Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 32461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
His gaze hardened. “Explain.”
Eudora fought the words she knew she must speak. “You are to kill her.”
For the first time since entering the solar, Legion looked genuinely stunned.
“You want me to kill a servant lass because someone claims she has royal blood?”
“Nay,” she said with a shake of her head. “I want you to prevent a civil war.”
“By killing a woman who may know nothing about it?” he said unable to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Do you think I reached this decision easily?” Eudora snapped. “Someone is deliberately turning my people against the crown. Villages that have answered the call to training for generations now refuse. Whispers have crossed our borders. If this woman is presented as the rightful queen, every chieftain in Morra Mist will be forced to decide which claim he believes.”
“And if she wants nothing to do with it?” he challenged.
“It may not matter what she wants. A claimant does not have to desire a throne to have others kill in her name.”
Legion couldn't argue with that. He had seen men go to war for less.
Eudora stepped closer to him. “I will not allow Morra Mist to be torn apart while I stand by and hope those responsible lose interest. If the information is false, Senna has nothing to fear from you. But if it is true, and her existence can be used to plunge my kingdom into war, I will protect my people.”
“By ordering me to murder her.”
“By ordering you to prevent a war before it begins.”
Silence stretched between them.
Legion had walked across battlefields after the fighting ended. He knew what war left behind. Men who would never return home. Women who waited for husbands already dead. Children without fathers. Villages burned. People left homeless. One life weighed against hundreds, perhaps thousands.
It should have been an easy choice for a man who had made far worse ones.
Except now that life had a name… Senna.
“You understand your command?” Eudora asked.
“Aye,” he said with not an ounce of emotion.
“And you will carry it out?” she asked, needing him to confirm it.
Legion fought to control the anger churning inside him. He had no choice.
“Aye, my queen, I will obey your command.”
Chapter 16
Torden’s Task
Torden and Creagan turned toward the open door as soon as they heard the door across from their chamber open.
Torden expected Legion to enter the room and tell him it was his turn. Instead, Legion walked straight past the small chamber without a glance.
Torden immediately got to his feet. Something was wrong. Legion's expression revealed little, but after all the years they had known each other, he did not need to see anger on the man's face to know it was there. It showed in the rigid set of his shoulders and the way his hands remained clenched at his sides as he strode down the hall.
Creagan came to stand beside Torden, the decanter of wine still in his hand. The amusement he'd worn since they'd entered the castle faded as they watched Legion walk away.
“Legion,” Torden called out.
He stopped but didn't turn.
Torden waited, giving him a chance to say something, anything that might explain what had happened in the queen's solar.
Legion finally looked back at them. “She wants you next.”
That was all he said before continuing down the hall.
Torden watched until he disappeared around the corner.
“It takes a lot to upset the Lord of War,” Creagan said.
Nodding, Torden agreed. “My thoughts exactly.”
Torden looked across the hall at the closed door to the queen's solar. Whatever command Eudora had given Legion, it had disturbed a man who had faced armies without flinching. He didn't particularly care for the thought of discovering what she had waiting for him.
“Go get her,” Creagan said with a slap to Torden’s shoulder.
He scowled at Creagan, then crossed the hall and entered the solar.
Eudora stood near the hearth. She looked as composed as she had when he'd left her, giving no hint of what had passed between her and Legion.
Torden closed the door behind him. “You upset Legion.”
“I gave him his command,” she said, surprised by his concern.
Torden responded with a command of his own unable to keep the deep rumble out of his voice “What did you command him to do?”
“You know I won't tell you.” Her tone turned sharp. “And do not dare command me.”
That it wasn’t a choice he had irritated him and it irritated him even more that he was left to wonder.
Eudora stared at him. “You are the Lord of Thunder. I can hear it in you and when you release it, I imagine your footfalls alone tremble the earth.”
“You have a task for me,” he said, not willing to discuss that with her.
“Legion was unwilling to admit he is the Lord of War. I expect Creagan will be the same, though what he is lord of evades me since my grandmother refused to tell me.”