Chapter 75
Chapter
Seventy-Five
ZANDYR
E ven with all the embalming tinctures Elysia had poured inside the barrel, the salt water had given Nylen a grey hue.
No final resting place was worse.
The righteous were burned, so their souls could ascend to the gods.
Those who’d wronged in this world had to rot in water, so that Xamor’s hounds couldn’t sniff them out and find their souls for eternal life.
Nobody deserved that fate more than the man who’d tried to kill Evie.
Banu and Valuta remained furiously silent, probably concocting a new plan to get out of this. I could almost taste their fear and worry.
“Is this not your guard?” I asked as I descended the stairs, the fire blazing behind me. The cloud of smoke was so thick, it poured down the steps, trailing me.
Valuta finally snapped her head up. I wondered how many more sudden movements that neck could endure. “He was.”
“All the guards are under your command.”
“They are.” Valuta seemed to grow taller out of sheer spite. “But traitors can be found anywhere. He was a newcomer, highly recommended from the southern peninsula. If his papers were forged, he’d done an excellent job at it. Not even we could detect anything amiss.”
“How do we know he is the killer?” Banu asked.
“I saw him above my wife’s body as she took her last breath.” I stopped right next to Nylen’s miserable head. “You can see the cut from my sword.”
“It would have been better if he was alive to be interrogated, no?” Banu said.
“If you saw someone kill Valuta, would you chit-chat with him?” I asked.
“Convenient to accuse a man you murdered,” Banu said.
A pressing sensation tried to burrow itself into my head. Through the silken layers of her sleeves, I saw Valuta’s fingers twitching with precise movements. The witch was trying to access my mind.
I sent my own power out and felt her miserable heart–it was beating fast. She truly was afraid. I fisted my palm, as if crushing it between my fingers.
Valuta’s eyes widened. Her fingers stopped twitching as her hand flew to her chest.
I let go a second later and she swayed on the spot.
That warning sign cost me. I already felt my chest constricting with shooting pain.
It seemed the oath hadn’t vanished with my almost death.
“We planned for this,” Evie’s soothing voice echoed in my mind, even as I felt her own worry. “We will succeed.”
I grounded myself in her essence, struggling to breathe. I couldn’t attack the advisors again without risking my own life. All I could hope now was for my nose and eyes to not bleed in front of everyone in the Blood Brotherhood.
“I’m accusing you,” I said, the words more sluggish than I would have wanted. “You’re alive and have every opportunity to defend yourselves.”
“Were there any other witnesses other than the grieving widower who everyone knows has had a problem with us since the Lost Daughter came here?” Banu asked while Valuta regained her balance.
“Doubting my word now, Banu?”
“You have suffered a great loss.” He tried his hand at compassion; that was one emotion he couldn’t fake all that well, at least not now, when panic swam in his beady eyes.
The advisors were being pushed into a corner and they knew it.
None of the Sages had spoken up to defend them.
None of the civilians had cried for their absolution.
Not even my parents intervened. With Banu and Valuta focused on attacking me, they must not have had the energy to toy with the king and queen’s minds right now.
“We are innocent.” The look Valuta sent my way was pure hatred. “And we are ready to prove it. Bring us the truth potion.”
“Yes, bring it.” I nodded and Kylian and Myron. “Let’s hear what the advisors have to say.”
Finally. The traps people set for themselves were the most efficient.
“We would have never plotted to end the Lost Daughter, no matter how ill-fitted she was for the Blood Brotherhood royal family or how many misfortunes she brought down upon us,” Valuta said. “Let’s not forget the Serpents attacked our Clan because of her. Your precious warriors died defending her .”
“The Serpents attacked because I murdered their heir, after he attacked our ships and killed our civilians,” I said. “As my duty as crown prince demanded.”
“You could have traded her for peace.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Is that what you would have done? Taken the coward’s route and traded one of your own to save yourself?” I made a dramatic turn toward the civilians, struggling to keep my balance as the oath’s effects rushed through me. “Which life would you have given? How many of them?”
I faced the advisors once more. “The Blood Brotherhood was built on strength. We do not bow our heads and we do not kneel to threats. We protect our own.”
Eryn raised her fist in the air. “For the good of the Blood Brotherhood!”
The civilians, taken aback, didn’t follow suit. But my warriors did, roaring hard enough to shake Phoenix Peak.
Valuta rolled her shoulders back. “The truth potion will reveal everything.”
My grin turned jagged. I distantly wondered how they’d managed to give Nylen his deadly orders without dirtying their hands, so they could ingest the truth potion without incriminating themselves.
Probably the same way they managed to kill Kaya’s suitors and got away with it for years.
It pained me to say, but Banu and Valuta were exceptionally smart–therefore exceptionally dangerous.
“We planned for this as well,” Evie said.
“We did. Ready for the next step?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be to face my own mortality.”
“You have no witnesses and a man you killed as so-called proof,” Banu said. “Our innocence is indisputable and the truth potion shall reveal that. No mortal can withstand its effects.”
My grin grew. It would give me so much pleasure to see Banu and Valuta defeated.
An eerie silence, brimming with anticipation, settled in the square.
The smoke from the pyre grew.
“The flames!” a child from the crowd yelled. “They’re turning blue!”