Chapter 41 #2
“Lady Anna was struck through while opening the gate for King Kallias.” His tone held no inflection. “The blade missed her vital organs. She lost a great deal of blood. Her size works against her.”
It felt as if a dragon settled on my chest—a crushing weight restricting my lungs. She risked her life for us. Without her, those gates would have remained closed. Without her courage, we would still be outside the walls.
“Is she going to survive?”
“If the gods will it.”
“I will it.” The words left me before doubt could catch them.
His eyes lifted to mine. Dark. Assessing. He studied me as if measuring bone and marrow, searching for blasphemy or command. He would decide which he heard.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
His gaze dropped, and he peeled the sheet from Anna’s side.
Bleached linen wrapped her torso, stark against skin drained of color. Crimson seeped through the bandages, blooming slow and stubborn. Her face tightened, a faint groan slipping free.
The Harvester uncorked a vial from his belt. The sharp scent of herbs cut through the room as he tilted it to her lips. Liquid slid into her mouth, and she swallowed on instinct. Almost at once, her body slackened, surrendering to deeper sleep.
I brushed my fingers over her hand before stepping away.
Gayle was next.
I drew back the sheet.
Air left my lungs.
She had been stripped bare. Age-thinned skin had become a canvas of lacerations. Cuts and scrapes crossed her torso and arms in jagged lines, some shallow, others cruel. Bandages covered the worst of it, yet red still bled through the white cloth.
Her body looked like a corpse.
Rage pooled low and hot in my belly.
I let the sheet fall back into place and tucked it close beneath Gayle’s arms, smoothing the linen as though warmth alone could knit her torn flesh.
She’d given me clarity and comfort when I floundered in my own skin, when desire and duty warred until I couldn’t tell one from the other.
She believed in Kallias. In us. She spoke as if our love would somehow endure and overpower any obstacle in our path.
Now it was my turn to care for her.
Wisps of white hair clung to her damp cheeks, and I brushed them away. I swore her mouth softened at the corner in the tiniest of smiles. The change was slight, almost imagined, yet I chose to believe that she sensed me there and knew she was safe now.
The chains of my mantle draped against the bedding as I bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Cool skin met my lips. A vow settled in my chest. No more harm would reach her. Without Gayle, I would never have become Queen of Radaan. I would’ve been stuck with a monstrous brat of a boy.
Claydon lay beyond her, his condition far worse.
“Sea beneath,” Ronan muttered, hissing out a curse.
A Harvester worked with needle and thread, methodical in his movements, trying to make sense of the massacre etched across his collarbone. The sheet was pulled down only far enough to reveal his painstaking work, and my brother moved past me, tugging it lower.
My throat burned. Bile surged, clawing upward in a desperate search for escape, yet I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Sick horror glued my eyes to his dark, bruised skin.
He looked as if he had been flung into a school of eels, crescent-moon-shaped bites littering his flesh like a grotesque constellation. Punctures from hundreds of teeth dotted his body, forming a monstrous tapestry of suffering.
No limb remained unmarred. They bit him everywhere.
I took the sheet from Ronan, laying it back down with reverent care. Clay’s arm was a mangled mess, sinew and torn skin hanging in twisted fragments.
He was such a sweet soul. He didn’t deserve this. His only crime had been his loyalty to Kallias, his devotion to his passions, his love for his friends and his goats. Tears pricked my eyes, a searing agony splitting through me, threatening to tear me apart from the inside.
“How did you find them?” I dropped beside the bed, fingers brushing against his raw, battered arm. I wanted to cradle it, to hold his hand—but I dared not jostle him.
The Harvester’s eyes flicked to mine, brows drawn into a tight frown. He stayed silent, giving me a moment to retreat, to be delicate, to tell myself I couldn’t face the truth.
But I was a Radaanian queen who had burned a fleet and witnessed cities turn to ash.
He drew in a long breath, lowering his gaze to the stitches. “He was their feast. They fed on him, siphoning the power in his blood. Gayle’sol was staked in the great hall, but spared their teeth. She was cut, her husband forced to watch.”
My heart skipped. Pain stabbed like a jagged knife.
“They wouldn’t have let the blood go to waste.”
I snapped my gaze back to the Harvester, but he remained absorbed in his task, in the careful tug of thread through skin, uncaring of my reaction.
“Power is power. Claydon’sol has suffered not only the breaking of his body but the shattering of his mind. When he wakes, he may not be the man you once knew.”
My fingers dug into the sheets, gripping them until the fabric crinkled, as though I could tear through the Velli themselves.
Clay was bitten, sucked dry, and that hadn’t been enough for them.
They had to torture Gayle, force him to watch as they licked the blood from her—storming eels, they were monsters.
Ronan’s face was pale, white as a beached whale. “This was Tallon’s work?”
“There were many Velli in the manor. Who fed from them is unknown,” the Harvester said quietly.
“But he was here. He allowed this.” Ronan met my gaze, hatred radiating from him. Not anger, only stark, unfiltered horror. Fear.
He had befriended Tallon, chalking his immaturity up to his youthful age. They were both still young, still figuring themselves out. My brother had given his blessing for our marriage contract. Without his approval, Father would never have signed the blood oath.
If I married Tallon, it would’ve been because of him.
And now he saw the true monster.
My attention shifted to the corner of the room, to the woman I once called friend.
She crouched, forehead pressed to her knees, trying to make herself smaller, invisible.
