67. Chapter 67
Chapter 67
Rahk
Kat kneels, one hand braced on her leg, the other against the floor. Her hair is wild, her eyes ringed in white. Only two paces away are the remains of what appear to be the Valehaven Tailor.
I only barely made it in time.
I take in the rest of the room in a flash. The placement and identity of each guard, the arrangement of Pelarusa’s additional four captives, my two sisters.
“You are back,” growls Lord Nothril. “What a privilege to have you finally grace our presence!”
Lady Nothril strokes Pavi’s head. Her calm, steady voice carries through the hall. “My dear son. I am troubled by the reports I have received of you.”
It frightens me how strong the impulse is to sheathe my swords, clasp my hands behind my back, and fix my gaze above her throne as I’ve always done. To ask, without an ounce of emotion, what my sovereigns require of me.
But Lord and Lady Nothril have asked me for one too many deaths.
Kat is mine , and they cannot have her.
I do not care what it costs me. I have spent so much of my life trying to somehow be both, to be a Nothril prince but uncorrupted. I let Lord and Lady Nothril dictate everything in my life. I let them punish me for caring about my sister.
But I am done playing their games. I am done being their prince.
I have finally come to destroy the kingdom I spent my life building.
“I hear reports that you have been lazy in your search efforts, despite your own dear sister’s life being on the line.” Lady Nothril rakes her nails lightly across Pavi’s scalp, even as the girl looks up at her, startled. Pavi did not know what a blood oath entailed. “I heard you bonded with a human woman, and the very criminal you sought. If I did not know better, I would think your loyalties had shifted.”
I take in the room once more. I am confident I can get Kat and I out of this room alive. But the moment I do, Lady Nothril will slice her beloved daughter’s throat—and order Mary, Oliver, Becky, and Agatha all slaughtered.
If I can delay the inevitable, it might buy me just enough time.
“There is one thing you can do to ensure your loyalties remain as they ought,” Lady Nothril continues, a slow smile twisting her lips.
My focus narrows on Pelarusa. There is one thing I can do to protect Pavi’s life.
Lady Nothril waves her hand, gesturing at Kat. “Execute the Ivy Mask as we instruct. You will be restored to your former position and glory as our heir. We will put all of this nonsense behind us.”
She is out of her mind if she thinks I will seriously consider murdering my wife.
“What sentence would please you? She took your slave girl, after all. It is right that you should decide.” Lady Nothril regards her husband.
“I have considered this,” replies Lord Nothril, his pupils dilating and glittering. “She must be executed very slowly. A table will be brought forth and she will be pinned to it with a blade through her naval, her hands and legs pinned to the table with stakes. Then hot tongs will be used—”
“No!” cries Pavi.
I flinch at the sound of her throwing herself to the ground before Lord and Lady Nothril.
“Pavi!” Pelarusa cries, fear staining her voice.
“Please, don’t make him do this to the woman he loves!” Pavi begs, and my world turns cold with dread. “She wasn’t trying to hurt our people! She just wanted to help her own! She was being kind and brave. She shouldn’t have to endure a horror like this!”
Pavi, no. No, no, no, no.
I just need you to stay alive for a few more minutes longer until—
The air turns deadly.
Stay out of this, I scream in my mind. Let me handle this. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Please, Pavi!
But she cannot hear my frantic thoughts.
“I cannot bear to watch this!” Pavi is openly weeping now. “You always make me watch such horrible things and I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”
Pelarusa does what I cannot, and marches across the room to grab Pavi by the arm, to drag her back to her place, temporarily leaving Kat unattended. “Be silent!”
Pavi wrenches free. “I’ve been silent long enough!” She whirls on Lord and Lady Nothril, either not noticing the dark thrum of energy coming from the twin thrones, or not caring. “Mama, please! Papa! Don’t do this horrible thing. Can you not see how this would destroy Rahk?”
“Pavi,” Lady Nothril says with deceptive calm.
