The Prince's Rogue (Golden Guard Trilogy Book 2)

by Elise Kova

  Her rage was so fierce that it dulled the pain that exploded in her side as a rib cracked where the icicle met her body. Even blunted, the projectile had near-deadly force. Her hands tightened in determination around her sword’s handle, pushing further, pushing until the last bit of life drained from the man onto her blade.

  Raylynn whipped her sword through the air. The blood sheered away and spattered the floor in a merry little percussion. She turned on the Lord, who looked suddenly far more uncertain of himself.

  He launched attack after attack, all of which she dodged with ease. Magic by itself was not deadly. Just like swords, sorcerers had to train to use their skills. And that seemed to be something Twintle never invested much time in.

  He knew how to hurl ice at her and how to take advantage of openings. But without his lackeys to create those openings for him, she advanced with ease. Every icicle was dodged with a sidestep. Her heart raced, pulsing blood from her wounds, but Raylynn disregarded the pain. It was like a tithing for the battle, and one she would gladly pay to continue her relentless pursuit.

  Then she was upon him.

  Raylynn sliced the man at the knees, forcing him to drop before her. He raised his hand, trying to summon another scrap of magic, but Raylynn’s sword arced, slicing at the tendons in his wrists. The man yowled in pain and his fingers went limp.

  By the time he brought his eyes to her in pain-inspired rage, the flat of her blade was already under his chin, its point pressing into his neck. Raylynn looked at the man who had killed her mother, bloodied and bested beneath her, and finally felt victorious.

  “It won’t bring your mother back.”

  “I know. But it will make me feel good.” She smiled delightedly, as if to prove the point.

  “Wait, wait!” Lord Twintle was back to laughing his little laugh when he thought himself far better than everyone else. “There is that issue of… the prince. My magic is staunching his wound, stinting the bleeding. If I die, the ice starts melting, and the blood will flow. Your prince will be dead before you could ride to the Crossroads.”

  This was Twintle’s play. He thought she would spare his life to ensure the prince lived. Raylynn pressed her blade forward.

  She had come here to kill the man. She was going to kill the man.

  “You could’ve been everything,” Lord Twintle rasped up at her as her blade slowly began the process of slitting his throat.

  It felt so good when a sharp weapon eased into the tender flesh of a man’s neck. The blade slipped in like it was coming home to a scabbard, the vertebrae offering only moderate resistance. But Raylnn pressed forward, as she had always done, without remorse or hesitation.

  “I will still be everything. But on my terms, and along the lines of my fate—not yours.”

  29. Baldair

  The iron cut into his skin as they held his limp arms in position. Baldair blinked. Every time he opened and shut his eyes, it seemed to take longer. The periods of blackness were increasing, while his glimpses of the hazy world grew shorter.

  On his knees and leaning forward, held up by his chains, Baldair watched the dripping of his chest. At first, it had been entirely water. But now whorls of blood danced in the clear teardrops that splattered onto the floor.

  A violent shiver wracked his body, and Baldair crushed his teeth together so hard his jaw popped, fighting against the cold of death. He had to fight, even still. He had to fight and earn his life. That was the only way to survive. If he focused enough on that, it might just stave off the terror at the notion of his own mortality.

  The door to his room was opened again, but a woman he didn’t expect to see stopped in apparent relief.

  “Baldair,” she breathed. “Thank the Mother he wasn’t lying. You’re alive.”

  “Barely.” Baldair coughed, instantly regretting it as searing pain shot through him.

  “You’re not going to die here.” Raylynn didn’t speak directly at him, which led him to wonder who she was reassuring.

  From where he presently stood—kneeled—it seemed very likely that he was indeed going to die there. The thought was a black hollow on his mind, a reality he had never experienced before. There was more for him to do. At the very least, he wanted to die a soldier’s death in battle. Baldair could think of no worse way to die than prone and cheated.

