If she had, our battle here was already lost.
I awoke sometime around midnight, barely able to breathe and with sweat on my palms and throat. I flung my bedcovers aside and stood, trying to orient myself in the darkness. Where were my day clothes?
It didn’t matter. I collapsed on the floor, wrapping my arms around my legs, hoping simply to breathe again. What I’d just experienced was no ordinary dream. It was a memory, so real that I felt as if I were there again.
Thanks to the starry ceiling overhead, my eyes gradually adjusted, but I had yet to calm my racing pulse or to collect an even breath.
I remembered being in the room with Lord Endrick on the day he took my memories. I remembered all of it. The acidic smell of the walls and furniture. The smooth binding cords that had tied me to the chair. Lord Endrick with his scarred gray face close to mine, eagerly anticipating the theft of my memories.
I remembered everything, and recalling what had been missing before was worse than I had imagined.
He had ordered me to kill Simon, an order I had later refused. He had instructed me to wear his necklace to spy upon the Coracks; at least it was safe now with Loelle. But he had also assured Sir Henry that even if I failed, he had another spy in place among the Coracks.
Whoever that was, I needed to warn Captain Tenger. If I didn’t, the spy would find the Olden Blade. He would betray all information about the rebellion to Endrick.
The spy would kill Simon.
I had to leave immediately.
With that decision made, I stood and dressed myself in riding breeches and a fresh tunic, then slung a satchel over my shoulder for what few possessions I had here. Wynnow already knew I was leaving so it should be little surprise to find me gone when morning came. She would be angry at my decision, but no angrier than I still was for what she had done to Loelle. Wynnow would call me a fool for entering a battle with such insignificant magic, powers that could never change the battle’s outcome. I was going to Reddengrad anyway.
I tiptoed from my room, avoiding any servants I could and ignoring those I couldn’t. Once in the stables, the horse I chose was a Brillian breed of far greater strength and power than what we had in Antora. It wouldn’t beat an oropod in a race, but it would get me to the battle sometime tomorrow.
Once the horse was saddled, I led him by the reins, intending to mount him after passing through the stable doors. But I didn’t get five steps forward before Wynnow entered the stables to stand directly in front of me, deliberately blocking the doors with her body. A disk bow was in her hand and a thin-blade sword hung at her side.
“You will not leave.” Every muscle in her face was tightened in anger, but no more than mine.
“I’m no prisoner, nor servant. I do not follow your orders.”
“You are staying here, Kestra.”
As proof of her intentions, she reached into the satchel at her side and pulled out a black disk, inserting it into the pocket of the disk bow. My pulse quickened. “Only the Dominion have black disks.”
Something in her smile turned my stomach. “Then I must have gotten this from the Dominion.”
“Stolen?”
“No.”
As coldly as she had behaved since we arrived here, that single word of hers sent an icy shiver through me. I began backing away. “You’re a Corack. We’re on the same side.”
“I’m Brillian, doing what is right for my people.”
“I’m no threat to your people,” I said.
“But you are part of a bargain I made for my people … now.” She had backed me into a corner of the stables, her bow trained on me. “This wasn’t what I wanted, Kestra. I sent Imri Stout to serve you in Woodcourt, and she would have gotten you safely out, had Simon not interfered. Meanwhile, I joined the Coracks, fully intending to be your friend, and the one you trusted as your memories returned. But Simon interfered with that as well.”
“Lord Endrick said he had a spy among the Coracks. That was you?”
She sighed. “I must do what is best for my people, and whatever is necessary to protect my mother and her throne, and I have. Lord Endrick and I have just completed an agreement that assures the Dominion will never attack Brill.”
I shook my head as the pit in my gut swelled. “He’s here?”
“He’s on his way to these stables now, to collect the second of his two demands. They were steep sacrifices, but they were necessary.”
“What demands?”
“The first was that Lord Endrick wanted the necklace back. It shouldn’t have mattered—I already told him everything he wanted to know about the Coracks, but perhaps he’s sentimental. Imagine how dismayed I was to discover that Loelle had stolen it. She barely escaped Brill earlier tonight, but I retrieved it from her.”