Gillen’s hands fastened around Raisa’s throat, and he squeezed, stopping her breath. She twisted and turned but could not break free. The blood roared in her ears, and spots swam before her eyes, coalescing into wolflike shapes.

Then somebody plowed into them, and the pressure on her throat was released.

Greedily gasping for air, Raisa snatched up the fallen torch and jammed it, still burning, into Gillen’s face. He screamed with pain and rage and left off pounding one of the boys. Suddenly he seemed less interested in beating them to death and more interested in getting to the door. Raisa hooked a foot around his ankle and sent him sprawling, and Sarie lifted a heavy iron chamber pot and slammed it into his head.

Gillen finally lay quiet.

C H A P T E R  F I F T E E N

STRANGE
BEDFELLOWS

Amon Byrne was not the kind of person who dwelled on things. He usually made a decision and moved on. But this time was different. He’d done more second-guessing over the past two days than he’d done in his lifetime before then.

They’d not been released from Speaker Jemson’s study until the morning after Raisa’s abduction.

By then the trail was cold. Amon had sent his Gray Wolves racing into Ragmarket to search for any trace of Cuffs or Raisa, while he went straight to his father to confess what he’d done.

He found his father at breakfast, dining alone, as was his habit. Once the first few words were out of Amon’s mouth, Captain Byrne stopped eating, sat back, and listened stone-faced, firing a question here and there.

When Amon finished, his father threw his napkin on the table and sent his orderly to fetch his duty officers to the garrison room.

Amon extended his sword to his father, hilt first. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said stiffly. “I hereby resign my comm—”

“Keep that,” his father growled. “You’ll likely need it.”

“Sir?” Amon stammered, confused. “But…when the queen hears…”

“They are headstrong, the Gray Wolf queens,” his father said. “No one knows that better than me. The most difficult task a guardsman faces is to say no to his sovereign when he knows it may result in his own dismissal, imprisonment, or death.” He fixed Amon with his hawklike gaze. “But sometimes you have to say it. You should have said it to the princess heir.”

“But how can we do that, sir?” Amon restored his sword to its scabbard. “I mean, we serve the queen, and so—”

“We serve the line of queens,” his father said. “We serve the throne. Sometimes an individual makes a bad choice.”

Amon stared at his father. “But isn’t that…isn’t that…”