Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
With that one gesture, he became a traitor.
The king’s voice rattled the arena, summoning a flurry of guards to seize us. I took Atlas’s hand and he pulled me to my feet just in time for the guards to rip us apart. My hand slipped from his, tearing my heart with it as he thrashed against the men who restrained him.
“Diaspro!” He twisted the guard’s arm, freeing himself only enough to get two steps closer before three more guards came to pull him back.
I recognized the guards; they were the ones assigned to watch over the other competitors. They must have been running low on active guards since so many had joined the fight earlier.
I tried my best to fight off my own captor, but my injuries had weakened me and they stripped me of my weapons before I could even make a move for them.
They twisted my arms behind my back, straining the cut on my arm and alerting me to an array of other sore spots and bruising I hadn’t noticed until now.
The crowd was in chaos, half of them fleeing while others moved closer to witness the fall of one of their great princes.
The king joined the fray, stepping into the arena with an eerie quiet that eclipsed his earlier screaming.
He walked straight through the fallen bodies, stepping directly on top of them if he needed to, as if they were nothing more than gravel to kick around.
Atlas was still struggling with the three guards holding him back, but when the king stopped in front of him, they lifted his face to meet his father’s.
Slap.
The smack of his ringed hand echoed painfully loud across the arena, acting as a gavel that quieted even the birds. The snow seemed to fall more slowly, the world moving in slow motion as the king and prince stood face to face.
My heart pounded. I opened my mouth to scream for Atlas’s life, but the words were suffocated by the terrifying presence of the black king.
“I knew I raised a fool,” the king said, every word digging deep into his son’s bones. “But I didn’t think you’d be a traitor too.”
He drew his sword, the slick sound of screeching metal excruciating in the quiet arena. Atlas didn’t even flinch at the weapon, his lips sealed and eyes locked only on his executioner.
No…
Atlas gritted his teeth, his head riveted into place by the guards who prepared him for his death. It was a scene from a nightmare, with only the warmth of my dripping blood and the cold of the snow to remind me that this awful reality was unfolding before me.
Septimus raised his sword, and I saw my mother’s face flash in the blade, then my father’s, then Oren’s…
Then Atlas’s.
“Wait!” I screamed so loudly I nearly burst a lung. “Don’t kill him! I’m the one who made him turn against you!”
“Diaspro, no!” Atlas barked at me. “Stay out of this! You’ve already won the challenge!”
“He won’t care!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face as I looked up at the stunned crowd.
Atlas was right; I had technically won the game when he surrendered, but that wouldn’t stop the king from killing me next, or anyone else he pleased after all that had happened.
Atlas was fooling himself if he thought he was saving anyone.
“Your king won’t follow his own rules! He’ll kill all of us, he’ll—ack! ”
A meaty hand snapped around my mouth, putting the taste of his gold rings on my tongue. The king’s grip threatened to crack my jaw, his unfiltered rage bulging every vein in his neck and making his eyes go red.
“I’ll rip that tongue out in a moment,” he whispered, his vile breath on my face.
“Stop pretending you’re anything special.
You’re nothing, a measly maggot that crawled out of her kingdom’s waste.
” He pulled his hand away, his expression soulless yet satisfied with the bruises he’d left.
“I should have let you die with Damon the night of the siege.”
I couldn't hear that monster’s voice anymore. I couldn’t take his gloating, his abuse, or the way he looked at me like I was the scum of the lands. His power was an illusion, and I had let him believe in it far too long—it was time to watch that power crumble.
“How?” I asked, my voice dry but still loud enough.
I needed it loud; they all needed to hear this.
“How could you have possibly managed to kill me with Damon?” I straightened as best as I could, the taste of blood touching my tongue as I dealt the only blow I could with my hands tied.
“You never killed Damon in the first place.”
They heard me. They all heard me.
The king’s eyes shrank to pinpricks, then reinflated with a rage I never thought a man could be physically capable of without screaming.
The crowd, however, couldn’t keep silent.
