by Rose Reid
I drop the metal bowl and let it clatter to the ground loudly, trying to gain the attention of whatever guard stands watch.
When the guard walks up and the door opens, a familiar face glares at me from the other side.
“Jamas,” I say, my shoulders slouching. Jamas is the only person I want to see at this point. Lyom’s gaze makes me feel worthless — no, repulsive — and Carnahan makes me squirm, but Jamas? He looks at me with compassion, no pity.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“An outpost,” Jamas answers, gaze flicking to the ground. “I’m to bring you back to Lyom.”
I’m already shaking my head. “Please,” but I don’t know what I am bargaining for. Do I really want to grovel and beg that he not bring me to Lyom? Do I want to plead for him to release me?
Jamas must sense my inner turmoil because he only looks up with a sad expression on his face, regret in his eyes. He looks over his shoulder and shouts down the hall that I am awake and a guard materializes in the darkness, walking forward with handcuffs and shackles. Jamas takes them from him and binds my wrists and ankles. The shackles have spikes on the inside of the cuffs, making even the slightest movements painful.
Leading me out of my cell and down the hall until we spill out into the foyer of the base and I am finally allowed to see the size of it. Right away, I know exactly where I am.
Vernaught Outpost. Near the village of Twin Haul.
Home to forty soldiers, the outpost is one of the largest in the kingdom, apart from Soldier’s Pond. Twin Haul, though, is a small village that we nearly passed through while traveling to Helmfirth at the beginning of our journey.
The outpost is well fortified and when I am brought up into the foyer of the base, I see several of the soldiers standing in line, waiting to watch me be dragged out of the outpost. As I walk, I see Lyom out of the corner of my eye, talking with another servicemen, and I cannot help myself. I lunge at him, anger and betrayal surging in my chest. Have I not been betrayed enough? By my own father, by Quay, Cicero and Sebastien? I even thought Dominik had betrayed me, though now I am more keen to believe his story over Lyom’s. He was probably in on it the entire time, knowing I’d never hunt Dominik down if I believed he was still my partner.
I’m rewarded with a sharp tug on my chains, Jamas hissing my name in a warning. The spikes dog into my skin and muscle and scrape against the bones of my wrists and ankles. My feet are almost swept out from underneath me but I manage to stay upright. I want to scream out in anger but all that bubbles up is an insane kind of laughter. I shake my wrists out while I look down at the blood trickling over my hands.
Lyom watches me, his emotionless expression cracking for a moment and I see a tinge of horror in his eyes. Good. Let him be horrified.
I’m not given a horse to ride on the way back to Adandyrl’s Keep. Lyom leads the way but we move slowly — I see to that. I drag my feet the entire way, the spikes from the shackles only digging into my wrists but I feel nothing. Any chance I get to torment Lyom and his men, I take it, giving them all the time in the world to consider what is going on in my mind.
I refuse to allow myself to be weak, to wonder if half of Lyom wants him to betray the king and release me. I refuse to want to kill myself, to end it all now, because that is what Quay would want me to do. I refuse to allow certain thoughts into my mind, but there are some thoughts I cannot stop. The ones that pry their way in and torment me, chastising me for always being the one to be fooled. Since when have I become the naïve, gullible, innocent girl that anyone could persuade and bend to their will?
Part of me wants to believe that Lyom has no other choice and he must bring me in, but another part of me knows we are always given choices.
We do not stop at all until we reach Adandyrl. I am dragged through the streets for the second time. Somehow I pictured our ride back to the Keep differently. I imagined being on a horse, for one thing, my wrists completely fine.
Everything passes in a blur until the doors to the great hall are opened and I am led by my cuffs by Lyom down the throne room’s corridor, the king of Evrallon sitting on his throne of silver at the end. I can tell just by looking at the king that he is not pleased. His brows are furrowed and his mouth set in a permanent frown.
When Lyom has dragged me close enough to the throne he drops my wrists, planting a hand on my shoulder and shoving me down. I hear the doors behind me close and begin to shake Lyom’s hand off my shoulder but he is already removing it, walking towards the king.
“Lord King,” Lyom says. “I present Princess Cress, the second Child of the Elements to appear.”
The king sneers, unbelieving. “You jest, Swordmaster.”
“Yes, Swordmaster.” I mimic. “You must be kidding.”
Lyom doesn’t silence me, only walks around behind me and pulls the neck of my shirt away, revealing the swirling Jezdah beneath. I don’t push him away or resist in any way, just let the king realize that he had the Girl in his possession the whole time, he was just too thick to realize it.
The king draws to a stand, looking down his nose at me with complete hatred. “Where is the Boy?”
“Escaped.” Lyom admits.
“Escaped?” King Dryden’s voice shakes with rage but he manages to keep his expression controlled. “Tell me, Swordmaster, how did he escape? Was it because our mutual friend, here, allowed him to?”
Lyom is quiet for a long moment, then respectfully answers, saying, “Azmar Quay interrupted the assassination of Dominik Giovani. We assume he is the one seeking the Children.” Lyom tells his king. “But he can do nothing with him unless he has the Girl.”
