Chapter 8
Rosie
Everything is confusion. Darkness, chaos, noise. The clamp of hard fingers around my arms, a sudden whirl of sickening motion.
I hit the ground hard, breath knocked from my lungs, feet tangled in my skirts.
For some moments, everything around me seems to freeze, and I lie stunned, unable even to breathe.
Then I draw a gasping inhale into my lungs and smell it: anti-magic.
A powerful chemical smell that burns the nostrils and sickens the innards.
That would explain why the scintils went out—a blast like that, expelling so much anti-magic into the air, would easily break down any lesser spells like orb lights.
A blast as strong as that would severely weaken even the more powerful protection wards, which means… which means…
A clash in my ears, echoing throughout the great hall.
Metal on metal, but where did these weapons come from?
We were so carefully searched and stripped at the gate!
Then again, Valtar snuck in knives; who’s to say he’s the only one?
Now that the brilliant scintils are out, the walls and ceiling reveal veins of luminous blue-green meorise, a rare dwarfish ore.
It’s not enough light to fill the space, certainly not for human eyes.
But my not-quite-human vision begins to make sense of the shadows around me.
Men shout. Figures crash into one another.
Vicious cries and hoarse screams bounce in echo from wall to ceiling.
“Prince Joro has betrayed us!” Alderin’s voice bellows from somewhere in the mayhem. “Find the princess! Defend the princess!”
I push up onto my hands and knees. I can’t crawl out of here, not in this outfit.
I’ve got to get to my feet and somehow escape this madness.
Where I’ll go for safety, I cannot guess—pandemoniac confusion surrounds me everywhere I turn.
Numerous brilliant scintil-sticks flare briefly before the anti-magic fumes put them out again.
By those brief flashes of light, I catch glimpses of lance blades and wide, fear-shot eyes.
For a moment, I’m transported back to the home of my childhood.
Back to that night, full of hellfire and screams, when dark shapes appeared suddenly overhead as they swooped down upon our village and shadowy figures in low-pulled hoods marched down the street, summoning flame to their fingertips.
I hear my own childish voice screaming: Mama! Mama!
I grab the hair at my temples, struggling to push those memories down.
I cannot go back there; I must stay in the present.
I must do as I’ve done before and find a way to survive.
A sob caught in my throat, I struggle upright, tearing a long rip in some layer of my skirts.
Poor Philippa—if I survive long enough for it to matter, she’ll have her work cut out for her.
I stagger three paces, half-blind, still uncertain where to turn, which way to go, when something slams into me.
No, not something. Someone.
I hit the ground once more, this time flat on my back.
White light flares in my eyes, dazzlingly painful.
I scream and turn away, then force myself to look again, taking in the small scintil suspended in a glass ball to protect it from the anti-magic.
This is strung on a chain around the neck of Joro.
Joro, who bends over me. Joro, who places one hand on my chest, pushing me into the floor.
“There you are, demon spawn!” His teeth flash in that dangerous smile. “You can’t get away from me so easy.”
I claw at his face, managing to cut his cheek with one of my damnably blunted nails. He curses, then lunges, both hands closing around my neck. “No more dragons,” he snarls. Spittle flies from his lips, spattering my face. “No more demons.”
My body spasms, desperate for air. His fingers tighten; I cannot wrench them free.
I try to scream, but my vocal cords are crushed.
I thrash and writhe, but he’s too heavy, all that weight pressing down on me, choking out my life.
His eyes, fully dilated and full of murderous lust, gleam in that swaying scintil on its chain, encompassing the whole of my narrowing vision.
Suddenly I feel it. Deep down inside me. Deeper than any physical part of my reality, down in the depths of my soul.
Fire.
It builds, leaping from spark to flame, crawling up from that space of suppression, green and hungry and growing.
The darkness on the edges of my vision ignites, and heat builds in my veins, my fingertips.
I stare up into Joro’s eyes. See them widen.
See the sudden reflection of green fire in his pupils, and—
His head jerks back, his throat exposed. A flash of steel in the scintil glow, and blood spurts from his opened neck. Hot and gushing, straight into my eyes.
Joro’s hands drop away. I choke, roll, struggling between the desperate need for air and the equally desperate need to scream and scream and scream.
