Chapter I Tyrant #2
Something’s happening to me. I can’t breathe, gasping in shallow, too small inhales.
My throat is tight, my chest shrinking with every panicked heartbeat.
I press both hands to my heart, shaking my head, as wheezing sounds tear out of my mouth.
The world grows dim, darkness spreading before my eyes.
I can’t breathe. I’ll die.
I grab onto that thought and cling to it with all my might, thinking, Good. I’d rather die. So it’s all right.
Somehow, that thought pulses like a beacon of calm. The next breath I take is a bit deeper, my throat opening to admit air. I realize I’m on my knees, and I press my hands to the lovely carpet, coughing and taking in big swallows of air until I’m almost well, just a bit dizzy and lightheaded.
It passed, whatever it was, leaving me shaken but purposeful.
When I blink the darkness away, I see the room is empty. Avinia must have gone to hide somewhere less obvious.
It’s eerily quiet, too. My heart sinks when I realize the sounds of the battering ram have stopped, and there are no more screams in the courtyard.
They must have broken through our last defense. They are here.
I am still for one heartbeat, and in the next, I jump into action. Hastily, I put on my gown, doing up every second hook of my bodice. It will look untidy, but I don’t have time to worry about appearances, do I? All I need to do, the most important thing, is make it clear I am not a servant.
My white-gold diadem glitters on top of the dresser, the diamonds reflecting the dawn, and I snatch it so fast, a sharp edge cuts my palm. Already out the door, I ram it into my hairdo that’s messy and loose after the sleepless night.
The corridor is eerily quiet as I sprint toward the staircase, my steps muffled by the thick carpet, this one red. Would it be preferable to the gray one, I wonder? Blood will be barely visible against the scarlet.
That’s how I manage to keep running despite the heaviness in my chest, the weight of terror in my belly. I focus on trivialities, a sweaty lock of hair sticking to my temple, an unsteady heel in my shoe that must have loosened during the long hours of nightly pacing.
If I let myself think of the future, I’ll lose it.
Down the stairs I run, throwing myself into death’s arms. Now I hear sounds.
My steps echo on the marble, so white, it’s blinding.
The tall, narrow windows admit the full glory of the golden dawn, but also—I turn my eyes away with a cringe—the sight of bodies outside.
They are heaped around the well, the pile almost as tall as the wooden roof above the well casing.
Who does that? I think, nausea tickling the back of my throat. What sort of army puts the bodies into piles while still fighting?
The sight freezes my blood, so I speed up, terrified I’ll lose my nerve. I want a proud, dignified death. I cannot run away and hide.
The doors to my father’s throne room stand wide open. I burst through without paying attention—and collide with an unnaturally tall form of a warrior.
I know it’s a warrior from the clink of armor, the scent of blood, and from the musk—male musk that surrounds him like a lethal halo.
A hand shoots out to grab my arm, firm and unyielding. I gasp, swallow my terror, and catch my balance. My eyes are glued to the floor in front of me, because if I look up and see the Tyrant’s army in my father’s throne room, I will soil myself like Avinia.
The silence is deafening, but it’s different than the dead emptiness of the corridors on my floor.
It’s textured with small sounds of breathing, shuffling, a cough, a whispered word, a small sob.
Yet nobody speaks for a long, blessed moment, in which I focus on the boots in front of me to calm down.
They are uncommonly large, made of brown leather, and muddied, but not just with any mud, no.
This substance is what I imagine is created when one mixes soil, fresh grass trodden by military boots, and then blood, and possibly bits of entrails.
It is a stinky, murderous mud, and I want to throw up on those shoes to cover it up with something nicer.
But before I have time to rouse my stomach into action, a voice cuts through the silence, desperate and afraid.
“My prize! No! Please, no!”
I flinch, my head jerking to look up at the throne before I stop the motion. I’ve never heard my father this terrified. He was always a pillar of strength, a protective, prying force that hovered over all my moments, either waking or sleeping, until I felt smothered and small.
He sounds small now.
“A prize, hm?”
I release a harsh, hissing breath as the man holding my arm speaks. His voice is rough and low, his cadence slightly off, spiced by an accent I’ve never heard before, yet know all about.
“All of his soldiers know the language of the Eleven Kingdoms. They used to kidnap people and force them to teach it, then learned from each other. But their teeth are wrong, their tongues abnormal. They can never get it right, no matter how long they learn. You’ll always know a beast by their speech. ”
The reality of this moment smashes into me like a cannon ball. The Agnidari are here, in my castle. One of them touches my body.
“Let go,” I say, pleased to hear how haughty I sound. Like a proper princess, ready to bleed out with dignity.
“Maybe I will.” His words are followed by a harsh sound, something like the bark of a wild beast.
After a moment of confused trepidation, I realize what it is. A laugh. My insides curl with disgust at how unnatural, how ungodly it is.
“Barbarians, all of them. They can do nothing properly. Uncivilized trash.”
He walks backward, facing me, and tugs me deeper into the room. My father calls out again.
“No, Caliane! Ten thousand manoli to the man who saves her! No, twenty! Fifty thousand manoli!”
The Agnidari who’s dragging me toward my pleading father lets out another abrasive bark of amusement.
“All the manoli in your coffers belong to us, half-sized king. You have nothing to bargain with.”
I almost look up, outraged that my father, who is the largest man I know, was just called half-sized. But of course, I know the stories.
“They walk on two legs, but they are as tall as a bear is long from head to rump. It stands to reason. They are animals.”
I was naughty that day, I remember vaguely, the memory slipping into my head between two frenzied heartbeats.
I checked the lengths of other animals out of curiosity, and learned that the length of a wolf from head to rump is the same as the height of an average human.
When I asked Avinia if that meant we were beasts, too, she beat my hands with the book I learned it from.
We stop in front of my father’s throne dais. I want to look at him and apologize, but the Agnidari stands in the way, blocking the view. I refuse to give him the courtesy of my gaze.
“You can’t take her!” my father cries out, so desperately, it’s unseemly.
That is not how a king behaves. My guilt crushes me, suffocating and tight in my belly, and I press a hand there, trying to appease it.
My other hand is numb, faint tingling the only sensation I have.
It’s not because his hold is too tight—it’s not—but because I need to protect myself from the barbarian’s sullying touch.
“Do you yield, half-sized king?” the Agnidari asks, clearly mocking. “Do you give me your crown, your kingdom, and all that is yours? Do you make me a king in your place?”
I stop breathing. Just like that, it’s as if my body forgets how to draw air. I am suspended, horror slowly blooming inside me like a garden of poisonous flowers. My ears ring, and I think I hear another beastly laugh from afar.
No. No, it can’t be.
But he said it. I heard it, didn’t I? And there’s only one Agnidari who wants to rule over humans. Only one who’d ask that question. The most terrible demon of them all.
I raise my head as my mouth opens in a mute scream, and look up into the horrifying face of the Tyrant.