Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
KINGSTON
The blow catches me across the temple. I'm down, down hard, and my vision swims for half a second, everything tilting.
But I kept my sword in my hand.
I scramble to stand, but something rams into my shoulder—Moroslav, kicking, his sword raised.
Panic lances through me. Real panic. He was flagging, getting sloppy, but—
"King!”
Kai. I hear him a split second before I see him, his blade crashing into Moroslav's with enough force to drive him back three stumbling steps.
It’s all the opening I need. I shake my head, tighten my grip, and push to my feet. The blood from my eyebrow is still streaming, but I can see well enough.
Moroslav tries to recover, but now it's two of us. Kai presses high, forcing Moroslav's blade up, and I come in low, a cut at his outside leg that pushes him right against the icon wall.
“Pull him—”
“I got it!” Kai binds his blade, controlling it, and I move. I leap to advance, knock Moroslav's sword wide with a sharp beat, and put my point to his throat.
“I’ll kill you,” I say, through gritted teeth. “You sick bastard. I’ll kill you. I’ll—”
My arm tenses to thrust, but something restrains me.
Kai.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Let me go,” I bark, trying to shrug my brother off. “He has to die.”
“I said don’t,” Kai practically snarls. He wrenches me off of Moroslav, whipping his blade to replace mine at his throat, and stares across at me.
“You’re better than that, King.”
Kai resets, lunges, and drives his sword between Moroslav's ribs.
Moroslav's eyes go wide with shock. Blood bubbles at his lips, dark and wet, as Kai pulls the blade free without a word. Doesn't look down as Moroslav slides against the intricate wall, painting a long smear of red.
For a moment we just stand there, breathing hard.
"Thank you," I manage.
Kai just nods, already turning toward the others—Lanz with Gwenna, Callahan flanking. "We need to move. Now."
The path across the island is brutal. Snow up to our knees in places, ice-slick rocks, gray light that shows barely anything.
But it's faster this way, more direct. The road winds for kilometers around the perimeter of the island, switchbacks designed for vehicles carrying equipment and supplies. On foot, we can cut straight across.
Callahan—the only one not bleeding—carries Gwenna. She's barely conscious, her head lolling against his shoulder, wrapped up in my coat but still wearing that damned sarafan, the painted symbols on her face are smeared with sweat and tears.
“How much farther?” he pants. Not that he’d ever set her down.
None of us would.
“Quarter mile, maybe?” Lanz says. I’m glad he answers, because I have no idea. My head is throbbing, my feet burning with cold, and my body shaking from adrenaline as much as from the wind.
Moroslav is dead.
Kai glances over his shoulder at me. As if he can sense what I’m thinking.
“Almost there,” he says. “Listen.”
He points up, and I slow my steps, just barely, and I can hear it—the distant hum of something mechanical. An engine, maybe. Generators.
I nod, my heart is in my throat as we forge over the next gray rise of hill.
But he was right.
The airstrip.
The wind hits us immediately, unobstructed across the flat expanse, as we half-run, half-stumble down the slope. The plane waits in the open—no proper hangar here.
And standing beside it, arms crossed, coat whipping in the wind:
My father.
Relief. It’s all I can feel. He's here. He can help us, alert the pilot, we can get on the plane and—
“Come on,” I yell to the others, slipping on the slick surface of the tarmac as I jog, run the few remaining yards towards him.
"Father!” I yell. "Dad!” I skid to a stop, breathing hard, my head aching with the cold and the effort and the throb of the cut. “We need to get on the plane,” I pant. “We have to get out of here. We—they—they tried to kill her.” I run a hand through my hair.
"Slow down," he says. He looks behind me: at the other three, at Gwenna, taking in her strange attire, her painted face, her bleeding feet. “What on earth is going on?”
"Please," I say, my voice cracking. “There isn’t time to—she's the grail. Gwenna is the grail, she has the power, and they know it, and they want to kill her to…” I glance back over my shoulder. "We have to go.”
Why isn't he moving? I look with desperation into my father's one eye as his expression changes from one of confusion to dawning recognition: his lips parted, his eyebrows lifted.
“I know,” I say. “I know it’s a lot, and I'm I can explain more later. We just have to—”
“Where's the fucking pilot?" Kai cries. He doesn’t wait for an answer and stalks off to the control tower.
My father blinks, shakes his head. “You’re not leaving.” His tone is so calm and conversational I think I must have misheard him.
