Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
Treason is punishable by public execution.
And the king is the executioner. - King Richard
She killed me. My own wife.
For over twenty years, I’ve been avoiding assassination attempts by professionals, enemy soldiers, hired hitwomen, and witches, all of whom have been honing their skills for years.
And yet, in the end, it took an incompetent brownie less than a week to kill me.
The irony of my situation isn’t lost on me.
But it’s too crushed by my fury to make me smile.
“Where is she?” I demand as I pull on a pair of trousers.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea –” Jace begins.
“She’s my wife,” I growl. “I’ll see her whenever the fuck I want.” And I want to see her now. I want to look her in the eyes when I charge her with treason.
“Tomorrow, I’ll take you to her. But not now. Not when you’ve just come to and you’re not thinking straight.”
“For fuck’s sake, Jace, you’re my guard, not hers.” I shove my arms through my tunic, then strap on my knives.
“And I am guarding you.”
“Like you did when you didn’t warn me she was trying to kill me?”
“Yes, actually. There’s more to life than being a king. Aurelia would’ve –”
“Stop bringing her up!” I roar. Slamming my fist into the wall, I pull back and do it again. Again and again until my hand is bleeding and the pain in my knuckles matches what is in my chest. “She poisoned me.”
“So what?” Jace says so flippantly, it cuts through the furious haze, just for a moment.
“What do you mean ‘so what’?”
He walks towards me, his teal eyes downcast, his body language soft and nonthreatening. He’s trying to coax me into relaxing like I’m some wounded animal backed into a corner.
“I mean,” he says slowly, “that everyone you know has tried to kill you at least once. Including Nicholas and I, and you got past that.”
I shake my head. “That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t, and you know it.”
My jaw tightens. I refuse to look at him.
“And if Aurelia hadn’t stepped in, we would have.
” His voice cracks ever so slightly. “When you told us that you planned on killing her, we thought the idea of power had finally gone to your head. That you were doing it just to take the throne. That she would die in a fairy ring, forever trapped and never knowing peace… You didn’t even fight us when we came for you. ”
Tears burn my eyes in memory of that day. Nicholas had wanted me to die quickly; Jace had wanted to drag it out. The pain in his eyes…
“You didn’t blame us after either,” he says softly. “Fuck, you gave me the job of protecting you.”
“I didn’t want to kill her.” My voice comes out strained. I close my eyes, clamping down on the agony burning my throat.
“None of us did. But you also knew it was the only way to save her soul. To give her a chance at reincarnation. We should’ve believed in you, just like Arienna should have. But we didn’t. Our crimes are the same.”
I shake my head, refusing to listen. “You think I should just forgive her?” I spit. “I trusted her.”
And she broke it.
Stabbed me in the fucking heart.
“She tried to bring you back, you know.”
I recall her throwing all of the food into the bin. Frantic. Wild. With pain in her eyes and tears rolling down her face.
I shake my head. “She tried to kill me.”
“Technically, Fabia was the one who managed it. Did you know she has a blueprint of the tunnels?” A touch of pride fills his voice.
My eyes narrow. “Charge her with treason too then and burn the –”
“I’ve already destroyed her copy.”
The anger in my chest doesn’t loosen. It isn’t enough. Punishing them from afar isn’t enough.
As I stride for the door, Jace steps in front of me. A knife embeds into the floor between my feet. “Pick it up,” he says.
“Jace –”
“I issued a challenge. Pick it up.”
“My anger isn’t with you.”
“It’s not with her either. It’s with yourself, and I’m going to let you beat it out of your system.”
I scoff. “How is it with me? I’m not the fucking one who poisoned me.”
“No, but you are the one who set her up to die to begin with.”
Guilt rams into my anger, and the two emotions battle it out inside of me. The need to move consumes me. The need to fight through the pain that’s making it hard to breathe.
Slowly, I bend down and pick up the knife.
Jace smiles. “When you were passed out, by the way,” he says, rolling his shoulders, “I convinced Arienna to feed you your own cum. A necromancer’s trick, I told her.”
My eyes narrow. I toss the blade into the air and catch it again.
“She loved you enough to try anything.”
Growling, I charge.
The knife slices through the air. He jumps back as he smacks my arm across my body. Grabbing my wrist, he twists it backwards. My shoulder pops. The blade drops. Kicking it away, he spins us around and throws me against the wall.
I crumble to the ground, dust raining down on top of me.
“I thought you said you were going to let me beat it out of my system,” I say accusingly as I rise to my feet. Using the wall, I pop my shoulder back into place.
Grinning, he shrugs. “Yeah, but this is more fun. Also, I absolutely hate what you’ve done with the place. I’ve been wanting to redecorate in here for ages.”
Shaking my head, I go in cautiously this time.
With each swing of my fist, I think about what Arienna did to me. With each blow I take, I think about what I did to her. I’ve been so worried about the Court destroying what makes her her, but in the end, I did it. I made her feel like she had to make the choice between me and her.
I am to blame as much as she is.
More so even.
As we fall to the ground, with Jace on top of me, I throw a fist into his face. His elbow knocks my jaw, snapping my head sideways and filling me with a pain I deserve.
Fuck.
Jace said that she’d left here crying. That she refused to leave me until he told her it’d be better for me, easier for me if she wasn’t here when I woke.
Raising my arm, I slam my elbow into the base of Jace’s neck. Shoving him off me, I leave him wheezing in pain as I rise to my feet. My heart a damn knot in my chest, I head for the door. “Thanks for the talk,” I growl, “but I’m going to see my fucking wife.”