Chapter 23 #3
Half of them had crammed themselves through the door, and the other half were huddled against the walls, staring glassily at the dais.
There was no legible story here, no playwright’s careful staging to tell them who were the villains and who were the heroes.
Their champion had become a devil, covered in the blood of her comrades, and their queen’s white gown was turning red at the hem.
Vivian rubbed her temple, as if she had a very bad headache. “We’ll have to start over. This time maybe I’ll take one of the children along with me, as an incentive for good behavior. Toss me that book, please.”
I didn’t understand who she was speaking to until I felt the butt of a crossbow strike hard between my shoulder blades. I hadn’t seen the men at my back.
One of them wrested the book from my grasp—my nails left pale, desperate scores in the wood—and the other wrenched my arms behind me.
I thrashed, contriving to knock into one of them just as he made the toss.
The book fell short of the dais, landing instead where Ancel lay wanly in a widening pool of his own blood.
The queen looked at the book. You looked at the queen. I looked at you.
Your face was waxen and pale, but familiar. It was the way you’d looked on your bier, I realized: Beyond fear or anger or hope. Beyond everything, save death.
Abruptly your eyes left the queen to study the archers now lined up like pallbearers at the edge of the crowd. Your expression grew a little distracted, as if you were doing sums. Could you kill the queen before the arrows killed you? Could you reach her before she reached the book, and escaped?
You nodded to yourself. Yes.
You wouldn’t survive it, but neither would Vivian. And if you couldn’t have your future or your freedom—if you would never see your children again—at least you would have your revenge. You would be a tragedy, still, but you would not be hers.
“No!” My scream was hoarse, shattered in my throat.
“Don’t do it, please, Una—I can’t—” I threw myself forward against my captors, twisting my arms backward in their sockets.
One of the archers cursed and drove his fist into my kidney.
I doubled over, still screaming, unsure whether it was pain or grief or sheer fury that I would have to watch you die again.
Then: the clop of unhurried hooves. A mild, sinister whinny, which I associated with imminent injury. A rush of air above me, followed by the split-melon sound of a bone breaking.
The archers’ hold loosed instantly. I staggered upright to find Hen standing nearly atop me, all four legs once again on the ground. There was something slimy and grayish on his hoof, like brain matter.
The queen was cursing at her men. “Don’t waste arrows on the fucking horse, keep her in your sights—don’t you dare, Mallory.” She’d seen me staggering toward the book and swept up her long white skirts, ready to race for it.
Both of us stopped, abruptly, because the book was no longer on the flagstones. It was in Ancel’s long, graceful hand.
Sir Ancel of Ulwin was no longer especially beautiful.
His hair was sweat soaked, pressed unflatteringly to his skull, and his skin was the color of unbaked pastry.
He turned the book curiously in one hand, studying the device on the cover.
“This is how she does it, then.” His voice wouldn’t have been out of place at a dinner party, idly polite.
“This is how she makes it happen again and again.”
I wet my lips. “Yes.”
His eyes raked over me, unimpressed. “And you must be Owen.”
“How did you—”
He gestured toward you with his chin. “She talks in her sleep.” This he delivered with an expression that might have been a leer, on a man who wasn’t mostly exsanguinated.
“Surely you’ve noticed.” I wished, fervently and jealously, that you’d put your sword through his heart instead of his shoulder.
His attention returned to the book. He ran his thumb over the circle of the dragon, rubbing at the place where its teeth swallowed its own tail.
Then he craned his neck at an awkward angle, so that he could meet Vivian’s eyes.
He smiled up at her, and I saw suddenly why he had been named the Knight of Hearts.
It was not a rakish smile or a charming one, but a smile of pure and perfect sincerity.
In Ancel’s shifting, twisted character, warped by centuries spent as nothing but a sharp tool in a cold hand, this much was true: He loved Queen Yvanne the First.
“Fret not, my queen,” he said, lightly. “I remain yours.”
Vivian smiled sweetly back. “I know, dear boy.” She held out her hand for the book.
Ancel’s expression turned wry. It was the expression, I thought, of a man who has discovered he has one choice yet remaining to him, and almost wishes he didn’t.
“Save me a kiss in hell, then,” he said, and tossed the book—not to Vivian—but to me.
I fumbled, not expecting it, and Ancel said into that last hushed second: “Get her out of here, Owen.”
Then the queen was screaming orders and I was diving sideways toward you and your arms were opening to catch me—
The book was crushed between us, the pages crumpling, sliding against your blood-soaked armor—
Ten arrows were flying from ten bows, whistling toward us—
I was grasping back through time, further back than I’d ever reached before, and the world was peeling away like old paint—
Sharp steel arrowheads were burrowing into me, lancing into my back, my right shoulder, my left ear—
And then they were passing painlessly through the air where we used to be, but no longer were—
Because we had gone away, back to the very beginning.