Chapter 43
King Elrod tracked her through unyielding eyes as she sauntered down the red velvet carpet to the foot of the dais. The air was still, as if the room held its breath for what Arla was about to unleash on the world.
‘No need to look so serious, Your Majesty. I’ve only come to talk,’ she said sweetly, mentally plotting the position of each soldier around the perimeter of the throne room.
‘The problem, Miss Reinhart,’ Elrod began in a voice bitter and cold, ‘is that I don’t believe you. Don’t pretend you’re here for anything other than violence.’
A vein bulged in his forehead as he spoke down to her. She bit her lip between her teeth, tasting the metallic twang of red bursting on her tongue as she held back words she had sharpened in long hours of training.
Every soldier in the room held a sword, and she wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the potential for crossbows to be hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of wooden beams and arches crisscrossing off the ceiling. She was the most lethal weapon of them all, though, and they knew it.
‘You know,’ she started, beginning to pace in front of the dais with an inhuman gracefulness.
‘I’ve thought over, and over, and over again about what I want to say to the man on whose orders my parents were murdered and my kingdom ransacked.
Ironically, now that I stand before you, I don’t think you deserve a word of it. ’
Arla Reinhart was known for her lack of mercy. For her ability to chill the blood of her victims before unleashing a wrath of violence reserved only for them. As Arla Dragonhart, she would be no different. She wanted the king begging before she decided what to do with him.
‘Shall we skip the niceties, bitch,’ he spat, and she smiled at the clear riling of his temper.
‘Gladly,’ she continued. ‘This will be very, very simple for you, Elrod.’ His eyes widened at her blatant disrespect, and Arla felt more than saw the tensing of the soldiers who were positioned around the room.
‘You will remove yourself from the throne. You will free any slave you still have in your possession, and you will beg me to show you the mercy you have not shown the human beings you have captured and slaughtered for being born differently to you.’
Something flickered in his icy eyes before he said with the same dangerous quiet she had offered him, ‘No wonder my son has grown fond of you.’
‘Reuben doesn’t know me well enough to grow fond of me.’
‘I’m not speaking of that useless specimen.’
Her body stilled.
‘Ah, so he didn’t tell you, then. I wondered.’ A sly smirk twisted the corners of Elrod’s mouth into something grotesque.
‘What—?’
‘It’s a shame, isn’t it, that you’ve lived under the same roof for the last two years and kept so many, many secrets from each other. Some assassin you are, Miss Reinhart.’
Gods no.
No, no, no, no.
But … it made sense. The icy-blue eyes that stared down at her resembled a set of eyes so ingrained in her mind that she had trouble sleeping without them as the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.
The secrets, the half-finished sentences, the—
‘Hark,’ she breathed.
‘Does it make you hate him, Miss Reinhart? Does it make you want to cut his throat as you do mine? Come now, we all know you despise Kastonia and its people. Why not its prince?’
She didn’t think she’d ever draw breath again.
‘If you’ve hurt him—’
‘Hurt him?’ Elrod scoffed. ‘My dear, you’re the one who’s going to hurt him. Do you know the punishment for threatening to kill a king? I’m certain Cyrus hasn’t sanctioned this little escapade, but if he has then it is an act of war.’
Her hands trembled at his words. This was not how she had imagined their conversation going.
‘So no, I have not hurt him. I will leave that to you when he’s forced to watch you hang by your neck.’
‘Where’s Orson?’ She didn’t know why she asked it – didn’t think the ambassador would help her, anyway. She’d seen the way he trailed after the king, desperate for the approval he hadn’t won from Cyrus. But if there was a chance he was still on Hadalyn’s side, it was worth taking.
Elrod looked blankly at her. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, Miss Reinhart, but young Orson is currently preoccupied with a … personal project of mine.’
She could see it for what it was: an admission that Orson had been helping him with the slaves and the sacrifices; that Orson had betrayed his king and his country.
‘Tell me, Elrod,’ Arla sneered. ‘Tell me why.’
‘Why?’
‘Why have you been killing them? You can’t do anything with their magic, so why? Slavery is a relic of the past. You want to be seen as a strong, modern king and yet all you’ve done is wind the clock back to how things were before.’
He scoffed, leaning forwards on his throne – a dark, wooden thing as hard and cold as the man who sat upon it.
‘I can’t do anything with it? Oh dear. You really are letting yourself down today, Miss Reinhart.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she snapped.
