49. Rorax
“I’m going to need another drink before he steals any more of my money.” Milla scowled down at her cards and at the giant stack of silver coins stacked precariously in front of the prince.
“That’s a good idea,” Rorax agreed, reaching up and scratching the back of her head between her two hair knives tucked in her hair. She eyed the bastard who’d won her an extra few coins to add to her purse today in his victory.
“Peasants,” the prince tsked, not even bothering to look up as he shoveled the copper coins into an already full leather coin bag. “As a prince, it’s my job to be able to rob the people.”
“Is he always this smug?” Rorax asked the emissary, jerking her chin at the prince.
“Always,” Milla grinned.
They were in Milla’s room, scattered around the emissary table and chairs. They played poker for nearly four hours after the Selection. Besides the lieutenant shooting her dirty looks between nearly every hand, it had been a calm and peaceful evening. A fun evening.
The three of them had slowly eliminated everyone else. The lieutenant had thankfully left the room nearly twenty minutes ago, grumbling about cheaters and card sharks.
Rorax felt strangely comfortable with the two of them, the prince and Milla. It felt like they didn’t hate her, even though they should.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
They shared a wary look, but Milla nodded at her. “Okay.”
Rorax rubbed her finger along the grain of the wood on the table, unable to look up at them. “Did Surmalinn ever . . . rebuild?”
There was a heavy silence, before the prince blew out a sad breath. “Slowly, but yes. Surmalinn has been fully restored. Povelinn was destroyed beyond repair. Most of the civilians have started a new colony outside the ruins called New Povelinn, or they became refugees in Surmalinn and Morvarand and just melded into the populations there.”
Rorax swallowed tightly, and finally looked up into the prince’s face. His lips were pressed together tightly, the corners of his mouth turned down, but his golden yellow irises were warm. Milla’s face was similarly grim, but she couldn’t see any traces of resentment or anger in either one of their expressions, so she continued.
“In the library, was there anything else besides Sumavari’s Books that were stolen? Or damaged?” she asked. She curled her hand into a fist on the table. She had specifically ordered her men not to touch the library, to leave it alone. If she found out they’d disobeyed orders, it was never too late to have them court martialed.
Something softened in Milla’s face. “No. Nothing else. The soldiers left the schools, the libraries, and the hospitals completely intact.”
Rorax nodded. “Good.”
There was one more question she had to ask, one more question that had been burning a hole in her soul, but her mouth felt like it was full of cotton as she tried to form the words. Rorax brushed her fingertips over the skin of her neck, just below her left ear.
“The man . . . the man with the star tattoo . . .” She swallowed. “Did he get it the night of the siege?”
The prince’s face hardened, and he took a long drink from what was left of his pint of ale.
Milla’s expression didn”t change at all as she nodded her head. “His name is Cannon, and yes, he did. It was done by one of the House of Ice soldiers. Your soldiers. He knows exactly who, but you’ll have to ask him.”
Rorax’s throat was achingly tight as she nodded. “Thank you.”
Milla gave her a small nod before pushing herself up from the table. “I’ll go get us another drink.”
Rorax stood after Milla disappeared from the room; she took two steps toward the fire to warm up her hands when the prince spoke behind her. “There was a generous donation to the University of Surmalinn twenty years ago, from a House of Ice patron. It was anonymous, but it was signed ‘For not doing all that I could’. You wouldn’t happen to know where that came from, would you?”
Rorax froze, her eyes wide. She started to turn toward the prince, the half-truth ready on her lips, when something hit her in the chest, absorbing into her flesh, into every cell of her being.
Something hot, something new, and something powerful slithered up her back.
She turned around to face the prince, confused and scared as the feeling consumed her—but before she could say a word to him a heavy, red mist covered her vision, and then she was too angry to speak. Too enraged to think. She wanted blood.
Rorax looked around looking for something, for anything. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she couldn’t find it, so she was going to have to settle on something else, or someone else.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned back to the prince.
He could give her blood, he could give her a fight, and she was going to take it.
The prince looked at her softly, but when he took in the expression on Rorax’s face he went pale.
“Rorax?” He scrambled to his feet and took one step back, but it was too late.
Rorax grabbed his wooden pint of beer from the table and hurled it at the prince’s head. He raised his arms to block it, but the metal edging of the cup sliced into his raised hand.
Rorax pulled both hair knives out of her braid in the same instant the prince snatched the fire poker from the flames of the fire pit warming the room.
