Chapter 39
The Songbird
Damn Erik Bloodsinger. He’d ignited an insatiable fire in my blood, then left me to burn.
Rationally, I knew a king was often called away on a moment’s notice, but the way my body still hummed in anticipation for his hands on my skin, for him to claim me in every way, was a new kind of torture.
I closed the door on him and paced the bedchamber.
Mere moments after the door closed, the latch from the garden door clicked. My heart stilled when three palace guards appeared.
“Lady?” A tall man with oddly dilated pupils spoke. “We were making rounds and saw the light but not the king. Are you well?”
The hair prickled on my neck. “The king insisted no one was welcome in his chambers without his permission.”
The chill worsened when another man stepped closer. His eyes were a warm shade of yellow, but the inky pupil was slit like a snake’s.
I didn’t have time to command them to leave before the third guard, a fae with greasy hair braided behind his neck, rushed at me.
Startled, I knocked my hip against the table in the room and fell back.
I managed to roll to my side before the guard had his hands on me.
Alek was the fighter in our family. Sure strikes, instincts clad in steel, but my moves were swift.
Before I’d even finished standing, I had one of Erik’s knives kept by the side of his bed in hand.
Blood pounded in my skull when I wheeled back and swung the point, nicking the greasy guard on the cheek.
“Bitch!” He doubled over, tapping his face gingerly.
Snake Eyes had me in his sights. He made his move. I tore a chair away from the table, letting it topple in front of him. He jumped over it but nearly lost his footing on the landing.
Think, dammit!
“You’ve nowhere to go, Princess,” Snake Eyes said. “Nowhere!”
The door leading to the front chamber was on the other side of the guards, but they’d left the garden door wide open. I rushed through it and slammed it behind my back, bolting the lock in place.
Wood splintered when they crashed against it, cursing me with horrid threats.
I drew in a long breath. Think. Breathe. I rushed into the garden and ducked inside a lush shrub tall enough it would strike Erik’s chest. Gods, where was Erik? I wasn’t fool enough to think he’d been separated from me without intention. This was planned. They wanted the king gone.
I wrenched my thoughts free of the dreary scenarios. He would be fine. He had to be all right. Erik was a damn impressive survivor. Today would be no different. Breath burned in my lungs when the door to the gardens cracked against the side of the palace wall. They were here.
“I want his creature before she touches too much of the darkening,” the man with the knife snapped. “Spread out.”
I tucked my knees to my chest and gripped a branch until the hum of warm fury magic filled my veins. I needed the leaves thicker, denser. Little by little, the burn of my ability to craft the earth took hold, and the branches eased around me like a knotted cocoon.
Heavy boots shuffled down the stone steps into the garden. The whistle of blades against leaves and branches rattled me to my bones.
Rapid breaths slid through my nose, hardly filling my lungs. Fear and harsh nerves would leave me gutted and bloodied if I couldn’t keep my wits while assassins prowled the garden. One look at the soil and a thought pressed against my skull, dancing a violent shudder down my spine.
Before I was born, my father had suffered beneath insatiable bloodlust once and fought every day since to keep the pull for bone and blood sated. Brutality, much the same, lived in me. I’d felt it before, and I’d been running from it for turns.
My fingers stopped trembling when I reached for the soil.
Fury burned through my palms. Instead of blooms and sweet little buds on shrubs, I called for something else.
I held my breath when the footsteps drew nearer.
My palm hovered over the soil; the heat of my magic deepened to a bite.
I winced. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
Nearby shrubs rustled. Dried leaves crackled.
A cruel laugh came from behind. “Lookit here. Found myself a little bird.”
Anger collided with fear, and it was as if I shielded the softer parts of my heart only to release a different side—a darker piece I never showed to anyone. The corner of my mouth twisted. “I’m no one’s bird except the king’s.”
If ever it is a choice between your life or another’s, strangle them with thorns. When I flung my arms open, jagged roots burst through the soil. The points were splintered and sharp, and half a dozen new growths impaled through the man’s boots, thighs, through his middle.
He choked and doubled over. With his body bent forward, the fleshy side of his throat hovered over the soil.
I stood and gripped the back of his neck.
His dilated pupils seemed to widen even more when I held out my free hand, wincing as fury fatigued my muscles.
