41. The Sword and the Crown
V iola stood before the door of the King’s study, waiting to be announced.
This is a mistake, a voice told her—Seb’s voice again. Always the voice of reason, even now.
Some mistakes you have to make, she reminded him.
She’d know no peace until she did. She had to hear Jax’s justification for what she’d witnessed. She wasn’t sure what difference it would make, but she needed to hear it nonetheless.
Her plan was simple. She’d say she had some memories of what she’d seen. She’d confess she was worried, confused. She’d sound as non-judgemental as she could, like she was asking for his guidance. She’d have to push a little for the truth. She suspected that Jax would give it. It was hard to lie when you weren’t prepared to.
Logically, the next thing he’d do is have a mage alter her memories again. With Nico’s talisman still buried inside her flesh, it wouldn’t work, but she could pretend it had.
Unless they administered a truth potion too…
At that point, or on the off chance that King Jax attacked, she was prepared to fight back. She’d purposefully left her usual sword behind and worn a light outfit difficult to conceal weapons under, but Nico’s blade was twisted into her hair in the form of a pin. She’d defend herself, throw herself out the window onto the balcony below, and had Blackberry waiting nearby for her to summon.
She hoped it didn’t come to that. If she had to run …
It didn’t matter that she had somewhere to go. She needed to be here. She wanted to be here. It was safe and tidy and known to her.
Or at least it used to be.
“Enter,” came Jax’s voice.
The guards swung the doors open, and Viola stepped inside. Jax stood behind his mahogany desk, shifting through papers with a bored expression—an expression that brightened as soon as he saw Viola.
“Good to see you, Windbright!” He beamed. “Did you have a pleasant trip?”
Viola took a deep breath. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk about, Your Majesty.”
“Jax,” he reminded her.
Viola had never hated his informality, even if she wasn’t sure what to do with it. But today she hated it. Today she wanted to tell him exactly where to shove it. “May I sit?”
“Of course.”
She lowered herself into the deep wingback chair set aside for guests, doing her best to look shaken. It wasn’t hard.
“I’m having strange… well, it’s like they’re memories, but they feel like dreams.”
Jax faltered. “Oh?”
“I keep thinking about the Farm. In one minute, I’m merely patrolling the fields, but in another… the fields are scraping the skies, and the workers… the workers are giants.”
Every muscle in Jax’s body seemed completely still. “I see.”
“Sire, I can’t… I don’t want to pry… and if the Crown has been keeping secrets I’m sure that there must be a good reason… but the Farm… how does it work exactly?”
Jax took a deep breath. He got up from his seat and slowly moved towards the window, staring out across the flat expanse of sea. Viola sat on the edge of her seat, hand up by her head, ready to strike at any moment. She couldn’t see a weapon on him. It didn’t mean he didn’t have one.
“When I was a boy, I once journeyed to the land of giants,” he confessed, his reflection in the pane of glass staring back at him. “I shan’t bore you with the how. It hardly matters anymore. What matters is that, years later, famine swept through the land, and for a while, Isabeau and I—both newly-crowned—thought that it might be the end of our country. For all its power, magic cannot conjure food. It cannot grow in a land that refuses to be planted. It cannot multiply or negotiate trade deals.
“But then I remembered the land of the giants. A place where a single strawberry could feed a family for a week. With help, Isabeau and I were able to reopen the gateway between worlds. Our initial plan was to bargain with the giants, but they did not accept our offer.”
Viola swallowed. “So you enslaved them.”
Jax still did not meet her gaze. The gold band of his crown shone in the reflection, silhouetted by a blackening sky. “A singular village. Fifty of the creatures. A single, small, isolated village—far away from anyone who might object. Fifty were sacrificed to save thousands.”
Finally, Jax turned from the glass, his gaze fixing on Viola.
“You and your family survived the famine. Your farm was one of the few that managed to persevere. You were hungry, but you didn’t starve. You didn’t watch your people shrivel around you, you didn’t find your servants collapsed due to hunger, didn’t visit orphanages overflowing with children whose parents had starved so that they wouldn’t have to.”
Viola twitched uncomfortably in her seat. He was right, for the most part. They hadn’t starved. But the look of those who had would never leave her either.
Much like the look of the giants would never leave her either.
“Tell me, Windbright—would you have done differently if you had no other choice? The needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few. You’ve killed for your country. Is what we are doing really any different?”
Yes, Viola wanted to scream. Yes, because some things are worse than death. Yes, because we didn’t need to enslave them. Yes, because we’re not starving anymore.
Suddenly, Viola’s plan dissolved in front of her, invisible behind the rage that overtook her.
“You speak of starving people and orphans,” she hissed, her voice dark, “but how is what we’re doing to the giants any better? Are they being fed well? Are they safe from losing those they love? You’re breeding them to work, you’re killing them when they can’t, you’re making their friends drag their headless bodies into pits and sending them back into the fields the next day. I serve this country because I believed it was a good one, one worth making sacrifices for, one worth dying for, but I would rather burn this castle to the ground than serve it for a second longer!”
Jax stared at Viola as if she’d been possessed by a demon. In some ways, she felt she had—she’d been taken over by the worst parts of her, or the spirit of injustice, or just the dark, angry soul inside herself that she’d buried in an attempt to make her feel worthy of her survival.
No more. No more would she bury her darkness or temper her fire.
“Windbright—” Jax said, holding up his hands.
“My name is Brightstone,” she told him. “For I am your knight no longer. ”
Jax’s eyes latched onto Viola as if she were flame consuming his room, and he was trying to look for a way out. “Guards!” he called.
Viola’s fingers twitched, wondering if she should go for her hairpin, or if she should let herself be taken and submit to the false memory wipe, or if there was too much fight in her to be quelled or subdued.