  She moved more frantically than he’d ever seen before. Perhaps it was the haze of his eyes, but her motions were sporadic. She rummaged through a keyring Baldair had seen attached to Lord Twintle earlier.

  “Did you kill the bastard?” He tried to believe Raylynn and focus on anything beyond the encroaching darkness. But the hole in his chest was making it hard to talk, fracturing the edges of his bravery.

  “I did.” Raylyn got one of his manacles off with a satisfying click. She quickly moved onto the next.

  “Good. I’m so glad.” At least it wasn’t all for naught.

  When Raylynn unlatched the other manacle, Baldair eased to the floor ungracefully. The ice in his chest had begun to spawn undeniable chills. He shivered and bawled like the pathetic creature he was, no longer able to maintain strength even in the wake of death.

  “Don’t fight the cold,” she commanded.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to race against time.” Raylynn pulled him upward, starting for the stairs. She was so much stronger than she looked, than Baldair even gave credit for, as she had no issue hoisting him, arm over shoulder. He leaned on her, relying on that strength. He had to. “The cold will slow things down, put you in a bit of a stasis. We need that… Twintle is dead, and his ice is melting as a result.”

  “When it’s gone, there will be nothing to s-stop the bleeding.” The words sounded so logical that they cut with surgical precision and demanded him to take a breath for his composure following. He was talking about dying. Maybe it would be better if he thought about it all as happening to someone else.

  “You’re not going to die, Prince. We’re going to get to the Crossroads and a proper Groundbreaker cleric there will fix you up. You must hang on for that long.”

  “Doesn’t seem so hard.” He laughed at the futile idea.

  “We’ll see if you manage. You are a pampered prince after all.” He appreciated her attempt at humor despite their situation.

  They emerged into the stable area. Blood trails told a gory story of what had occurred at the manor. Two servants cowered in the corner, and Baldair paid them no mind as he collapsed on a bale of hay.

  Raylynn, on the other hand, went right for them, sword drawn.

  “What are you doing?” Baldair couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  “Please don’t hurt us!” a young man pleaded. “We didn’t do anything. We don’t even want to work here—the man does horrible things! Take us with you.”

  Raylynn said nothing. Baldair watched as she raised her blade. She was going to kill them.

  “Stop!” he commanded. Even though his voice was faltering and weak, he issued an order that could not be questioned, and her weapon stopped mid-swing.

  “They know we killed Twintle.”

  “Because we had cause to. He’d imprisoned me, attacked me, and acted treasonously against the Crown. They’re not the ones who deserve punishment.” He motioned to the cowering stable hands. Perhaps the last thing he could do with his life was save another. Would that mean his was a life worth living? What made a life worth living at all?

  “Is that truly all you know?” Raylynn demanded with a determination Baldair didn’t quite understand. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You… You’re in service to the prince, right?”

  “She is,” Baldair dared to answer for her. They didn’t have time to bother with this. And yet, he remained focused on his next decree. If he was going to die, he would do all he could for Raylynn. “She is a member of the Golden Guard, a L
ady of the Southern Court, and is to be given your highest honor and trust.”

  “Yes, sir,” both agreed easily.

  Her expression betrayed her skepticism, but he seemed to have stayed her hand for the time being. “Do you have a cart? A carriage? Something the prince can lie on, that a horse could pull? Something sturdy, though, as we need to make haste.”

  “I think I can fashion something.” The man sprinted into the stables.

  “And you,” Raylynn said, turning to the woman. “Fetch me any clerical supplies kept on the premises.”

  Baldair tried to sit a little straighter as Raylynn grew near.

  “Don’t. I’ve always seen you as anything but the proper prince. There’s no need to pretend otherwise now.” She waved his determination away, pushing him lightly to lean against the hay. “Save your strength. You’re not out of the woods yet.”

  “You didn’t object to my calling you the Golden Guard,” he pointed out softly. Darkness had settled heavily on him.

  “I didn’t.”