“Is that so?” bellows the king, stepping down one stair closer to the both of us. “Then why is it that the Girl lives?”
“There is a charm on her, Your Majesty.”
My jaw tightens. Of course, I already suspected he knew of the charm, but hearing it makes me sick to my stomach. How does this charm work? If I, as the Girl, attempted to kill the Boy, would I die in his stead? As a Child, am I allowed to kill him? When an injury turns fatal does whoever inflicted the injury die in my stead?
“Explain.” the king orders.
“It would be better to show, My King.” continues Lyom. “Is there anyone within your court you could stand to live without?”
He wouldn’t.
The king looks skeptical of Lyom’s methods for all of a second before he calls to the guards standing around the room. “Bring Cicero to me.”
I straighten, looking at Lyom. I start to ask what he plans to do if the charm fails to work and my head goes rolling but I keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that Lyom does not care to hear anything I say.
The doors to the throne room open a minute later and in struts Cicero in all his glory, wearing garbs of the Keep, adorned in silver and jewels. I sneer at him. What has he been doing all this time while I have been dragged across Evrallon? I contemplate if I should lunge at him or not — rip his eyes from his skull before he can even raise a sword against me — but choose to trust that Quay would not send me back to the king of Evrallon without being certain of the charm set in place.
Upon seeing me, Cicero smirks. “You wanted to see me, King?” he says, though his gaze remains solely on me. I feel all the hostility, all the venom directed at me. I killed his brother and he has always hoped that one day he will get to kill me in return.
The king waves a hand at me flippantly. “Kill Miss Elony if you would, please.”
Cicero balks only momentarily, clearly astonished that the king is going back on his word. I would not be so astonished if I were him.
His befuddlement is short lived and he nods and unsheathes his sword. Lyom steps back away from me, the cowardly slug. Cicero saunters towards me, twirling his sword around in the air as if to boast his abilities.
“I’m waiting.” the king says impatiently.
So Cicero raises the sword over his head and I turn to look up at him, only a tinge of fear in m
y stomach as he begins to drop the sword towards my neck. My gaze flits to Lyom and for a fraction of a second I swear I see him tense.
But then the sword drops on my neck and the electric feeling pulses through me, zipping through my veins. Even when I see the tip of the sword fall to the floor, resting on the marble, I keep my head down. It isn’t until I see the sword clatter to the ground and Cicero’s lifeless body and decapitated head hit the marble floor that I look up, admiring the expression of horror and unbelief on his face. Turning to look at Lyom, I frown at his masked expression. No matter. I have the king’s full respect at this point, even if he would rather see me dead than alive.
XXIV
“And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
To say the king is upset would be putting it lightly. lightly. He jumps to his feet when he sees Cicero’s head roll across his beautiful marble floors, eyes narrowed into slits. His head snaps to me and it is not hard to imagine why he was named the Cruel King.
“It would seem the terms of our arrangement have been changed.” says King Dryden.
My muscles tighten involuntarily. “They have not. I agreed to bring Dominik back. You have not given me adequate time to do so and your Swordmaster has dragged me back before I could complete the task —”
“You were never going to complete the task, Assassin.” hisses Lyom venomously.
I keep my eyes on the king but have no hope that he will be merciful this one time. I am not one to set myself up for disappointment, and I have already been burned enough these past few months.
King Dryden looks as though he could breathe fire. “Did you really think you could hide right beneath our noses?”
I remain silent, knowing that speaking at all at this point will only hurt my situation further.
“Are you so conceited as to think you are better than my Swordmaster? Do you even know what he is?” the king hisses, taking a step forward. “Do you think yourself better than my finest swordsmen?”
“I know what he is,” I say in a low voice.
King Dryden stops moving forward, scowling at me. “So he has been forthcoming in more ways than one.” His gaze goes up to meet Lyom’s. “What of Dominik?”
Lyom straightens. “He is in the wind.”
Dryden curses. “We need him. The Afterlighters will destroy my kingdom if they are released.” He looks at me. “You will destroy my kingdom. All of you will.”
I want to argue that the Afterlighters are not coming to start a war but how do I know? Quay has sided with them, which can never be good, but King Dryden is on the opposing side, which makes choosing between them even more difficult.
“You have an Afterlighter serving you.” is what I manage to say. “If you fear them so much, why then did you place one over the safety of your own daughter?”
The king’s brown eyes turn a dangerous shade darker, his young appearance suddenly changing to make him look more threatening as he stands taller. “A father will do strange things to protect his daughter, Miss Elony. You of all people should know that.”
King Dryden snaps his fingers and like he has just bellowed the servant’s name, a courier races into the room, carrying a scroll with him. The young courier hands the scroll to the king before bowing out and scampering from the room like a small rodent.
Unraveling the scroll seems to take the king a great deal of time. He is drawing out the seconds as he looks at the long parchment.
“It says here that your father originally wanted to kill you. For the safety of his kingdom. He thought of his kingdom as more of a child than he did of you, didn’t he?” The king’s smile only makes me want to wretch but I know he is right. “Your mother convinced him not to do it, though. After her … untimely death, sentenced you to life in the Aerie, to become an assassin of his secret Cannon, and to work beneath the harsh disciplinarian, Azmar Quay.” The king looks up at me. “Do I have it right so far?”
