Princess (44 page)

She placed her hand over her mouth as she stared at the floor, crying, listening to his words that charged on like a maddened bull, barbed pennants flying from its black hide.

“You’re thirteen years old and you’ve seen things to keep you jaded for three lifetimes. You’re hardened, and lying’s a necessity, and you survive because you lie so very well. You don’t care what you have to do or say. You don’t let anything touch you. You don’t dare need anyone and you don’t trust anyone in a million years, not even the angel God sends to save you.”

She sobbed, holding her head in both hands.

His chest heaved. “I am empty, Serafina. I am nothing and I have nothing to give you.”

But for the sound of her crying, there was a terrible silence.

“Well, now you know. Happy?”

She looked up, crying like her heart was broken. He could see her shaking.

“I don’t expect you to be here when I get back. Wife,” he added bitterly as he turned to go.

He barely heard her whispered plea. “Don’t leave.”

He turned around, glaring at her from under his forelock. He felt naked in front of her.

She stood up and began walking down the stairs, taking them one by one, like a child. She looked so unsteady he thought she might fall down them, so he went up to her. She sat down on the middle step and leaned against the spindled banister.

She eyed him as he wearily crouched down near her. He thought she looked frightened of him, but when he lowered himself to her eye level, she put her arms around him like she would never let him go. She clung to him and laid her head on his shoulder, still crying softly.

“Don’t go away from me now,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. The feel of her arms was warm, wonderful. He inhaled the vanilla-citrusy perfume that clung in her hair, then he sighed.

“You’re the only pure thing in my life, Serafina,” he said, his voice soft but heavy. “All I ever wanted was to build a kind of wall around your little garden world and let you be safe there, and happy. A little paradise just for you.”

She pulled back and stared at him, agony and heartbreak in her red-rimmed eyes, an anguished smile on her trembling lips, and he knew what he had to do. A match with this girl? This royal creature, this angel? What hubris had ever made him think himself worthy of her? His heart sank to subterranean depths, but it was the only solution.

“Protecting you, Serafina, is the one thing that I can look back on and take pride in,” he forced out. “I’ve done my best by you. At least, I’ve tried to. But look at what’s happening to you. Look at what I’m doing to you now. You should never cry, butterfly. You should never have loved me—”

She clutched at his shirt, protest swimming in her violet eyes.

“But that is your nature,” he went on gently, stroking her hair again. “Pure love, joyous and giving. That’s my angel. How lucky I have been to watch you grow and share your life.” He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “I never should have reached for you, knowing what I am, knowing I could only contaminate you. It was unforgivably selfish of me. But I needed you so.”

“As I need you,” she whispered, holding on to two fistfuls of his shirt, as if she could already sense what he intended.

He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “I must give you up now, my Serafina. You know it’s time to say goodbye.”

“No, Darius! You’re wrong!” she whispered frantically. “I need you here.”

“No, you still don’t understand,” he said, beginning to lose patience. “There is something . . . deeply wrong inside of me. I don’t know what it is, I only know it can’t be fixed and it can’t be helped—”

“Yes, it can! Together we can—”

“No! Look at what I’ve done to you. Throwing your food against the wall like a bedlamite?”

She winced. “I only did that to get your attention.”

“Drinking? Taking laudanum? I heard about that. You nearly destroyed yourself.
I
nearly destroyed you.”

“But, Darius, I thought you were dead! You are my love, my best friend! I was distraught!”

“What about this afternoon?” he whispered angrily. “Rutting with you like the whore of Babylon?”

“I wanted you.”

“Serafina! That’s scarcely the point.”

She caught his face between her hands and stared pleadingly at him. “Darius, stop this. I know you’ve suffered things I’ll never fully understand, but I love you. Yourself. I don’t want a champion, I want you, and I accept it—”

He jerked away, growing angry and bewildered. “I said no! Can’t you hear? You can’t still want me. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not going to hurt you. Let me love you.”

“I can’t do that!” he cried as he stood up, poised to flee. “Don’t you see? I can’t! I don’t know how!”

