“I plan to offer the Vendans the right to settle in the Cam Lanteux, a chance for a better—”
He slammed his sword into his scabbard. “We are not going to offer the Komizar anything!” he lashed out. “Do you hear me, Lia? If he were on fire, I wouldn’t so much as piss on him to douse the flames! He gets nothing!”
I reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled away. I knew he was still reeling from the loss of Captain Azia and his men. “Not an offer to the Komizar,” I said. “I know he’ll settle for nothing less than our slaughter. The offer is to the Vendan people, Rafe. Remember, they are not the Komizar.”
His chest heaved. “Lia, you’re fighting an army, the Council, the thousands who are behind him and want the same things he does. They’re not going to listen to any peace settlement from you.”
I thought about those who supported the Komizar. The chievdars. The governors who drooled over bounty and wanted far more. The quarterlords, who breathed power like it was air. The soldiers who massacred my brother and his company, then sneered at me as I buried them, and the hundreds more like them, those who reveled in destruction. Rafe was right. Like the Komizar, they would not listen.
But I had to believe there were others who would—the clans pressed into service, and others who cowered and followed the Komizar because they had no other options. The thousands who were desperate for any kind of hope. They were the ones I had to take a chance on.
“Before the battle begins, I am going to make the offer, Rafe.”
“Did your father agree to this?”
“It doesn’t matter. I am regent.”
“The Lesser Kingdoms will never agree to it.”
“They will if Dalbreck leads the way. If we lose, it’s going to happen anyway. And if we win—it still has to happen. It’s the only way for us to move forward. Everyone needs hope, Rafe. I have to give it to them. It’s the right thing to do.”
He argued that there was no time to offer a settlement and the battlefield was not a place to negotiate one. There were tens of thousands in an army that would stretch for miles—I couldn’t speak to them all, and the Komizar wouldn’t listen. The moments before battle were charged with uncertainty.
“I know. But I’ll find a way. I’m just asking you to help me. Without Dalbeck in agreement, I will only be offering them false hope.”
He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know if I can make that promise, Lia. You’re asking me to break a treaty that’s centuries old.” He stepped closer, his anger receding. He brushed a wisp of hair from my cheek. “I know what else you plan on doing. I’m asking you one last time. Don’t. Please. For your sake.”
“We’ve already discussed this, Rafe. It has to be someone.”
His eyes sparked again, resisting—it wasn’t what he wanted to hear—but then our attention was drawn to an urgent knock at the door.
It was Aunt Bernette, breathless and holding her side. “Dalbreck troops!” she gasped. “They’ve been spotted! An hour out of Civica.”
My heart caught in my throat. “And the squads?” I asked.
Her eyes glistened with worry. “We don’t know.”
* * *
Rafe, Tavish, and I, and a dozen soldiers rode out to where the troops were marching toward Civica. We saw a brigade of maybe five hundred. Not the six thousand Rafe had requested.
“The rest may be farther back,” Tavish commented. Rafe said nothing.
When they spotted us riding toward them, the caravan halted. Rafe hailed the colonel and asked where the rest of the troops were. The colonel explained that General Draeger had already recalled them to Dalbreck before the colonel got Rafe’s message. I saw the heat glowing in Rafe’s eyes, but he moved on to the subject that at the moment, was more pressing—the princes and their squads.
“They’re here, Your Majesty, riding in the middle,” he said, nodding over his shoulder. “I’m afraid there were losses. We didn’t—”
My heels dug in, and my horse and I flew toward the middle of the caravan. When the Dalbretch blue gave way to Morrighese red, I jumped from my horse, looking for Bryn and Regan and calling their names.
I spotted five horses with large bundles tied up in blankets draped over their saddles. Bodies. My throat closed.
A hand touched my shoulder.
I whirled and faced a man I didn’t recognize, but who seemed to know me. “They’re alive, Your Highness. This way.”
He walked me back in the caravan. He identified himself as a surgeon and then described my brothers’ injuries. The brunt of the attack had been directed at them. “Their men fought valiantly, but as you can see, some lost their lives.”
“The attackers?”