I refrain from saying anything, just let my gaze fall to the floor. I don’t want this, don’t want to relive all my assignments, to remember my past.
“You trained in the Cannon for several years. I even have your training statistics here. Look,” The king taps another parchment he’s pulled from inside the scroll. “It says you were top of your class, if that’s what we’re calling it. By the time you were nine, you were able to take down full grown men! I’m very curious as to how you managed that.”
“Stop,” My voice is barely a whisper.
King Dryden ignores me entirely. “When you turned eleven, Azmar let you out of your little cage, isn’t that right? He sicced you on a young couple in Blancathey, didn’t he?”
Beside me, I see Lyom stiffen and I want to look up to see what his face is projecting but cannot take my eyes off the marble. This is not a story I want the king retelling.
“Please stop.” I say again.
“Strange,” continues Dryden. “This story seems oddly familiar to me. I knew the young man whose bride-to-be was murdered that day!”
I do not want to know where this is going, do not want to know if I could have killed his son or his cousin or his uncle, however the man was related to him. I hardly remember their faces at this point. The shame of knowing that I killed two, happy people in cold blood and cannot even recall what they looked like is heavy.
The sickening glee in the Cruel King’s voice is practically tangible. “Could it be —”
“Stop!” I shout again, my head whipping up.
But Dryden doesn’t, and I immensely wish he had. Because the moment the words leave his mouth, I know I will never be the same again. Cliché though it may sound, it is entirely true.
“Carenina was her name … Wasn’t it, Swordmaster?”
I don’t want to look at Lyom, do not even want to consider that the king’s words mean. My heart is the only sound I hear in the room — my heart and my ragged breathing.
“Yes,” Lyom finally answers.
“You were going to be married that July, correct?”
I know the lump in my throat will never go away but my mind is spinning, demanding to know how that is possible. I was eleven! How could Lyom have been about to marry someone at fifteen years old?! I must be misunderstanding the king, must have heard something wrong, but I am not drugged and my mind is not going numb.
My jaw tightens and I look up at Lyom, who is staring straight ahead, just as emotionless as ever.
“That was not you who I killed in the carriage,” I say it quietly, mostly to myself. “You would have been fifteen.”
Lyom’s expression does not change and neither does he offer an explanation.
“Did he not tell you?” asks Dryden. “He doesn’t age, you foolish girl. He hasn’t since Anguis brought him back to life.” He hesitates, then smiles. “But you wouldn’t know who Anguis is either, would you?”
I am not even paying attention anymore. I keep my eyes on Lyom, unable to believe anything is going on. I killed Lyom’s fiancée?
“I killed you both.” I say, then immediately wish I could take it back.
“You cannot kill a Riser.” is all Lyom responds with.
I blink at him and I know I must look shocked. “You knew … This whole time you knew?”
Lyom just nods.
He knew I killed his betrothed the moment he showed up on Lydovier’s shores. He knew I killed his fiancée when he found me in the Hook Gulch. He knew I killed the one he was supposed to love forever when I was kissing him in his tent. He has known the entire time.
I am not as surprised if I would be had it been anyone else. Lyom has a marvelous ability to shut off his feelings; the fact that he was recently associated with Princess Haraya is proof of that. Perhaps he forgot all about that woman I killed the day after it happen. Perhaps that is how he gets up every day without b
eing heartbroken that Haraya chose Prince Finnegan over him.
Dryden lets out a long sigh. “The conversation grows tedious, Swordmaster, and I am done answering this girl’s ridiculous questions. Take her to the dungeons while I decide what to do with her.”
Lyom just inclines his head, uttering his acknowledgements as he walks up to me and grabs me by my jagged cuffs, pulling me to my feet. I don’t even feel the pain as he drags me out of the throne room. All I can think about is the day I earned my title.
“That is why you despise me,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.
Lyom doesn’t respond.
He is careful to keep to the less-trafficked hallways in case the Keep has honored guests that would be horrified to see the Queen of Crimson dragged, bloodied, through their marble halls. But his cautious maneuverings only help him for so long.
Princess Haraya suddenly appears around the corner, her skirts lifted as she runs. She comes to a dead stop when she sees Lyom standing in front of her. Her eyes widen but her posture relaxes as if he was who she was looking for all along.
She runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck before he can move even a muscle. Her eyes are squeezed shut as if she can hardly believe he is here in front of her.
I think I am staring at them but I can’t help it. Lyom has proven that he is not my friend, let alone anything else, but seeing her with him hurts. My heart feels like it is on fire and will disintegrate from the heat at any moment, hands clenching and unclenching, which only makes my bloodied and bruised wrists hurt more.
Here I stand beaten and battered while Haraya has her face buried in Lyom’s neck, inhaling his woodsy scent.
“I was so worried,” she whispers into the crook of his shoulder. “Carnahan made it sound like … I thought you were injured.”
She pulls back from him, looking him in the eyes. At first, I am glad that he isn’t showing any emotion, that he is just standing there like a mannequin, but then the hand that doesn’t hold my chains settles on her ruffled hip.
