Destined for a King by Ashlyn Macnamara Page A

You must be strong like your father.” Even at the mention of her lord husband, her voice did not falter. Although she had to know they’d never see him again.
    “Yes, Mama.” He gave her the expected reply as if he were as brave and strong as his papa, but inside, his heart felt like a trapped moth battering against the sides of a lantern.
    “Take this, then.” She pressed the cold iron of a dagger into his small hand. With an adult’s understanding, he knew she could not have expected him to use it, but as his fingers curled about the hilt, the permanence of the metal had calmed his heart. She was trusting him with his first weapon, and he must not fail her.
    And then she shouldered a pack. His mother, the queen, who commanded servants, took on a burden. He’d never seen her with more in her fine, white hands than an embroidery needle, but now those long fingers gripped a torch. And into the waistband of her patched skirt, she slipped a dagger of her own. Not once did her hands waver.
    When she straightened, the flicker of that torchlight showed the way through back passages known only to the servitors, down through the bowels of the keep, lower than even the lowest dungeons. The shadows fled before them, creating eerie shapes on the rounded brick walls. The corridors echoed with the squeak and rustle of rats scuttling to hiding places. A damp draft blew chill through the passage, and bit into his skin beneath his ragged clothes. But down here even the clangor of battle at the gates soon faded into a heavy silence.
    At one point, Mama turned to him, one finger raised to her lips. He wanted to ask why, as he’d been carefully silent thus far. Before he could whisper the question, she placed a firm hand on his shoulder and leaned close to breathe, “Wait here.”
    His heart turned into a moth once again. The passage walls pressed close, like the sides of a lantern, and the desire to escape turned into a cold block of ice deep in his belly. But he must be brave, so he nodded.
    His mother eased herself through a crack in the wall, and the torchlight followed her through that tiny space. He strained his ears, fancying he could hear the scrabble of rats coming back, and he held in a whimper. Brave. Silent. Like Papa.
    Ages passed before she returned. “Come.”
    The brick gave way to earth, both above and below, and the air filled with the rich scent of humus. Like rabbits in a warren, they crept onward, while the ceiling lowered until his mother had to bend double. Before long, she sank to her knees. On and on, they went, until he felt as if he could not take another step. But he forced himself, for his queenly mother was crawling like a worm, and crumbs of dirt streaked her face. If she could keep on, so could he.
    By the time they emerged, hot and dirty, from the tunnel, they truly looked like peasants who had spent a long day laboring in the fields. They found themselves surrounded by trees, the din of battle blessedly replaced with birdsong that greeted the pinkening sky to the east.
    Finally, he might voice the question that had been plaguing his childish mind since they’d left the palace behind. “Why, Mama?”
    His mother knelt before him and set both hands on his shoulders. Beneath her eyes, the smear of earth on her face had given way to two salty tracks. “I’ve brought you something.” She reached into her pack to produce a long, narrow bundle. In the growing dawn light, she unbound the rough cloth. Metal rung like a bell as she withdrew a long, heavy broadsword. “This is Char. I laid it by for when you’re old enough.”
    Far better than a dagger, this. Papa’s eagle decorated the pommel. Round-eyed, he reached out and touched the glimmering metal. Then he traced the embossed runes, his fingertip bumping down the black leather.
    “Do you want to know what that says?” his mama asked in her quiet way.
“Death to the unworthy.”
    “What does that mean?”
    She set the blade aside. “He who