Chapter Fifty-One
Aren
No one moves. No one breathes.
All eyes are locked on the glistening blade as it slides to a halt. Then to the dead general. I catch Dietan’s eye, holding his gaze for the length of a heartbeat.
Crap.
Now more people are retching, especially those who’ve had some of the special desserts. Then the room erupts into chaos.
“Guards,” says Namreth, his voice calm, controlled.
They sound the alarm, and down another hallway, a horn blows. Heavy boots echo in the corridors, growing louder as they near. The clank of armor fills the air.
Shit. So much for hoping a majority of the soldiers would be unconscious when we struck. Or looking at the general on the floor, dead apparently. I wasn’t counting on someone eating that much. At least the commanders attending the party seem to be very drunk.
Men with shiny medals pinned to their chests stagger and gape as panicked ladies in silk gowns and jewels shove their way toward the doors only to find them blocked by the approaching guards.
One after another, guards spill into the room, spears and swords at the ready. They grunt and shout, eager for battle—too eager. Maybe they were celebrating in the barracks after all.
The show of force sends the guests scrambling yet again, while the masked rebels scramble to reach their weapons. In an instant, everyone’s running, the chamber’s jammed with people, and Harvest Mother, I can’t find Dietan.
I hurry toward the place where I last saw him, but he’s gone. Lost. I nearly trip over a bejeweled woman who’s stumbled and fallen in the panic. I look for any sign of Dietan’s white wolf mask. Any sound of his voice.
Nothing.
The screams of the crowd compete with the soldiers’ war chants and the shouts of the rebel servants, who fumble with their humble knives. The guards take notice, and both sides clamber for the blades.
A rebel reaches for a knife on the floor, only to have his hand cut off at the wrist by a guard.
A servant bares her knife, her grin triumphant.
But she’s slow to act, and a guard slits her throat from behind.
My stomach sinks. I should have known that our brave band of castle servants never stood a chance against the mad king’s battle-ready soldiers.
The soldiers are all red in the face, eyes filled with fury, or maybe just drink. Regardless of the cause, they are bloodthirsty.
In the middle of this chaos, the king sits calmly on his throne, a gust of wind swirling around his feet.
He scans the room, quietly taking stock.
His striking blue eyes turn to the sickened guests near the poisoned tray of treats, then to the growing number of armed servants.
He realizes what is happening, and his vengeance is swift.
He holds up his hand to the nearest servant girl and snaps his fingers, ripping the mask off her face with a gust of wind.
She isn’t one of the servants we recruited to our cause, but that doesn’t matter.
Namreth stands. He clutches her chin, and the blood drains from her face. He lets go, and the girl falls, trembling, from his grasp. Then I witness the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life, an image that’ll be scorched into my memory for the rest of my days.
The king snaps his fingers, and with a crack, the girl’s chest collapses, her rib bones snapping like twigs, her sternum folding in on itself. Her whole body convulses as a steady stream of red dribbles first from her mouth, then her nose and eyes. She’s dead before her head hits the marble tile.
Everyone is screaming. Good goddess, every soul in the room is running wild.
A soldier tackles a servant who tries to run away, ripping off her mask and pummeling her into the floor with his fists until she no longer moves and blood pools around her body.
A rebel jumps on his back to retaliate, but a second soldier spears him with his sword, driving the blade into his open mouth.
Two more servants fall to the ground beside each other. A third, thin as bones, drops down over the others, while a fourth, a boy of no more than twelve, falls to his knees beside them, sobbing. Some try to run, but the doors are all closed, the exits blocked.
“Where are you?” I yell, but Dietan’s still nowhere to be seen.
We’re losing, and losing badly. I try to find Marcus, Jared, anyone, but a gauntleted hand crushes my wrist, and a steady stream of my own blood dribbles down my arm.
With his other hand, the soldier rips the mask from my face.
It catches on my hair, tearing a clump from my scalp, but I don’t scream in pain.
I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
I twist and turn, straining against his fist. “Dietan,” I cry out once again as the soldier forces me to my knees, my arm going numb, my head wound throbbing, the pain growing sharper.
The rebellion is a complete disaster, and Dietan is still nowhere to be found. I fear the worst, that he’s been killed in the chaos, that he lies dead and overlooked beneath our feet.
Namreth is another matter.
Across the chamber, he’s watching the scene with a bored look on his cold, handsome face, so like and unlike Dietan’s.
He stands up from his throne, and a wild wind stirs around him as he stalks the room, killing masked servants, one after the other, stealing their breath with a twirl of his finger.
Slowly, Namreth makes his way through the party, a nightmare come to life. Blood stains the floor. Servants are snapped like twigs.
Tess tried to warn us.
We’re not faster or stronger than the wind. We cannot beat the Unseen Death.