Rorax lunged. The prince blocked.
They clashed in a shower of hot sparks.
The prince snarled at her from over their locked weapons. “What are you doing?”
She considered him. She could throw Glimr into the prince’s neck and be done with it. She wanted his blood on her hands, wanted the dark liquid over her skin, but . . . maybe the kill would be too fast, not satisfying enough if she just used her knife.
Something in her face must have unsettled him.
With a sharp grunt the prince shoved her back a few steps and used the distance to move towards the door.
“GUARDS! MILLA!” the prince yelled over his shoulder. “GET AYRES!”
Rorax hissed, launching herself at the prince. He deflected her to the side again in another shower of hot sparks.
“MILLA!” he bellowed over his shoulder as he deflected one, two, three of her lunges in rapid succession as they moved along the long wooden table. The fire poker was long and effective at keeping Rorax away from the parts of his body she wanted to strike.
“Rorax, what the fuck?” he grunted.
Rorax just hissed in response.
One solitary guard burst through the door.
Rorax hurled one of her hair knives at the soldier. It stabbed the man through his shoulder and pinned him to the wooden door before he could interfere with her prey.
He shrieked in pain and tried unsuccessfully to work the knife out of the wood.
“Gods fuck me, Ror,” the prince grunted. Rorax pulled her second knife out of her hair. Fear contorted the prince’s mouth before twisting the rest of his features. He stumbled, creating an opening, and Rorax knocked the fire poker out of his hand. It sailed away, before hitting the ground and sliding under the table.
Rorax grinned. The prince stumbled again and using the opportunity, Rorax slammed the butt of her knife into the prince’s temple.
He collapsed on the ground at her feet.
She stood above him, looking down on her prey through the red haze still clouding her vision.
Kill him, kill him, kill him. Something inside her chanted.
Rorax hesitated and shook her head, trying to clear the red haze from her mind as a hand wrapped around her throat and threw her backwards with so much force it launched her into the air. She slammed into the stone wall.
She hissed and rolled, ready to spring onto her toes.
The lieutenant stood above her, breathing hard, his nostrils flaring like a bull. His men followed him in, and immediately drew their weapons, but he raised his arm.
“Get him down,” he said, pointing to the man still pinned to Milla’s door, watching them both with wide pained eyes. “But do not touch her.”
He took another step closer to her, baring his teeth. “You want a fight, Rorax? Well then, I’ll give you a fucking fight.”
“Finally.” She smiled her most wicked smile, the red haze, heat, and adrenaline inside her surging before she launched herself at him.
It was both brutal and raw, and the lieutenant delivered exactly what he promised. In a flurry of limbs, angry fists, and barely dodged blades they fought.
The lieutenant managed to sink his knuckles into her flesh at least ten times and grazed his sword across her skin another twenty, each stroke leaving a scratch, a bruise, or a nick in her flesh.
Her knuckles landed on his ribs, but the light scaled armor he wore sliced open the flesh there, her knuckles becoming progressively bloodier as the fight went on.
The lieutenant swung his arm wide over her head, just missing her with an attempted backhanded blow, and when she saw the opportunity, she tackled him.
He dropped his sword as he hit the ground hard with a loud, painful grunt, and as he tried to push back on top of her, they rolled in a flurry of violent limbs down the long corridor.
She punched him hard, her bird ring cutting open his cheek bone with a small spray of blood. She raised her head, reached for Glimr, and was about to thrust it up into Ayres’s neck when he somehow found his way on top of her. He pinned her hand to the ground and headbutted her with his head against her brow bone. The force of it smacked her head against the floor.
It hurt like a motherfucker asstars popped in her eyes, but the pain jolted her free of the hot thing writhing in her chest. Her vision cleared and she took a deep desperate breath. She felt like she”d been underwater for the last five minutes. The red haze on her vision was gone.
What the fuck just happened?
Ayres’s chest was heaving, his silver and red eyes wild like he wanted to kill her. He raised his fist threateningly, but the prince was suddenly there, gripping it before it could strike. “Ayres, stop!”
Rorax blinked a few times, shaking her head clear of any remaining haziness.
She blinked up at Ayres’s face, and saw nothing but pure, undiluted loathing. Horror crept through her like a poison paralyzing her.
Fuck. Fuck, what had she done?
Shame ricocheted around her chest as she heard someone shrieking in the distance, the voice vague and muffled. “Ayres, stop! Don’t kill her! She’s influxing!”