Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Cecily began shrieking at the top of her lungs for her brother. Roland was still curled over the king’s chest, protecting him—but of course, no one wanted to assassinate the king at all. The king cried, “Do you see where I am cut, Thomas? Am I dying?”
“It is only your shoulder. Not very deep, Your Majesty. Hold my hand now.”
I knew when Roland had gripped Fulke’s mind.
He had said it was relatively easy to nudge a person to do something they already wanted to do, no matter how deep the desire was buried.
And Fulke Roet had always wanted to see his uncle dead.
For years, he’d been watching in the long grass, waiting to strike.
He slowly approached the king, as if walking through a dream.
Raised his knife, trembling with longing, while Roland held his mind.
Just long enough for the king to see light catch the blade, for his eyes to widen.
Just long enough, then Fulke was cowering, the steel clanging across the floor.
Roland lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Fulke’s legs, knocking him to the ground.
“Seize him!” Richard commanded. “Take him!”
As Roland’s muscles tightened around a writhing Fulke, I focused on Jasper, who had no idea which side he was meant to fight on.
I hurled more terror, more confusion, into his mind. Azure magic swirled around the Jupiter, and suddenly he was expanding in size and strength, a twenty-foot-tall giant of legend, unable to contain the power spiraling out of his control.
Roland dove away as Jasper lost his balance, his foot snapping the banquet table in two. Treasurer Martin slipped in the pool of Tom Guildford’s blood and was crushed under Jasper’s boot.
I sliced Jasper’s ankle with my sword. He bellowed in pain, smashing a high window in with his fist. Glass rained down, stabbing one guard through the chest. Wind blew into the hall.
Now there were men fighting men on the banquet table, on top of fallen shards of glass, Jasper the giant, in his madness, punching in all the windows he could reach.
Guards trained crossbows on him, but Jasper battered them against the wall with a sweep of his arm.
The rest of the court clumped together at the doors—blocked by more and more guards pouring in.
Fulke and Roland still wrestled on the ground, and for a moment I thought Fulke had the upper hand, until Roland kneed him hard in the stomach.
Panting, he pressed his blade to Fulke’s throat. “Yield,” he seethed.
Fulke did not know who he was. If he did, I wondered if he would have surrendered. But instead, he smashed his forehead into Roland’s nose, stealing his blade. Cartilage snapped. The two men staggered to their feet.
Roland ripped a sword from a guard’s limp hand, just as Fulke lunged.
The two blades threw sparks. Roland lazily parried another blow, then twisted the sword around his back to his left hand. A swipe across Fulke’s cheek. Fulke staggered back, gritting his teeth.
Roland spun the sword around his knuckles, then leapt forward. The two of them clashed together, again and again, but Roland was faster, more dexterous, more alive, and when he thrust his elbow into Fulke’s side, he knocked him off his feet.
The point of his sword caught Fulke’s throat. “Yield.”
You will never be king, I thought from the corner of the room as Fulke rose to his knees. It is not in your stars, Fulke Roet.
Charles staggered over to Tom. His son’s eyes were glassy, unseeing.
More guards were pushing into the great hall, pointing crossbows at Jasper’s head, at Charles shaking beside his son’s body, and at Fulke Roet, who chuckled darkly and shook his head as he was cornered, both men abandoned by all those they considered friends, as Roland had been abandoned only days before.
The king moaned that everyone he loved had betrayed him.
And I had ensured he had seen it with his own eyes.
“My magician went rogue,” protested Charles.
The captain of the guard—Henry Tromblay—calmly took Charles’s blade, the only one still raised. He said, pained, “What shall I make of this, Guildford? And you—” He turned. “Fulke. Tell me: Did you know of the plot to assassinate His Majesty, or did you simply see an advantage for yourself?”
“Have you all gone mad?” cried Charles.
“I have done nothing,” raged Fulke. “When I saw the king struck down, I thought only to protect him.”
As wind ripped through the holes in the windows, as rain washed away the blood, I ducked out of the great hall.
Once the guards led the wounded king back to his bedchambers, Oliver would deliver a ciphered missive from Roland, addressed to the king—a warning.
The former lord chancellor—the newly convicted traitor—had caught wind of a Guildford plot and begged His Majesty the King to be careful.
A warning that had arrived too late.
The histories would call it the Guildford Conspiracy, I decided. Their family name, forever tarnished.
I transformed behind a tapestry. I was finally myself. Coated in blood. My eyes narrowed as I moved through a portrait gallery, my shadow, for a brief moment, eclipsing each magician of Alvion, from Oberon to Prospero.
I was focused. I knew where I was going. This was what I had been born to do: to make and unmake kings.