Whispers and gasps rippled through the spectators, spreading the rumor like a wildfire that would slowly smoke out their king.
“What lies are you spitting?” Septimus hissed, his hand shaking around his hilt.
He’d considered this outcome before, and by his reaction, I’d imagine that he even feared it.
“Tell me, did you ever see his body?” I felt the guard’s grip loosen on me; even the king’s stone-cold soldiers couldn’t handle this realization.
“I burned everyone in that castle to ashes!” The king swung his sword out, his anger festering while his grip on himself faltered.
His eye was twitching, his trembling hand now making his sword visibly shake.
He knew he’d never killed Damon with his own hands; deep down, he must have known that the prince could have lived.
He’d finally found him.
“Damon is alive,” I called out to every ear that would listen.
Atlas caught my eye, his body tense but his eyes expressing support.
He may not have agreed with my plan, but he knew this was my secret to tell.
“And Prince Atlas was the only one on this battlefield wise enough to align himself with another powerful royal.”
I wrestled my left hand free from the baffled guard, thrusting it into the air for the king and all of his people to view. A few of the fallen soldiers rose from the ground to stare with them, rubbing their eyes to determine if what they were seeing was real.
“This is the ring of Queen Vivica of Ivalon, my mother.” I watched the ring glisten in the snow, the king’s horror reflecting in the enchanted band.
“I am her daughter, and my father’s prince.
Until the day of the siege, I lived as Prince Damon; since then, I have become the Lady Diaspro you now know, Princess of Ivalon. ”
I heard everything—the blaring of my heart, the gasping of the Aemastians, the tears of the Ivalonians, the heated breaths of the king who thought he had vanquished me months ago.
It was almost too much to take in, but it wasn’t my first time being looked at as a royal—though it was my first time being seen as a princess.
My hand was snatched out of the air, and the king ripped me from the guards to study my ring and nearly crush my hand in the process. I could feel the sweat pooling in his clammy palm, his kingdom slipping like sand in his grasp.
“No…” he breathed, his teeth pressed tight as he dropped my hand to snatch me by the chin. He pulled me an inch away from his face, his pupils shrinking as he recognized the heritage behind my deep-blue eyes. “Leopold…it can’t be.”
“Princess?” A small voice spoke up behind me, and I glanced back to see a young Ivalonian boy sitting up to gaze at me in wonder. “You’re really our princess?”
“Princess Diaspro,” another voice echoed in front of me, and I looked past the king to see an older Ivalonian crawl to his knees, placing a blood-stained hand to his chest. “We’ve missed you.”
“Princess Diaspro.”
“Long live the princess.”
“Long live Vivica’s daughter!”
“All hail our princess!”
The king’s grip slipped from me, his blade scraping against the frosty ground and drawing circles around him as he spun to take in all the risen Ivalonians. They had been rebuilt, their broken spirits rising from the ashes after the death of their phoenix prince.
It was everything he’d tried to stop.
I took my final stand, grabbing a blade from the snow and letting the cool metal absorb into my skin. All that needed to happen now was for me to die and become the martyr that would fuel my people to reclaim their lives. This was enough; the Guardian could take care of the rest.
I saved you, Mara, and everyone else. Take care of each other, okay?
“Face me, Septimus.” I raised my sword, my own arm shaking from my weakened muscles. “Finish what you started, and fight the rightful heir to Ivalon.”
Cheers erupted from my people, driving the king to the brink of madness as he let out an animalistic scream and raised his blade high.
I knew I was too weak to fight, and even if I killed him, there was little chance the guards would let me live.
Even so, just taking out one of his scathing eyes would be enough.
“You shall die choking on that kingdom’s name!” Septimus shouted, his blade coming fast as his boots shook the ground beneath me. “Die—”
He froze. His sword dropped, and another pierced straight through his heart. Everyone screamed, but I could barely hear it over the laughter that echoed from behind the king’s dead eyes. The sword was pulled from the king’s body, and he fell lifeless to the ground, cold and dead.
Standing behind him with the blood-soaked sword was a smiling Prince Lochlan.