She didn’t flinch, holding on to his hand. “You can. You’re my Darius—you can do anything. You did it before. You’re just afraid. Quit running. I’ll never catch you unless you let me. Let my love heal you, Darius.”

She caressed him and her gentle touch snapped the last of his control even as its softness slid down into the core of his being.

“Why are you trying to destroy me?” With a strangled cry, he grasped the silver medal of the Virgin and ripped it off his neck, chain and all, throwing it far over the banister. “I can’t do this! I never wanted to marry you!” he ranted at her, his throat straining, his eyes wild with anguish. “Why are you so cruel to me? Why do you make me wretched for what I can’t have and what I can’t be? Why couldn’t you leave me alone? Why couldn’t you let me die in Milan like I wanted?”

“No, Darius!” she said in dread, then she tried to slip past him. “I’ll get the medal. You put it back on—”

“I don’t want it,” he said in a voice out of hell, teeth clenched. He gripped her by the shoulders, shut his eyes, and pressed his blazing lips to her forehead.

“Darius,” she whispered.

He moved his face against her smooth brow. “I love you, Serafina. And for that reason,” he whispered, “I release you. I release you from this bond of blood. Go now, while I am strong enough to let you.”

“Darius!” she cried as he wrenched out of her arms.

Moving lightly, he descended the stairs, then stalked to the door, bloodlust pounding in his veins, for he had such wrath to vent.

“Darius!”

He paused on the threshold but did not turn around. “Do not be here when I come back. Go home, the way you planned. If you don’t leave first, I will.”

She cried out as he lurched out the door and ran down the front steps, going blindly to the waiting wagon. He flung himself up to the driver’s seat next to Rafael and cracked the whip over the horses’ backs.

He was going to die today. His mind was made up on the matter. He only prayed that he could stave off his own disintegration long enough to save Lazar and his men from massacre.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Powder kegs secured, the wagon careened over the rough roads, winding west. Darius drove the wagon with Rafe watching over the barrels. The men rode in formation behind them. After a breakneck race of nearly two hours, they arrived at the high, sparse pine woods that shielded the mouth of the tunnels’ western branch.

Leaving the wagon on the road, for half an hour they searched the boulder-strewn thicket, unable to find the cave’s entrance, it was so well concealed. At last, Rafe found it.

They tore away brambles and vines to reveal the cave’s mouth. Darius lit the torch that was always left just inside every tunnel’s entrance, because the subterranean passages were as black as tar.

This tunnel, he saw as the flame leaped to life, was wide enough that three men could climb abreast through it. By torchlight, they began the backbreaking labor of carrying the powder kegs through the woods, up the hill, picking their way around the boulders, and deep into the tunnel. The sweat on his skin turned clammy in the tunnel’s cool depths.

Darius held his breath every time anyone passed the torches, gingerly carrying their payload of explosives. They stacked the barrels, pyramid-fashion, about three hundred yards into the cave. As the last barrel was unloaded from the wagon, Darius ordered Sergeant Tomas to take his men over the ridge farther up the road so they would be a safe distance from the explosion.

Again the men mounted their horses while Darius kicked the final barrel until the side of it cracked. Then he and Rafe carried it into the tunnel, the barrel leaking a sandy black trail of gunpowder.

Just as they set it in position, their arms straining, faces beaded with sweat, they suddenly fell silent, hearing dull, muffled echoes coming from deep inside the cave.

They both turned, staring into the eerie, echoing blackness. They could not yet see the light of torches, but they could hear voices and the scrape and shuffle of countless boots.

“Poor bastards,” Darius breathed. He hoped the mountain crushed them before the fire consumed them, he thought. Burning was no way to die.

He didn’t know exactly how far the fireball would roll in both directions when the barrels blew, any more than he knew how many hundreds of unsuspecting soldiers would die when the mountain collapsed on them.

“Come on.” Rafe tugged his sleeve.

They ran. Darius grabbed the torch on the way out of the cave.

“Get out of here,” Darius ordered the boy, shoving him toward the wagon with one hand, holding the torch in the other.

Rafe stopped him. “I shall do it. Go with your men.”

