Chapter 65 #2
A fact of which is too odd for my brain to reconcile.
Yet just as quickly as the confusing moment comes, it passes. Tynan straightens himself, glancing back at Alastair. “Shall we play a mini round with the girl first?”
“Oh,” King Alastair laughs. “Now that would hold my interest.”
Tynan hums, his tight smile not seeming as delighted as all his others. “Raise the stake.”
A hooded figure steps forward and presses their palm into the ground.
There is a shimmer of light, and then a wooden post erects from the rock, leaving behind a low groan as the stone rumbles to make room for it.
Wordlessly and without instruction, they fasten iron brackets to the wood, and then another hooded wielder steps forward and uses fire magic to weld metal shackles with the brackets.
They tug on them to check the security, the metal echoing loudly in the face of silent anticipation.
From the corner of my eye, I catch King Erasmus leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and gazing over his folded hands. There is a curve wedged deep into the corner of his mouth. His eyes are alight with intrigue.
King Alastair turns to head back to his throne on the balcony. “I cannot wait to watch whatever Commander Dalmar has in store for you. Do put on a good show for us, pet.”
Two cloaked guards step forward, halting him.
His face twists. “Out of my way.”
The two guards grab his arms and tug him backward instead.
“Fools. Unhand me this instant. I am a king, for the gods’ sake.
How dare you touch me. How dare you defile me.
I…I…” When they slam his back against the stake and jerk his wrists over his head, locking them into the shackles which look like my own, his face turns purple.
“Commander. Commander!” When Tynan only watches him through a level expression, King Alastair turns his eyes to the balcony. “Erasmus, are you truly going to let—”
His words die in his throat, and the purple flees his skin, leaving behind a face pale as a moonflower.
King Erasmus is standing now, hands gripped on the balcony while a curling smile grips his lips. He says nothing.
Tynan squares his shoulders to me, cool like an evening breeze. “Would you like to hear your choices?”
My eyes remain glued to King Alastair as his expression shifts through a spectrum of emotions. As he seems to call on magic that doesn’t answer him.
He is bound so similarly to how my mother once was.
“Yes,” I breathe.
Tynan grins. “Lyra Izacalli, you may choose to spare King Alastair’s life, and thus spare yourself from participation in the next round of my game, removing considerable burden from Draven.
Or you may choose to take King Alastair’s life, and thus cement your participation in the next round of my game, almost certainly damning him instead.
” A loaded pause. “Which do you choose?”
The weight of the decision sits heavy in my stomach. I pry my eyes from King Alastair, who is shouting his objections—the threats slowly morphing into desperate pleas—and I look to Draven. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he simply holds my gaze, understanding already softening his eyes.
The guilt compiles in my stomach, building a tower of thoughts closing around my throat.
I find Rhea next. She is still staring at the ground, something seeming to have broken inside her.
If I reject the offer—if I refuse to plunge my hands into a bucket of more blood—I can rewrite the trajectory of the next game.
Draven can’t truly defend us both against gods-only-know how many condemned—not while they are fighting to regain their own lives—but I can give him the chance to save Rhea.
Truly save her, without sacrificing a piece of his stitched up heart in the process.
Plus, I know the choice my mother would want me to make.
It should be so easy to choose correctly. To make the choice that would make my mother proud and secure the lives of the man I love and the sister he loves in turn. Preserve my own life and mortal soul alike. My conscience.
Yes, I know which choice I should choose.
Yet I don’t choose it anyway. Because I remember a certain promise I made to myself the night he stripped me nude and brought a whip to me. I remember the thirst I felt when swearing to take my revenge on him.
I remember it all.
I already have a mountain of blood stained on my hands, so what’s another crimson seed in comparison?
In a terrible, twisted way, I now understand what Casimir meant when he said those words to me. There is so much blood now staining me—what does one more vile, malignant person hurt?
I lift my chin. “I want him to burn.”
Tynan angles his head. “Oh? By what flame?”
“My own.”
“Do elaborate, please.”
A curl forms in my lip as I watch King Alastair flail against his shackles. Hear his pathetic words, which only ricochet from my ears. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“And why would I remove your shackles? Why risk giving you access to your magic?”