Tears blur my vision. This was a mistake. We should have fled the city. We should have run far away during this banquet, rather than return to the site of so much suffering.
Namreth stops to lift the mask from the face of a slender girl of maybe sixteen.
She trembles as he shakes his head, sighing.
“Did you really think you could win against me? Have I not done my best to make you all understand? Have I not crushed every breath of dissent all these years? All of you live only because of my mercy.”
Then with a snap of his fingers, she falls to the floor, dead, the breath stolen right out of her.
He stalks through the hall, death walking—emotionless, pale, precise. He rips through bodies, breaking them to pieces.
It’s sick. He’s sick.
Even the soldier who’s holding me is stunned by the king’s cruelty. He loosens his grip, and I pull free.
I roll out of his reach even though he makes no attempt to follow me. Like the rest of those assembled, he’s transfixed by Namreth’s rampage of destruction. The soldiers, the guests, the servants—everyone is paralyzed. I creep away and resume looking for Dietan.
Oh, goddess, don’t let him be dead.
I elbow through the crowd, past rebels and loyalists alike, shoving past the last of the guests who are still pressing toward the doors to flee the banquet, desperate to be free of the slaughter.
I duck between two guards, nearly colliding with a fellow servant—and then I see him. He’s alive but surrounded by a handful of dead bodies and a phalanx of soldiers, leveling spears and swords at him. There are so many of them. Too many.
His wolf mask is torn off, and he’s bleeding from a cut on his forehead. He doesn’t have a chance, he only has his knife not his sword, but that doesn’t stop him. He is brave and fierce, but if we don’t find a way to turn the tide, he’ll soon be dead.
“Dietan,” I call, running up behind him.
“Aren,” he breathes when he sees me. My heart thunders with joy that he’s alive.
We stand back-to-back, just the two of us against the whole damn world. And hell, it might have been easier to fight the rest of the world, because at that very moment, Namreth sees us.
He twitches, and a glint of recognition crosses his face. “The prince and the barmaid,” he says as he strolls through a wave of people who fall dead, one after another, in his path.
I kneel to grab a knife at my feet. It feels too small in my hand, much smaller than a frying pan. It’s useless against Namreth, but I hold it up anyway, Dietan at my side. How did we ever think we’d best Namreth?
The mad king’s cold eyes bore into mine.
Namreth raises his hand…
The sensation starts with a tingling in my throat. Then a tightness in my chest. Then… Harvest Mother, I think as the air rushes out of my lungs like a bellows being squeezed. My head spins and I choke. I’m going to die.
So, this is the Unseen Death.
Namreth stands so nonchalantly, as if he’s enjoying watching me suffer. Maybe he’s killing me twice as slowly as any of the others. Or maybe I’ve lost all sense of time. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of my pain. Even though I’m on my hands and knees, I won’t beg.
“Fuck you,” I say with my last breath.
He doesn’t flinch. His eyes are fixed on me. His face is steel and iron, malice and hatred.
I’m going to die. I can feel it. The world goes black at the edges, and my head—my whole body—is on fire, like I’m going to explode.
So, this is the end. Maybe Namreth feels it, too, because he’s grinning a madman’s grin, relishing my death, dragging it out.
I clutch my throat.
We failed.
This madman will steal my life, then Dietan’s, and then join the Usurper in marching on our homelands. A tear rolls down my cheek.
I’m sorry, Dietan.
We didn’t have enough time. I didn’t even get to tell him how I truly felt. How I’d rather die here having loved him than live never having met him.
The room grows colder, as if wind is circling me. My fingers are numb, and the candles flicker, dimming in the corners of my vision.
And still the winds rise.
Then Namreth stumbles. He suddenly falls to the floor, and a gust of wind hits my face.
I turn to Dietan in wonder as the air rushes back into my lungs. I can actually draw another breath, then another and another. I never knew that air could taste this good.
My head begins to clear, and I rise to my feet as Namreth skids across the marble floor, skittering over the tiles like a pebble being skipped on the surface of a pond. He rams into an oak table with a loud crack, the wood nearly splitting.
For an instant, the battle pauses.
A moment ago, Namreth seemed invincible, but now he’s on his ass, face red, teeth clenched in pain. His unnaturally youthful features look older, undoubtedly rattled by the realization that he might not be the only power in the room.
“Dietan? Goddess above, Dietan. You did that?” I’m amazed, and proud.
Dietan doesn’t reply. He’s oddly…calm.
No, he isn’t calm. He’s focused.
His hands are raised toward Namreth. The winds whip around him, swirling upward from the floor and churning debris around him like a hurricane. The growing storm flutters his hair. It slices at my clothes and face, tears tapestries from walls, roaring around the hall like a living thing.
The Whisting has returned to him.