An illegitimate son.
Her fool.
4
MATTEO
“You narrowly escaped the marital noose,” Xavier said with a smirk.
Matteo couldn’t return a smile. Climbing on the edge of the stone wall, he peered off in the distance. His neck would be stiff if he kept this stance much longer. “I should have received a messenger pigeon from them by now.”
His friend leaned back against the sandstone wall so his face was shaded from the hot sun. “The Urkan princesses have gone home. They’ve moved on and you should too. Even the birds seem to know it.”
If only it were that easy. Matteo had fancied many girls, but only one had stolen his heart. Nora had made it impossible to even look at any other woman. Yet the treaty would have tied him to her cousin Elea. He couldn’t do it. He would not marry one princess when the other irrevocably held his affections. Nothing his late father had said or threatened could sway him. And Elea treating her cousin with less respect than a servant did little to recommend her to him. He would not be tied to a shrew for life.
Matteo touched the new black armband on his right bicep. His father had died believing him a disobedient son. Stepping down from the ledge, he held out a hand toward his best friend to help him up. “You’re right. It’s time to move on. For today, at least.”
Xavier took the offered hand. “Should we spar? I’ll even let you beat me.”
A laugh broke out of Matteo. Xavier hadn’t won a sparring match between them in ten years.
They walked slowly to the stairs until a distressed screech caught Matteo’s attention. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a pigeon flying with an awkward tilt toward Xavier. Matteo rushed back to the edge of the roof and held out his arms to catch it. The pigeon’s feathers were covered in blood. One of the legs had been shot off, and tied to the other was a note.
Cradling the injured bird to his chest, Matteo ran past his friend, down the stairs, through the atrium, and to the castle’s infirmary.
“Isabel! Isa!” he yelled.
His younger sister, a healer, dropped the bandage she was rolling and bounded toward him, her arms outstretched. Gently she took the injured pigeon and cradled it in her arms. She shook her head. “It is too late.”
The messenger pigeon was dead.
Isa set the bird on the examination table and lifted its feathers. A bullet had grazed the shoulder. “The poor creature bled to death.”
“Who would shoot a c-carrier pigeon?” Xavier asked, entering the room, out of breath.
Matteo shook his head, his heart sinking in his chest. “Someone who didn’t want the message to be delivered.”
He watched his sister softly untie the string and unfurl the paper. Flecks of blood dotted the small parchment, but he could read the words easily:
We have been betrayed to the Kauls.
Please help.
Nora
Matteo felt the blood drain from his head. He sat down on the floor so he wouldn’t faint. He’d never passed out at the sight of blood, but that was before it could have been Nora’s. The woman he loved. Dropping his face into his hands, he struggled to breathe.Is Nora still alive? Was she gravely injured? Why did she refuse to stay in Sania?
But he knew the answer to the last question: Elea.
Nora would never betray her cousin, neither could she stay in a foreign country until Elea held the throne of Urka. She was loyal down to the very marrow in her bones. Although, in his opinion, her horrid cousin didn’t deserve it. He admired Nora’s family loyalty almost as much as he resented it.
Xavier leaned over Isa’s shoulder to read the letter. “Seven purgatories!”
Nora’s favorite curse. Sanians did not believe in the three Urkan heavens or in the seven Urkan purgatories. His people worshiped their ancestors and cared for the earth. They did not follow male gods or female goddesses.
Isa sat down beside him. “How could Nora be captured by the Kauls? She is so strong.”
Matteo sighed, his shoulders drooping. “She’s not invincible, Isa. And she would have been protecting . . .”