Clay and Gayle’s daughter, bound and guarded.
But what was the extent of her treachery, her betrayal?
Tallon was a beast, but Fyrn—raised by the most loving souls I’d ever known—could she truly betray her parents for the enemy?
I straightened, spine stiff as iron, and crossed to her crumpled form. Her dress was torn and soiled, delicate fabric smeared with dried blood.
I crouched before her. “What happened to you?” I whispered, disgust thick in my voice.
Pale blue eyes, bright as wildflowers, met mine. Ashen blonde brows lifted, pleading, tears spilling down her cheeks.
What if I had misjudged her?
Doubt seeped in, tiny fissures splitting my resolve like a chisel on marble.
What if her cries in the stable had been pain, not pleasure?
Tallon could’ve used her father as leverage against her.
No sane child would willingly harm their parents—not without cause.
If faced with that choice, what would I have done? How could anyone choose?
I pressed my lips together, held my breath, and reached for her gag.
“This woman… she’s the one who tricked you?” Ronan’s leathers creaked as he dropped beside me, questioning my actions.
I met her gaze, letting my fury shine. Let her glimpse the unyielding rage of a Draconis queen. “She can speak for herself.”
My nails fumbled at the knot, freeing the gag. It fell around her neck, and she recoiled with a gasp. Her lips were chapped, raw, crusted with old blood at the corners.
“Water… please,” she whispered, trying to lick them with a dry, cracked tongue.
I held out my hand, and Seliora produced a waterskin, face unreadable, dagger still lingering at her side.
Fyrn drank long, greedy gulps, eyes squeezing shut in relief.
I pulled it away. “I’ve shown you more kindness than you deserve,” I said, then corked the waterskin and handed it back to the Harvester.
“Nienna,” she croaked, voice cracked, rolling her head toward me. “You can’t believe that. Please—of all people, you should know!”
“Somehow I feel I know your parents better than I ever knew you.”
“I am their daughter!” She bit out the words as if they soured her tongue. “Do you think their love wouldn’t pass to me? I never wanted to hurt Mother—but what could I do? What would you have done?”
“Kill the man hurting my father?” I spat. “Maybe I would confront the bastard who cheated on me with my best friend, and make him answer for the crimes he committed against innocent children.” My sneer deepened. “I never would’ve let him near my mother in the first place.”
“Cheated on?” She barked a pain-filled laugh. “When you had eyes for his father? Don’t condemn me for acting on my feelings while you indulged yours! What makes you so much better than me? I loved someone I couldn’t have—just like you!”
“I never slept with him,” I choked, throat swelling with hate. My fingers itched with the urge to rip off her face. Baring my teeth, I rose.
“Wait!” She lurched, and Seliora’s dagger was ready in an instant, body poised to intervene.
Fyrn cast a desperate glance at her before licking her lips and shifting her feet beneath her.
“Nienna, you have to listen. I loved him from the day I arrived at court. Father wanted me to find a husband, and I did—but he wasn’t mine, he was yours.
I was content to be your friend, to be close to him through you.
I never would’ve moved against you—you meant too much to me.
But when Tallon found out… he—” Her voice strangled off.
“He used me. And I was blind! So blind! I can never make up for what happened, never atone for what I’ve done.
But don’t you dare think I was willing!”
My teeth ground together. Nostrils flared.
Part of me longed to see truth in her eyes, to know for certain.
I couldn’t blame her heart for falling for someone—I did, too.
I fell for a man I was never permitted to love.
Still, anyone who saw an inkling of anything desirable in Tallon should be questioned.
Ronan glared at her, eyes narrowed, mouth pinched in a frown. When he caught my gaze, he shook his head. “There are lines I won’t cross without Father’s blessing,” he said. “I wouldn’t step inside that head—even to locate Tallon.”
Curse my brother and his rider principles.
“They’re my parents, Nienna!” Fyrn cried.
“He made me watch! I let him into my home, and he made me watch as those monsters tore Mother and bit Father like wild animals. We’re told they survive off us—but they don’t need our blood.
They do it for gluttonous greed. They get sick off their power, all to show off.
You cannot think for a moment that I would wish that on anyone! ”
“Then why did your king bind you?” Kallias would not have restrained her if he suspected she was innocent. He was a warrior, but he wasn’t cruel.
“She falsified a Velli mark.” Seliora shoved Fyrn aside, rolling up her sleeve to reveal two half-circles. “A true bite is dotted with teeth. She cut herself.”
“You thought to trick a king who spent twenty years fighting these monsters?” I scoffed. How foolish could she be?
“I thought to save myself from being some Velli’s escape plan!” She lashed out, struggling against Seliora. “I thought if they believed Tallon had bitten me, it would mark his claim and protect me from the others!”
Doubt crept through me, inching its way into my heart. I wanted to believe her—but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t release her. Not without Kallias.
“It didn’t spare your father,” I said, tone flat.
She slumped in defeat. “No. It didn’t.”
She curled in on herself. Her body trembled with her sobs. It was horrible to watch. The woman I once considered a friend writhed on the floor, hiding from me, knowing I might be her end.
“When your parents wake, they can verify your story,” I dismissed her, turning to face the Harvester. “For now, Seliora, tend to her wounds. If she goes to trial, Radaan will see that we care for our prisoners.”
Ronan grunted his disapproval, but I disapproved of his reluctance to probe my potential enemy’s mind.
We all had our lines.