  Baldair looked at the simple wooden cart, and its cushioning pile of hay, that would be dragged behind Baston. The servant had it almost attached to the saddle. His eyes felt heavy just looking at it.

  “So, does that mean I got what I wanted?”

  “Yes, but only on my terms.” Raylynn helped him off the hay with more tenderness than he knew she possessed. She laid him down atop the blankets and tarp that had been spread across the hay bedding. Dutifully, she bound up the slowly warming wound. “And remember,” she whispered, with what sounded like adoration in his slowing mind, “you will not die either, unless it’s on my terms.”

  Baldair closed his eyes with soft laughter at the strange words. The world was becoming one still image and then the next. He wasn’t afraid, because he knew a person’s life came back to him when he died—but all he saw was a blonde woman, determined to ride a horse despite all her fears to save him. The fading manor. The infinite sky.

  When next he closed his eyes, he didn’t open them anew.

  30. Raylynn

  She rode as though she was the wind itself.

  The desert blurred around her, and the saddle clanked loudly as the animal beneath her pounded the sand with his hooves.

  Baldair was as swaddled as a babe in the makeshift cot that rocked in the cart hitched to Baston’s saddle. But the pallor of the prince’s skin and its ever-graying shade wore on Raylynn each time she checked to make sure the servant’s rigging hadn’t come undone. If she focused on Baldair, she could understand why she’d forced herself into the saddle alone, and why she clutched the reins so hard her fingers had gone white from the strain hours ago.

  As much as she wanted to keep her focus on the prince, she had to look forward. Ahead of her, the East West Way snaked between endless dunes and golden-capped sands. The day had come, and night was nearly upon them, its inky darkness beginning to bleed out from the shadows of the sands she rode across.

  Blood continued to ooze from the wounds she had endured at Lord Twintle’s hand. But fear kept her alert. She would ride until there was nothing more to give. She’d ride until the sun was gone and the Crossroads crept upward on the horizon. She would defy Lord Twintle’s predictions and deliver Baldair safely—and alive.

  When the sun hung low in the sky at the end of her first full day, the Warstrider began to slow some. Its sides heaved and were slick with sweat, mirroring Raylynn’s own condition.

  “Onward.” She snapped the reins tentatively. A part of her didn’t really want to feel the creature lurch forward again. Her thighs screamed, and her back ached. Her tailbone would be bruised for weeks.

  Raylynn took one look at Baldair.

  “Onward!” She repeated the motion with more conviction. But still the beast did not move.

  Raylynn screamed in frustration, letting her anguish be known to the Mother and Father above as they transitioned the day. Why would they design to fate her with a royal, lead her to trust him and believe in a dead princess’s prophecy, give her this creature, if it were all for naught?

  She swung her legs over the saddle, finding enough strength to dismount and half vault away from the beast. It snorted, shifting its legs, and Raylynn tensed instantly, but it didn’t move. It stood, sides heaving and eyes wide as she crept around behind it. Her focus was instantly on the size of the stallion’s hooves. If it kicked her she’d have more than a broken nose—she’d be dead.

  But if it kicked, it would also tip the cart holding Baldair. And if she believed her fate was tied to his, she knew that a beast given to her by the grace of the gods wouldn’t wound either of them. Repeating the fact and putting as much of the wood of the vehicle strapped to the saddle between her and the horse were the only things that calmed her enough to keep focus on Baldair.

  Raylynn tentatively peeled away the swaddled layers, exposing the full gray of his face and stillness of his breathing. But he was still breathing. Every shallow inhale filled her with determination. He was in her hands, he had put his faith in her at the start of this journey, and she’d see him through to the end.

  Ripping through the fabric to make strips, she balled up wads, compressing them into the wound. It was a makeshift tourniquet, but it was the best she could do with what was available to her. Gripping his middle, she pulled him toward her. Her shoulders ached and her wounds ripped with near audible sounds, but Raylynn continued drawing the fabric tightly around his chest, keeping the cloth tight against the wound.

