Page 110 of The Half King
Father Padron had asked her that once. Now she knew exactly what happened under his watchful eye. She didn’t know what crimes the man and woman had committed, but they didn’t deserve to suffer torture, especially not at the hands of the Order. Holy magic was a gift, and for a priest to abuse his power was the foulest form of blasphemy she could imagine. She would tell the king as soon as the sun rose. The priests were still beholden to his command—for now, at least. If Father Padron wanted a reformation, he would have one.
Starting with himself.
She approached the victims while scanning the rest of the room. Aside from filth and waste, all that caught her eye was a discarded bundle of clothes and rubbish in the corner. That wouldn’t ordinarily strike her as important, but someone had cast an energy shield around the pile, so she made a note to take a closer look at it.
The nearer she moved to the wall, the stronger the smell of decay grew, leaving no doubt that the woman’s soul had returned to Shiera. The woman’s hair was gray, her skin withered with age. Cerise began to suspect who the woman was, and she was right. She recognized the face of the elderly maid who had touched her skirts the first night she’d arrived at the palace—the maid Father Padron claimed to have discharged from her post and then relocated into the city.
Revulsion and horror clawed up inside her. Cerise hadn’t fully believed him. She had expected Father Padron to punish the woman, but not like this.
He was crueler, far crueler, than she’d ever imagined.
She whispered a prayer of peace for the departed maid. Her words stirred the man, who groaned and lifted his face toward her…a face so handsome that not even bruises could disfigure it.
“Cole,” she breathed.
He licked his cracked lips and begged in a hoarse whisper, “Mercy, please. I repented.” His eyes were swollen and bleary. He didn’t seem to know who she was. “Mercy, please,” he repeated, his voice breaking in a sob. “I repented. You said I would be forgiven.”
“Lord Solon, it’s me,” she said. “Cerise.”
Cole blinked. His eyes focused on her and lit with recognition. “My lady?”
“Yes. Tell me who brought you here. Was it Father Padron?”
Cole nodded. “I repented.”
“I’m sure you did,” she said, wincing as she studied the wounds on his chest. Cole couldn’t have been hanging on the wall for longer than a few hours. Father Padron had accomplished a disturbing amount of torture in the short time since his return to the palace. And he had hidden Cole from her. Perhaps he had tried to sabotage the ceremony after all.
“My lady,” Cole said. “Please—will you let me go if I confess my crimes to you?”
She would release him no matter what, but his words made her curious to know what he might have done. “Yes, I promise.”
“I committed treason, my lady,” he said in a rush, darting a glance at the entrance to the hallway as if afraid that Father Padron would return. “Treason and murder.”
She found that hard to believe. Torture would make a man confess to anything. But she asked him to go on while she calculated the best way to lower him to the ground without hurting him.
“I was the queen’s lover,” he told her.
“That’s no secret.”
“But I fed her herbs—crone’s weed so she wouldn’t conceive another child with the king. It went on for years until she caught me putting the herbs in her wine. She was furious. She ordered me to leave the palace at first light. But I was afraid she would tell the king what I had done, so I poisoned them both.”
Cerise froze. “His Majesty’s parents… That was you?”
“Yes,” Cole admitted. “I tried to kill His Majesty, too. More than once.”
As Cole went on to describe the predawn attacks involving the desert panther and the dream weed fire, Cerise no longer doubted his confession. What she didn’t understand was the reason for any of it. Cole didn’t seem motivated by self-preservation or money or revenge. He seemed to have wanted to end the royal line.
“But why?” she asked.
“Because the priests can’t do it themselves.”
“Do you mean someone compelled you to murder the king?”
Cole’s gaze wandered back to the corridor. “No, the priests can’t compel anyone to harm the king. I had an arrangement with Father Padron.”
“What kind of arrangement?”
“We agreed that if I helped the Order take the throne by ending the Mortara line, the Order would give me more lands.”
