The Raven and the Dragon

Chapter Fourteen

There were a great many things she had been trying not to think about lately. Most of them were related to Father and his death, but there was another detail Alicia had managed to hide away in her mind. It helped that it was easy to forget, and something she hadn't much thought about even before that Midsummer Festival that changed everything.

The reminder came from eight words, spoken bitterly by her stepmother when Alicia and King Gideon spoke to her after breakfast.

"It's true. My brother will not surrender easily."

My brother.

Alicia had only met Lord Reardon in person once, at the wedding of her father and her now-stepmother. To say that she met him was probably overstating it; they had said hello to each other and then Lord Reardon had gone back to watching the proceedings from a corner, glass of wine in hand, eyes scanning the room like a wolf searching for the weakest creature to hunt.

Then again, perhaps it only looked that way in hindsight. It had been a few years, and with everything that had happened, she couldn't remember if she had always thought him so terrifying or if she was projecting. Perhaps, once, he had only been an odd new uncle to go with her odd new stepmother, an odd new aunt (whom Alicia had also barely spoken to) and an even odder new grandfather (one who would die within a year of Father and Adrianna's marriage due to age and, as she'd overheard Adrianna say, "an excess of drink").

Now he was the man who had killed her father and driven her from her home. And also her uncle, by marriage.

If that was difficult for her to consider, it must have been more so for her stepmother, who was actually related to him.

"He's stubborn. He's always been stubborn. It wouldn't surprise me if he planned this from the moment the wedding was agreed to. He'd never liked the terms of our union." Adrianna twirled a bracelet around her wrist, one of the thin golden ones she always favored. "I knew he might try something foolish, but I didn't think it would be anything like this."

"What did you think he would try?" Alicia asked.

"Challenging Robert to a duel at the wedding?" Alicia pressed a hand to her mouth. It felt terrible to laugh at that, profane almost, but it was such a ridiculous thought. She didn't know people actually did that sort of thing. "Object during the ceremony? Not anything like this, I can say that much."

"Does this mean that seizing him during the attack will make things better, or worse?" King Gideon asked. "In your opinion."

She didn't reply right away. Alicia noticed the sound of her bracelets seemed much more distant than the sound of her voice. It almost echoed, like a distant noise in a cave. An effect of the magic, perhaps? "It will prevent him from escaping," she said finally, "which is desirable, because if he gets back to the Green Isle, he will be in a position to do this again. I don't want this to turn into an extended conflict, especially not on his land. I can't guarantee that capturing him will make the conflict here any shorter, but...yes, I think there would be benefits in the long term." Adrianna looked at Alicia curiously. "You said Botan came up with this plan?"

"Him and the other people I've been travelling with." She wondered what her stepmother would think of the group she'd assembled. She'd probably like Solomon—they both thought about what they wanted to say instead of just saying whatever came to mind. "Two of them are willing to help with the plan. One is still deciding. I think the third is..."

Now that she thought about it, she hadn't actually asked Eve what she was doing.

"I'm not sure, but I'm not comfortable asking her unless she volunteers herself." She had asked enough of Eve as it was. "I'm not even sure I'm comfortable asking the two who are willing to help..."