  The first set of fabric was bled through nearly instantly. She wound the second tighter, and the third tighter still. She wouldn’t stop until he was in the hands of a cleric. She would wind together the threads of fate herself if she had to.

  “There,” Raylynn murmured softly, carefully folding the prince back into his cocoon. “Don’t you give into that delicate side of you now, princeling. We’re almost there.”

  She was lying to herself and to him. The Crossroads were still too far. The stars in the unbroken sky above her warned her of the truth. But she wasn’t going to give in so easily.

  She clung to the saddle with white-knuckled but sturdy hands, then swung up and into place. Raylynn scooped up the reins with the motions of someone who wasn’t terrified at the mere mention of horses.

  “I don’t care if you die, horse,” she proclaimed. “Before you do, you will take us there. And you will not stop again until we arrive.”

  Raylynn snapped the reins. She dug her heels in, and Baston responded, shooting off into the night.

  When the Crossroads appeared in the distance, Raylynn nearly teared up—if she had any water left in her body to tear with. A mere day in the desert had drained her of everything she had to give, the Waste claiming a part of her in exchange for a smooth ride that would save the prince’s life.

  She didn’t ease up as they crossed onto the road. Baldair’s cart jostled but held, its ties beginning to fray at the ends. The flat-roofed buildings of the busiest city in the world rose to greet her swiftly.

  “Make way!” she screamed, feeling her own voice tear in the process. “Make way by Imperial order!”

  She didn’t know if it was the “Imperial order” bit or the fear of getting trampled by the beast’s over-sized hooves that scared men and women to the sides of the road, but it didn’t matter. They did as she asked.

  Most still slept, leaving the roads thankfully more empty than they would be in a few hours when dawn was upon them properly. Raylynn had made better time than Lord Twintle had claimed… But she still didn’t know if it would be enough. She hadn’t stopped a second time to check on Baldair’s status. For all she knew, she ferried a dead body.

  She cut through town, using main roads to prevent unnecessary winding. Just as the Crossroads had appeared before her, so did its jewel.

  The Le’Dan estate was quiet, the magic fire in the sconces making
more noise as it persisted against the wind than the whole of the grounds. Raylynn vaulted herself from the saddle, trusting the animal to slow and stop itself. She rolled with the momentum, her joints screaming as she pushed herself onto her feet.

  The sand clung to her every step, caked in the blood of now-old wounds. Still, she persisted. She marched to the great iron gate she had sauntered to weeks ago and gripped it. In the distance, a night servant was approaching with a pace that betrayed his confusion and wasn’t nearly fast enough to meet her panic.

  “We need a cleric!” she screamed into the night, wanting her voice to wake up every last noble and pauper alike who slept under the Le’Dan roof. “We need a cleric for Prince Baldair. He has been mortally wounded.”

  Raylynn took a breath to scream again, but it came out as an exhausted wheeze. Her knees gave out, and she collapsed, clinging yet to the iron bars, gasping for air and fighting for consciousness. She wouldn’t give in until she knew the status of the prince. She wouldn’t surrender to the welcoming darkness until fate had shown its hand.

  31. Raylynn

  She studied the gardens beyond the pulled screens of the lavish room. It was richly formal—a study inside, a connected garden. It all promised extreme opulence, something she was becoming more accustomed to.

  A door on the far side of the garden opened, and a black-clad man entered. Raylynn tilted her head, studying him as he wove through the rose-covered shrubs. They were a plant his mother had so deeply loved.

  “Prince Aldrik.” She bowed deeply. Her joints still popped a little more than normal, her body in dissonance with itself after her long ride through the Waste, but everything was slowly coming back into harmony. She would be healed before she had to ride, yet again, to battle. Baldair insisted she have a horse at war. “Thank you for granting me an audience.”

  “Thank you for saving my idiot brother’s life.” The prince had a voice much different from his mother’s. Where Fiera had a sing-song quality, his was like a force of nature—like low-hanging thunder or gravel sliding down a mountainside.