than what the pox could have done to him…and yet I found I did not care. I was able to look into his eyes, to finally see him. And when our gazes locked, I smiled. I would not speak the words, not in front of the entire court, but I would mouth them, so he would know that the ruin of his face mattered nothing to me.

  I love you.

  The king saw those mouthed words, however, and his features twisted in fury. “He is a monster, Annora. Not only his face, but his entire being. How think you that he got those scars?”

  I shook my head, for indeed, I could not begin to puzzle out what might have happened to him. A house fire, perhaps, when he was young?

  “Ah, well, you would have been only a child when it happened, and perhaps your parents shielded you from the story.” King Elsdon turned from me toward Tobyn, asking, “Shall I tell her the tale, or shall you, Master Slade?”

  Tobyn’s scarred mouth pulled into a flat line. “Perhaps you should have the telling, Your Majesty, since you appear to take such pleasure in it.”

  “How very accommodating of you.” Once again the king shifted back toward me. “You see, Annora, this man you profess to love was born with the foul witch-blood running in his veins. Luckily for the good people of Bodenskell, he was not overly careful about concealing his powers — liked to amuse the children in his neighborhood by making coins disappear and reappear. The silly street trick of a conjurer, most people thought. But my investigators found him to be possessed of true magical powers. He was brought to trial and found guilty. And you know the penalty for being mage-born.”