"What?" Instinctively, I step between him and the others. “Are you serious? Because of the fucking tournament? Moroslav is dead, Dad. There’s no one to fence. They tried to kill—”
“You knew that this girl was what you were looking for?" he says. “All this time you knew?”
We don’t have time for this, I think. God knows who’s following us, what they have or what they could do. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I knew—or we thought we knew. I didn’t believe it—I wanted proof, and—”
“So you lied to me,” he interrupts.
I freeze. “What?”
“You lied to me,” he repeats. “To me, and to the Prior at Arms, and to all the White Brothers. You knew this girl was what we were looking for, and you said nothing?”
Fury boils out of me. “Of course I lied to you," I scream. "I'm not stupid. I know what you're capable of."
My father's face contorts into a snarl. "And what is that supposed to mean?"
"I know what you did," I say. "To my mother," I add.
Something shifts in his expression. Not fear, but wariness.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, after a beat. "Come, give her to me. The Consistory—”
“You knew she would die," I interrupt. "You knew that carrying a child would kill her. The risk of a fatal hemorrhage was almost certain. The same bleeding disorder, which she passed on to me, and you never seemed to tell me about.”
I think back to the nurse at the airport.
The needle slides into the crook of my arm. I watch the dark red blood fill the vial, then another, then a third. The nurse—middle-aged, competent, speaking careful English—labels each one methodically.
"You are fencer, yes?" he asks conversationally. "Many cuts, I am thinking. Much bleeding sometimes?"
"Not really," I say. "The weapons are blunt. We wear protective gear."
He hums, removing the needle and pressing gauze to my arm. “Hold, please.” I do. He nods. “Good.” He indicates the gauze with his pen. “You bleed longer than normal person. Much longer. A violent sport, someone like you…” He makes a sympathetic tsk sort of noise.
”I’m sorry,” I say. “Someone like me?”
He looks at his clipboard now, frowning slightly, then back up.
"Factor VIII deficiency, yes? Von Willebrand disease?"
The words don't make sense for a moment.
"Bleeding disorder," he explains. "Mild case. But any serious injury could be very dangerous.”
I stare at him.
"You did not know?" He looks surprised. I don’t know what to say. “Ah. Well. Now you know. Be careful with your swords, please.” He smiles warmly. “And if you marry, have children--”
“What?” Alarm strikes me like a bolt of lightning. “Why?”
“Hereditary. No danger to you. But a woman with this condition, if she carries both chromosomes…” He makes a gesture I don't understand. "Fatal hemorrhage. Very high risk."
All the air leaves my lungs.
“This was in my chart,” I confirm. “This deficiency.”
The nurse checks the clipboard again. “Yes. It—” His face falls. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice low. “I did not know.”
He turns the clipboard to me, and there it is.
FACTOR IV – (Maternal)
Outside, my father is waiting. “Everything all right? Was there some kind of problem?"
"Fine," I say, rolling down my sleeve.
“You knew,” I say. “You knew she wouldn’t survive giving birth. But you—you forced her anyway, and then you let me think it was my fault that she died. You held that over my head for my entire life!”
“She understood the risks,” he snaps. “She made her choice.”
“Did she?” I all but scream. “Or did you make it for her?”
My grasp on control is breaking. Around us, the wind gusts. Painful cold. And in the distant corner, I see Kai emerging with another figure from under the sodium lamp.
"She died so you could live. So you could achieve this. So we could—”
"I'm not achieving anything," I say. "No."
"Don't make a mistake, Kingston."
"Kingston," I hear Lanz from behind me. "King—”
“Get back," I yell. I'm still holding my foil, I realize, and I levy it carefully at my father. "We are leaving," I say, as evenly as I possibly can. "Now. And if you are going to try and stop us—”
Even in the dark early morning, I can see my father's face go brilliant with fury.
"You idiot,” he spits. "You pathetic—”
I lunge at him, not hard enough to seriously wound. Just a flick right at his cheek, enough to draw blood.
"Don't make me," I say, voice carrying on the wind. “Don’t make me. Because I will.”
His mouth falls open in disbelief. "My own son," he says, almost absently. “My own blood." He touches his cheek, fingertips coming off, stained. And then, in one single, terrible, fluid motion, reaches in his coat and brandishes a weapon. A rapier.
He must have had it this whole time.
Luther Pendragon’s no fool.
"You will not leave with her," he says. “If she is what you say, then this has immediately become the Consistory's jurisdiction. If you leave, you are in flagrant violation of every oath you've ever—“
I don't wait for him to stop. I flèche forward, blade extended, and beating the base of his weapon with my own.
Steel on steel rings out across the airstrip.