Darius scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m expendable. You’re the heir to the throne. Get the hell out of here. I’ll catch up.”

“I caused the problem. It’s my responsibility,” Rafe said in an odd, hard, crisp tone that did not sound at all like the royal rogue Darius knew.

He stared at him. “Raffaele! Don’t be a fool. This is extremely dangerous—”

“I know it is. Now go. That’s an order, Santiago.”

“You’re giving me orders?” he asked incredulously.

Rafael held his stare coolly. “That’s right. Go—now. Wait for me with the others.”

Resistant and rather angrily amazed, Darius surveyed the ground, searching for cover, then glanced at his young brother-in-law with a newfound measure of respect. “There’s a cluster of boulders over there.” He pointed. “I suggest you run like hell for them.”

Rafe merely jerked a nod for him to leave, his gold-green eyes hard as the wind tousled his gold-streaked hair. Darius realized this was something the young man had to do. Even so, he didn’t like it. Darius climbed up onto the wagon, picked up the reins, and slapped them over the horses’ back, but he looked over his shoulder as the carriage began pulling away.

Rafe stood in the middle of the dusty road. “Gonna kill a hundred, maybe a thousand men with one blow, Santiago,” the royal rogue called after him with a grin. “That’s even better than your average.”

“Just don’t blow yourself to smithereens,” he muttered. Then he urged the horses into a gallop and drove the carriage over the ridge.

“Hit the ground, hit the ground!” he ordered his men.

Several minutes later, the massive explosion tore through the belly of the mountain. The horses screamed in terror, rearing in the harness. Darius covered his ears, feeling the blast of heat. The roar went on and on as the hill fell in on itself, but when the noise finally rumbled to a halt, he was already on his feet, running back over the ridge.

“Ra faele!”

“Your Highness!” the men called.

Some began running back down the road. Darius joined them, his heart pounding. As he approached the site, he saw the tunnel’s mouth no longer existed. Also, fortunately, they had planted the explosives deep enough inside the cave that fire had not spread to the woods.

The dust was settling, the men running toward the boulders. Though some of the birds were still screeching in the trees, the place was otherwise shockingly serene, as if nothing had happened.

“Rafe!”

Squinting against the bright late afternoon sun, he looked down the road and saw a figure climbing out from under the small, flat den between the boulders. The boy came out coughing and covered in dust and ash, but he was unscathed.

Sergeant Tomas hastened to give him his canteen. Rafe took a long drink.

“Victory!” he croaked with a weak grin, but his face was pale beneath the grime. “Let’s go check on my old man.”

Amid the men’s congratulations to the prince on his feat accomplished, they walked back to the wagon and were soon under way.

They could hear the cannon fire rumbling from miles away, but when they finally rolled up into the shadow of the towering defensive wall from which Ascencion’s fine long-range guns were blasting the ships in the blue-green harbor below, the skirmish was already drawing to a close, judging by the sound of things.

Darius shaded his eyes, gazing up at the wall’s battlements, swathed in clouds of smoke from the cannons. Through the floating smoke, he saw the powerful figure of the king stalking back and forth behind the gun crews.

“Damned hothead,” Darius murmured, shaking his head. As king, Lazar had no right exposing himself under fire, but Darius knew he was venting his wrath as outraged papa on the enemy.

By the look of it, the meager exchange with the French had only whetted Lazar’s appetite for battle. He was ordering his men to fire and fire again, though the enemy had stopped shooting.

Rafe and Darius exchanged a grim, knowing look.

“Let’s get this over with,” the prince grumbled.

“Right.” Darius jumped down from the wagon.

As they strode toward the tower and up the stone stairs leading to the battlements, Darius felt that familiar clench of anger in his stomach, knowing he was about to face Lazar for the first time since their break. He felt rather like he used to as a boy, called before his father for some bewildering, tiny transgression.

Upon reaching the top of the steps, they walked onto the breezy battlements and looked out to sea. Darius ignored the stares aimed at him and considered the situation.

The French were retreating to their blockade positions, a wary distance beyond the guns’ range. He surveyed the battleships’ formation, but his thoughts were far distant, on Serafina.