She looks up, hope filling her innocent face. Every muscle in my body braces. I scan the room for the hundredth time, trying to sort out exactly how to get us out of this mess.
“You can only interrupt someone’s sentence if you are willing to take the punishment on behalf of the accused.”
Pavi’s face pales.
“Will you take the place of the accused?” Lord Nothril asks.
Pavi glances helplessly between me and the wide-eyed Kat beside me.
“You do not have to,” Lady Nothril says with gentleness that I don’t know if I’ve ever heard before, “but if you do not, then you cannot speak on these proceedings.”
“You’re saying I must die in order to say you shouldn’t make a husband kill his wife?” Pavi asks, outrage turning her foolish. “That is ridiculous, and you know it!”
“Silence!” roars Lord Nothril. He grabs Pavi by her hair, yanking her to her feet as she screams. “You have refused to conform to the ways of Nothril for long enough. You will now choose between your tongue or your life.”
He throws her to the floor. She lands hard, her fear palpable as she tries to scoot backward, toward me, away from the person she just called Papa. “What do you mean?”
He strides toward her, withdrawing a long, curved knife. “You will give me your traitorous tongue, or you will give me your life.
Kat uses the distraction to surge to her feet and dart to the four bound captives. Her fingers flying, she works the knot tying Oliver’s hands behind his back. She mouths something to him I cannot read.
“Or,” Lady Nothril’s voice rings out against the cavern’s walls. “If you wish to redeem yourself, Pavi, then you may perform the Ivy Mask’s execution yourself.”
At once, all eyes turn to where Kat should have been, then swivel to where she is. Pelarusa is across the room in a second, grabbing Kat by the arm and yanking her to the center of the room again. My blood turns to a lethal simmer. Still, I restrain myself. If I can just delay a few more minutes, I will have what I need to get Kat, Pavi, and her friends out of here alive.
“If everyone is too soft to kill the Ivy Mask, then I will!” Pelarusa throws Kat to the ground and lifts her sword. Kat desperately tries to scramble backward, throwing up her hands.
Everything inside me turns to ice. There is no time left.
I lunge.
Pelarusa freezes, choking.
I yank my sword out of her back. Her hand goes to the gaping wound in her chest, the blood streaming down her gown. Lord and Lady Nothril shoot to their feet as their daughter falls to the ground.
Dead.
“I said I would raze this Court if anyone laid a finger on my wife,” I snarl.
I grab Kat and fling her behind me in the spare second of shock before all hell breaks loose. Then I hurl myself at the guards. They surge toward me as one—men I know, men who have been my comrades.
I cut them down with one thought: if they come for Kat, they die. Lord and Lady Nothril wanted me to be cold, cruel, unfeeling. They honed me into a lethal weapon. So that is what I become. It is my Nothril blood that makes my swords hit true. With Pelarusa dead, and my future as heir forever destroyed, Pavi is the only remaining heir. Lord and Lady Nothril will hesitate before slaughtering her as I slaughter their men.
A burst of light comes searing toward me. I barely manage to dodge Lord Nothril’s death blow. It throws my balance off, just enough that the guard I fight slashes his blade across my chest. My breastplate shields me from most of the blow, but a gash cuts across my collar bone and into my arm. I throw myself forward, cutting under his guard to slide my blade beneath his armor, into his soft stomach.
A scream makes me whirl.
Kat throws herself at a guard, who raises his sword at Becky. The guard tosses the young girl aside and latches onto Kat. She manages to dodge one blow of the blade that comes for her heart—using one of the techniques I taught her. But she twists her feet in the process, falling onto her back. The guard pins her with his boot. Another runs to help him finish the job.
“Kat!” I scream. I drop one sword, throwing up my hand to shoot a bolt of pure magic at the guard. It destroys him, but the remaining guards have shifted their focus from me to Kat. In a single moment, she is surrounded. “Kat!”
A roar splits through the cacophony. Then, the walls of the cavern’s entrance suddenly cave in. Stone flies in every direction as though from an explosion. We all turn as one to see a massive, rocky body smash through the wall with a club.
