The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 45

Genevieve sat ramrod straight beside me as the uniformed riders surrounded us. In Vareinnian, they ordered us to keep moving. None of them bowed to Genevieve.

"Do you know them?" I mumbled in Pretanian, as the wagon hit a rut and bounced.

"I do not," she whispered.

Unease prickled along the back of my neck. I prayed that Beatriz had gotten safely away. I didn't dare look back, to see if any of the men who had ridden up the road to surround us had broken off and gone in search. I trusted her. I couldn't give her away.

The town stank of fish and brine, and the armed men surrounded our wagon until it pulled up outside a towering home atop a hill overlooking the sea. An intricate iron gate creaked open to admit us into a stone courtyard. Salt spray from the ocean coated everything in a matted coat of white.

"I really hope you know what you're doing," Genevieve said, as I helped her down from the wagon. "I don't think I can help you now."

"Allez-y," barked one of the dismounted men. He shoved my shoulder.

"Steady on," I barked back him, then added in Vareinnian. "Do you have any idea who you're touching?"

"Do I look like I care?" He fired back.

"Leave it," Genevieve hissed, pulling me towards the stately stone manor.

The door was already open, and a uniformed butler awaited us. But rather than bow to Genevieve, he only inclined his head. "Mademoiselle Genevieve, they await you in the salon."

Mademoiselle. The title of an unmarried young woman. I wanted to swat her hand away when it drifted towards her bodice. Thankfully, she had the foresight to slip her wedding band off as the butler led us up a set of plushly carpeted chairs and pushed open a set of double doors.

"Chérie!"

A cloying cloud of sandalwood cologne envelopped us as a portly man with an exceedingly curled and powdered wig threw his arms around Genevieve.

"Papa," she replied stiffly, for, like me, her attention was not on her father, but on the three other people in the room.

One was clearly the Vareinnian king, if the way Genevieve sank into a low curtsey was any indication. He, like her father, wore a powdered wig, though this one cascaded down his shoulders in a riot of ice blond curls. His face was powdered too, in the opulent, overdone fashion of the Vareinnian court, and the cosmetics gathered in the lines of his aging face. Rings glittered on every one of his fingers as they drummed impatiently on his armrest. More ominously, though, his lips had thinned upon our entrance.

Two others lingered near the window, backs turned. One, a tall, dark-haired man. The other...

She turned.

My stomach plummeted.

Dulciana. Dulciana and Armando.

She was here. But...why? And with the Vareinnian king? And Genevieve's father? Why would she...

A cold wave of dread washed over my skin as her plan unfurled in my mind. The brilliance of it both astounded and disgusted me.

When we thought she'd holed up in Relizia, she'd come here, to cut off Frederico's resources at the source—the king of Vareinne. And while we'd crafted our careful plans to march on the capital, she'd been within striking distance all this time. If we'd known, it would have taken a single one of Shahnaz's assassins to finish this. We could have ended all of it, all the bloodshed, all the death, all the turmoil, with a well-placed knife.