“Because I trust you have enough confidence in your own power to not fear me or my magic. I trust you are clever enough to put precautionary measures in place to ensure I don’t use my magic elsewhere.”
“You would be correct in those thoughts.” A sigh. “Very well. Uncuff the girl and position two blades over my son. One at his throat, one at his side.” Tynan fixes me firmly in his gaze. “Try anything, and you will live to regret it.”
My curt nod is my only answer.
Within moments, the manzat is removed from my wrists, and Draven has two blades pressed into his body.
I’m sorry, I mouth to him.
He shakes his head, the gesture subtle. There is the faintest of curves ghosting his lips. Don’t be, he mouths back.
It steadies me in a way I didn’t know I needed.
My expression hardens. I stare at King Alastair with nothing but cold resentment, and in his petrified gaze, all I see are the horrified gazes of the other night attendants.
The dead look in my mother’s eyes as a body grunts on top of her.
I see her tied to her own stake. Hear the words, You do not let this break you.
You do not let them win. I love you. I see my nights spent with strangers tattooed on his skin.
See the scars from my lashings grooved into the lines of his face.
See the hopes and dreams of a tiny girl be stripped from her just as viciously as her pride and dignity were.
I see the freshly spilled blood on the floor next to me.
I see a thief, who has stolen future after future.
A murderer who has played with life as carelessly as a child tossing aside their toys.
I see a monster. A stain. A man who is finally facing his long overdue reckoning.
I see nothing more than a promise being kept.
“Please,” he whimpers. The fabric at his crotch darkens. “Please. Have mercy for your King.”
I summon the pain of every moment—every jagged piece of grief—and channel it into my last look at the man who has done unspeakable harm to my life and others.
“You were never my king.”
Fire erupts in my palms, brilliant and with a different hue than I expect. The flame I have conjured—the fire I mold into a flaming bow and arrow—is crystal white and outlined by steel blue. It’s hypnotic and alluring. Beauty and power.
It is pure destruction.
I pull back and release the notched arrow from my fiery bow.
King Alastair goes up in flames the moment the tip grazes his skin, engulfing all but the stone beneath his feet.
His ear-splitting scream echoes off the walls, and the smell of his burnt skin paired with burning wood and melted metal quickly fills the air.
The fire is bright. Punctuated by the brilliance of a stunning white flame.
As I watch it dance and listen to the song it provokes, all I can think is—
If I have any regrets, it is only that I did not do more to prolong his suffering.
A guard returns to immediately re-shackle me in the manzat manacles, the sensation of being cut off from my magic as disorienting as it was the first time. As he works, a hooded water-wielder steps forward to extinguish the growing fire.
Their water magic does not work.
The flames do not die.
Tynan laughs. “Remarkable.” He presses two fingers together and twirls his hand in a circle. A small onyx tornado woven with crimson seams appears, wrapping around the blazing inferno in a smothering cocoon. When it falls away, all that is left is ash. No bones. No wood or metal. Just ash.
There is only silence in the room at the sight.
Until there is clapping. Slow and deliberate.
King Erasmus is beaming. “Bravo. Bra-vo!”
With a crease in my brow, I glance at Draven—who thankfully no longer has blades pressed into his body. His expression mirrors that of my own, gears turning behind his eyes as he seems to tie the threads together in real time.
“Commander Dalmar,” King Erasmus continues. “Do take a bow. What a show! What a show!”
“Your plan was to cross Alastair all along.” Draven does not say the words like a question.
He receives an answer all the same.
“He was a selfish fool who had sick perversions and cared more for his own gratification than he did his own kingdom.” King Erasmus stands tall at the balcony’s ledge.
“And now with the help of my brilliant strategist, we have reasonably declared war on one kingdom while dethroning the king from another in the midst of an uprising. The continent will be plunged into chaos. The people will need a leader. Will need someone to make order out of the disorderly. And who will they turn to? Whose feet will they lay flowers at and offer troves of their gold to for saving Solaya before it could swallow itself? They will thank m—”
A spear of pure darkness spirals through the air and pierces King Erasmus straight through his heart.
His body topples over the ledge of the balcony, falling straight for the stone ground like a baby bird who hasn’t yet learned to fly.
It lands with a dull thump.