Whatever that heat was inside me vanishes in an instant, replaced by sick revulsion and shuddering panic.
I crawl from under the collapsed body on top of me.
Then, swiping at my face with both hands, wiping away blood, pushing back locks of hair, I look up.
Valtar stands over me. Over the corpse of the Pirate Prince.
That single small scintil in its glass container casts him in an eerie glow.
By that light he looks taller than ever, the looming specter of Death incarnate.
One hand still holds a knife, dripping with fresh blood.
He stares down at his prey, his lips rolled back in a hungry snarl.
Then he lifts his gaze. Those black-void eyes of his fix on me.
I feel as though I’m seeing him—truly seeing him—for the first time.
I don’t know how long I remain there, crouched in my torn skirts, staring up at that figure of both dread and salvation. Slowly, I become aware of the chaos in the hall dying down, of the anti-magic stink fading, of scintil lights coming back on, one after the other.
“Roselle!” the king’s voice cries out from somewhere behind me. “The princess, where is she?”
I stand. The swimming chamber comes into focus, and the first thing I see is Prince Taigan ripping one of the guardsmen’s lances out of the chest of a fallen Rassumen man.
Beyond him, Prince Bryon holds a battered corpse upright with his bare, bloodied hands.
There’s gore and violence everywhere I look, all memory of the dancing hall, of the beautiful courtiers, of music and celebration, obliterated.
As though those were nothing more than a dreamlike facade over this dire reality.
“Roselle!” Alderin bellows again.
“I-I’m here.” The words can scarcely crawl up through my bruised throat. I try to take a step but sway heavily, my knees threatening to buckle.
Valtar is at my side in an instant. He steps over Joro’s body, extending a hand to me.
The same hand which, moments ago, held that bloody knife, which has somehow disappeared once more.
I stare at those extended fingers then slowly lift my gaze to his.
His expression is no longer the snarling animal I’d glimpsed mere moments ago.
His features are stone hard, inhuman, but for an instant, when my eyes meet his, there’s a flash—a brief flicker like fire. There and gone again.
I do not take his hand.
“Princess!” Alderin appears at my elbow. “Princess, are you hurt?”
“No, no,” I manage, even as Prince Warrick and Lord Elis close in behind the king, eyes round with worry in the wavering scintil glow. “I’m all right. I’m not hurt.” My voice sounds ghastly, but I can get the words out at least.
Alderin puts an arm around me, sheltering and solicitous as he turns me away from the corpse on the floor.
He looks down at Joro’s upturned face, twisted in an expression of shock and pain.
The pirate’s red hair is darkened by the pool of blood in which he lies.
“So,” the king says at last, “the truthseer saw correctly. There was an assassin in our midst.”
“What?” My head jerks up. “An assassin?”
“What do you mean, Uncle?” Taigan’s voice rings loud in that stricken hall. He still grips his lance, and his gaze swings aggressively toward Valtar.
The king shakes his head, his expression almost musing.
“Seer Tamnaeth,” he says, “saw a vision earlier today and spoke it to me mere moments before the Presentation began. He said an assassin had arrived in Stromin. That he was here for the princess.” He glances at Valtar now. “I thought we had our suspect—”
“No!” The sound bursts from my lips, a blunt little bark.
It hurts, but I force the words out anyway.
“No, he saved me! It was Joro who tried to kill me, not Prince Valtar!” I cannot even look at the Inithana prince as I say it.
I cannot bear it, knowing now what he did, knowing what he is capable of doing again.
But I won’t stand by and hear him accused like this.
I needn’t have worried, however. The king turns to me, offering a kindly look.
“Of course,” he says, “the assassin was Joro. This attempt on your life was obviously well planned. He must have had his men sneak in all the components of that anti-magic bomb on their persons, small enough parts that would not be detected by our wards. Indeed, this was a carefully orchestrated attack.” He shakes his head and sighs.
“It remains to be seen if he acted on Mad Melarue’s orders.
We may not have an ally at sea after all. ”
My head whirls. I look around the hall again. Dead bodies everywhere, some of them guardsmen. The Rassumen delegation did not go down easily. The ballroom has become a battlefield, carcasses strewn across the floor where I was dancing and laughing mere minutes ago.
My knees start to buckle.