From the soil, a shard of a root shot skyward, like a broken blade, and rammed through the center of his throat.
He gurgled on his own blood. The splatter of it dribbled down the dark wood, then in the next breath his body went limp, pierced and mutilated over the mutant roots.
I stumbled. Gentle fury could keep me energized for the better part of a day. This sort of violence, this amount of power drained my energy like a sieve, but I had to move. My fists gathered my bloodstained skirt, and I darted back for the door to the palace.
The two other men shouted ferociously across the garden when they caught sight of their brutalized companion.
I didn’t look at them; I kept my gaze schooled on the door. A little more, a few more paces. A little—
I screamed when thick arms wrapped around my middle and dragged me down into the soil. A heavy body rolled over my back, and a knee jabbed between my shoulders, pinning me face down. I writhed and thrashed. I cursed and screamed.
Snake Eyes kicked me in the ribs. The harsh tang of blood soaked my tongue. I coughed and groaned, the blow dragging the air from my lungs. I was weakened enough, one guard rolled me onto my back and moved each knee on either side of my hips, straddling me.
Snake Eyes tossed back his dark hood, white teeth bared. Like most sea fae, he was hauntingly lovely, stocky, and built like a wall, with a thick neck and palms. His hair reminded me of rowan berries at the peak of ripeness.
The second assassin came up from behind and stood over me.
A thinner man, but the blade in his hand was slim and swift, as I imagined he would be when he sliced up my innards.
Snake Eyes reached for my throat. Somewhere in the mud of my brain, I found the strength to kick one foot into the soft point on his knee.
He roared and slapped my cheek.
The second guard yanked my wrists over my head, pinning me in place. Snake Eyes straddled me again. He wrapped one hand around my throat, then slowly lifted my skirt up my thighs.
Snake Eyes laughed. “No wonder the bastard claimed you. You’re almost pretty.” He spun a small knife in his hand. “At least for now.”
The guard holding my wrists kneeled over my arms when I started to roll, giving Snake Eyes freedom to slash his blade across my leg. From inside his cloak, he retrieved a glass vial and pressed it against the trickle of blood.
“You’re not going to heal this place for Bloodsinger,” Snake Eyes said in a snarl. “You’ll have a new master soon enough, pet.”
All at once a new kind of rage took hold.
Unlike my own, this was dark, vicious. I wanted to skin each guard alive.
I knew just how to do it to cause the most pain.
A brutal task I shouldn’t know but did. They’d beg for death, and when I gave it to them, I’d serve their hearts to the hounds at the gates.
I didn’t know hounds were at the gates, yet I saw them plainly in my head.
Air was fleeting. Black spots dotted the corners of my eyes, and I was out of time. I flung my body about as best I could, but the two men were too much.
I didn’t see a way out, and I could accept it. Part of me was prepared for death. I would die fighting. I would die before they broke me. I would die with honor and enter the hall of the gods, where I’d raise endless drinking horns with those gone before me.
All I could do was watch as two blades aimed to carve me to shreds. I wouldn’t look away. They’d damn well see me as they brutalized me. I stiffened, bracing, but Snake Eyes coughed. He choked.
A hand to his throat, he spluttered as water spilled over his lips. More and more water flowed from his mouth, down his tunic, and he could not take a breath in without gargling more water.
“K-kill her,” Snake Eyes choked out. “Said to k-k-kill her if we got the b-blood.”
The greasy assassin didn’t hesitate. He lifted his blade, ready to slice at my body, but a sudden pressure leveled over my chest.
I tilted my head, afraid and curious to look in the same breath, and a muffled scream, scratchy and sore from my bruised throat, spilled out. Sprawled over my body, covering me like a shield, was Erik. He was heavy and slumped against me. When he shifted, his face contorted in a sharp wince.
I sat up, hands on his shoulders, and choked on my own breath at the sight of the blade pierced just above his hip.
“Erik!” My voice was rough, broken. It was little more than a rasp. I dug my fingernails into his shoulders. “Gods, you’re…dammit.”
“Not the words…one wants…to hear, Songbird,” he said through rough breaths. With a groan, he rolled off me onto his uninjured side.
The assassin choking on the water gasped and staggered to his hands and knees. The second hesitated, as if stunned his blade had found the king. Snake Eyes had turned pallid and had gone silent.
They were going to run.