“Ymer the Indefatigable will eat any who hurt nice small elf!” bellows Ymer. And with that, he snatches up the surprised guards around Kat and smashes them into the stone wall with obliterative force. “No one hurts small elf!”
I cannot help my grin. There he is. Barely on time.
It did not take me long to put the pieces together that the nice small elf who brought Ymer food was Kat. It took me precious time after she was captured by Pelarusa to find him again in Caphryl Wood, and he took so long to come I hurried on ahead—only hoping he would arrive in time to make a difference.
It was not hard to convince Ymer that the nice small elf was in danger and if he wanted to thank her for the food, he should come protect her. Trolls are, after all, fastidiously loyal.
I don’t see where Kat’s four friends disappeared to, but I am just in time to watch her open some small servants’ door and disappear through it. My breath comes easier as Ymer and I take down the rest of the guards.
“Stop this at once!” demands Lady Nothril.
“Rahk!”
It is the second voice—Pavi’s high-pitched squeal—that stops me. I whirl. My breath catches. Lord Nothril has Pavi pinned against his chest, a ball of pure magic held just next to her head. Ready to destroy her in a flash.
“I am giving you a choice, Rahk,” Lord Nothril seethes as Pavi whimpers. He pays no heed to Ymer tromping out of the throne room to either leave or go smash more of his palace. All the guards are dead by now. “You surrender now. Or I kill your beloved sister.”
I shoot a glance toward Lady Nothril, who stands only a few paces away from him. Her jaw is tight, her eyes a roaring furnace as she regards me. Pavi cries softly, helplessly.
If I surrender, they will make me hunt Kat again. They will make me kill her.
I am not surrendering.
But neither will I let them kill my sister.
I drop my swords with a clatter. I know Lord and Lady Nothril, and I do not believe that they will kill every single one of their heirs. It is time to call their bluff. Even if it risks Pavi’s life.
I stride toward Lord Nothril. Toward Pavi.
“Surrender!” cries Lord Nothril. “Or I will kill her!”
I summon an explosive flow of magic. It coalesces in a bright ball in my hand. I lift it, ready to hurl it straight at Lord Nothril’s face. Even if I am not strong enough to kill a ruler of Faerie, he might flinch and give me the exact window I need to grab Pavi.
Instead, Lord Nothril turns his snarl from me to my sister. He wheels back his own magic-filled blow, his face contorting with strain as he rams it straight into her head.
“Pavi!” I scream. My blast fires wide and splits Lord Nothril’s throne clean down the middle.
But Pavi is not the one who falls.
Lord Nothril crumples to the ground. Pavi stumbles away, unharmed. I search, bewildered, as Pavi barrels into my arms.
Lady Nothril stands behind Lord Nothril’s fallen body, a bloodied, glowing knife in her hand. Her narrowed gaze, full of hatred, lands on me. I see my death in those eyes. She will not let me get away with being the flame that set our family ablaze.
Still, I have space for one thought.
I am not the only one whose weakness for Pavi runs deep.
I brace myself, standing in front of Pavi, knowing Lady Nothril will cut me down without a thought. But I will still fight.
“Lady Nothril,” I growl.
Suddenly, her eyes flutter shut. She slumps to the ground.
“Mama!” cries Pavi. I grab her arm before she can rush to her side.
My lips part as realization descends. Even as we watch, the dead body of our father begins to glow, and tendrils of magic snake toward our fallen mother. The ruling power of Faerie that was split between them reunites, collecting in Lady Nothril’s body.
“Mama!” Pavi weeps again.
“She’s not dead.” I haul Pavi away, picking up my swords and breaking into a run. “We only have minutes before she is upon us.”
“Then what happened?”
Tears stream down her rounded face, her cheeks and eyes reddened.
“They were bonded. She broke that bond when she killed Lord Nothril. It took all her strength.” I look down at her. “To protect you. Now we’ve got to find Kat and get out of here before she rises again and kills us all.”