The guards marched into the room, looking confused to find themselves summoned. Viola knew them both by sight but not by name.
“Please escort Ser Windbright to the dungeon,” Jax commanded. “And summon the Royal Enchanter.”
The guards glanced at each other, clearly surprised by the order. “Sire?” said one, as though hoping for an explanation.
“Just do it!”
One of the guards unsheathed his sword, pointing it in Viola’s direction. He opened his mouth to speak, still seeming uncertain, tentative, as if he was hoping the order was some sort of joke. “If you just—”
A black scythe cut through the room, slashing through the extended blade and bisecting the immaculate carpet. The shadows in the corner of the room shimmered, and Nico stepped forward, darkness flickering around him.
“Do not touch her,” he growled, his voice darker than any of his shadows.
“The Shadowmancer,” one of the knights murmured.
Viola didn’t get a chance to react. The shadows at Nico’s feet jumped, transforming into a wolf. It leapt onto the guards, knocking both of them down, twisting into a serpent that coiled around them—
“Nico!” Viola screamed.
She wasn’t the only one. Jax screamed Nico’s name too. Not even ‘Nicodemus’. Nico.
Viola spun to face the King, who was hovering beside his desk, mouth open as if his own actions surprised him, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just uttered. Nico stared right back, even his shadows frozen.
He was still frozen when Jax’s hand went to a vial of his desk and hurled it onto the floor, engulfing the room in endless, tangible darkness.
Even Viola’s runed eyes couldn’t see through it.
“Guards!” called Jax again. “Apprehend the Shadowmancer, but do not kill him!”
That order made no sense, but Viola barely had time to think about it. Someone knocked into her, sending her spiralling towards the floor. She could make out nothing in the gloom, the ground indistinguishable from the walls and furniture. Grabbing her weapon would do no good—she didn’t know who she’d be striking.
“Viola!” Nicodemus called out .
It was the worst thing he could have done. A second later, he let out a hard, painful grunt—someone had struck him.
“Don’t hurt him!” she cried out, as if anyone would listen to her, as if she had the power to make them stop.
Her heart skittered against her ribs as she fought through the oppressive darkness smothering the King’s study, the weight of the magic pressing down on her shoulders. She strained her senses, grappling for Nicodemus amidst the shadows. A sharp yelp pierced the air.
Leave him alone!
Viola pushed forward. Footsteps echoed in the chamber, mingling with the distant murmurs of voices. More guards. More guards were coming.
Hands fastened around her, many and all at once. They bent her arms behind her back, no matter how much she kicked and screamed. The grips were iron vices.
Nico was still calling her name, in-between punches, his voice grunting through pain.
Stop this, stop, stop this!
“Nic—”
A fist struck her middle, sucking the wind straight out of her. Pain spread along her body. Her muscles burned, her bones rattling. More hands fastened around her, followed by rope.
She couldn’t fight back. Not this many, not in these conditions.
But she didn’t stop struggling until Nico went silent, and it didn’t seem like there was anything worth struggling for.
Nicodemus woke up in the dungeons. At least, he assumed that’s where he was. There was a cold dampness in the air, a moist, metallic taste—like moss and rust. His hands were bound, his bracelet missing, and he was lying in a wooden bunk. His feet hit stone when he flung them onto the ground. He groaned, pain lancing through his body. He was used to discomfort in his leg. He wasn’t used to it everywhere.
A blindfold had been tied around his face. Usually, that wouldn’t have mattered, but every lantern was off too, the room swathed in darkness. Nico could feel it the way a body could sense the rising of the dawn. Not for the first time, he cursed the irony of being unable to manipulate the darkness when that’s all there was around him.
Voices were talking above, muffled and quiet. Up a set of stairs, most likely. Nico strained his ears, trying to catch snippets of the conversation, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Viola?” he called out hopefully.
He was fairly sure he was alone down here. The air seemed absent of breathing, of any sound apart from a steady drip of water, the voices above, and his own frantic heartbeat. No, Viola wasn’t here, but he doubted that meant she’d escaped.
He shouldn’t have stepped out of the shadows. He should have waited to see what her next move was, or even waited until she was captured and then broken her out when she was alone. That would have been the logical thing to do.
But logic had left his mind the second he thought she was in danger.
And now they were probably both going to die, and painfully too.
He hoped they let him see her one last time.
He hoped he died before they could wrench anything from him about Cordelia. She would be safe in the castle, but he wouldn’t put it beyond Jax to burn the whole forest down if he thought that’s where a necromancer could be hiding. And if Nico was forced to give up her description… she’d have to leave the forest at some point anyway. He’d rather die than let anyone know anything about her, but he wasn’t immune to truth serum. He could be made to talk if they asked the right questions.
I saved her because she was useful to me, he’d told Viola once. He wondered now if that had been the biggest lie he told, although he supposed Cordelia had proven her usefulness a thousand times over, and not just by healing him or helping with his plans. She’d listened to him. She’d loved him even when he didn’t deserve to be loved. She’d saved him from being the very worst version of himself.
He’d never told her. He’d never get the chance, now.
The voices at the top of the stairs went silent, and someone made their way down the stairs. A man, judging by the sound of his breathing. There was no clinking as he walked, which meant he probably wasn’t a knight, although he suspected he was wearing a sword—something caught on one of the steps as he reached the bottom. He brought no lantern, cast no light.
Nico felt his gaze on him regardless, like he was seeking him out in the gloom.
“Nico,” King Jax whispered.
Even now, though it had changed so much over the years, he knew the sound of the voice instinctively. There was something to the way he spoke it, exactly the same way he’d said it twenty years ago on the day they first met and Nico had spelled it out in the dirt, too scared to speak.
Nico sighed. “Hello, brother.”