‘Arla, Arla, Arla,’ he tutted, and she hated how his mockery made her feel.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, assassin. I have found a way to harvest their magic.
You see, blood is easy enough to store in the right conditions, especially when there is magic inside it to keep it stable.
I have more than enough to last me until I find a way to use it.
And when I do, well, the other kingdoms won’t know what’s hit them. ’
Gods. It was true.
What Elrod had done to Hadalyn before … it would be annihilation if he had access to magic. There would be no collection of kingdoms. There would be only brutal Kastonia and its treacherous reach across the world.
And he was keeping their blood. No matter that he was sacrificing them, killing them, he was storing the blood until he could figure out how to use it.
And … and she’d seen that locked door in the palace.
She’d seen the number of guards positioned in that hallway and figured perhaps it was where he kept the most valuable of his jewels.
But diamonds weren’t important to Elrod, were they? Not when he had something that was worth far more than a rock. There was not a doubt in her mind that he was keeping the blood of magic-wielders in that room…
She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.
The king leant forwards on his throne. ‘And as for turning the clock back, have you actually asked yourself how things were back then? The kingdom was prosperous. Thriving. Look at it now. Perhaps backwards is the way forwards, Miss Reinhart.’
She couldn’t believe the words coming from his mouth – couldn’t fathom that he believed it.
‘Does he know?’ she asked, teeth bared and eyes blazing with an anger she couldn’t put out. ‘Does Cyrus know what you’re doing with the blood?’
‘Cyrus doesn’t have any business knowing anything, Miss Reinhart.
But seeing the company he keeps’— a pointed look at her—‘it’s best he’s kept in the dark, don’t you agree?
It’s easier that way. He’s a fool because he wants to believe that he’s helping his kingdom even when deep down he knows it’s all a lie. ’
‘You—’
‘Lied? Yes. Your king and that little lapdog of his ate up the lies I gave them because that way they don’t have to face the harsh reality.
I’d have to be blind not to see that Hadalyn is beginning to fail the same way Kastonia did.
People are dying because the kingdoms are failing, Miss Reinhart.
So when I sent my son’—a scalding fist gripped her heart at the mention of Hark—‘with a message for Cyrus explaining that a priestess had come to me from Malarye, bearing a message that the gods were angry that so many people were wielding magic for personal gain instead of for the benefit of all, he agreed to turn a blind eye to my purging of them to appease the gods and restore harmony to our lands. What a shame that he’s so trusting. ’
Hark had come to Hadalyn two years ago, which meant…
‘You’ve been hunting them down and killing them for two years?’ She could hardly believe what he was telling her.
‘Double it.’
Four years.
Bile rose in her throat.
‘Regrettably, it took eighteen months of bloodletting and sacrifice before we found a way to store the blood, but now that we’ve perfected the art of it, we need only learn how to use it.’
He had gone mad. She truly couldn’t believe what he was telling her.
‘Hark knew what you were doing and asked you to stop, didn’t he?’
He had to have. There was no way he would have risked his own life as well as his friends’ to begin extracting slaves if he hadn’t already exhausted every other option.
‘He begged me, actually.’ Elrod was … smiling, as if the memory of his own son, his heir, begging him not to take the lives of innocent men, women, and children was something to be laughed at. It made her sick.
‘The gods will curse you. You think they’ll accept this—?’
He laughed – a brittle, wicked sound. ‘The gods will bless me.’
She couldn’t believe the delusion of it, of what Elrod believed.
‘You’re not worth trying to save. Your reign has been all terror and death. You deserve the same fate,’ Arla sneered.
‘As do you, Miss Reinhart. I have thought of many things I’d like to do to you.’
‘Elrod—’
Arla hadn’t given a single thought to the queen, who stood behind Elrod’s throne, though she was so unremarkable it wasn’t hard to miss her. Arabelle reached for Elrod, as if she could temper the violence and wickedness exuding from his every pore.
Arla winced as the king’s hand collided with Arabelle’s cheek.
‘Touch her again…’ Arla growled menacingly as a red mark appeared on Arabelle’s pale skin.
‘You dare threaten me in my own palace?’ Elrod seethed, his knuckles draining of colour where they gripped the throne.
Arla felt the soldiers creep forwards; could almost see them run their fingers over the weapons they kept sheathed at their waists.
She’d been in plenty of situations in which she was outnumbered, but it was rare for Arla not to have multiple escape routes.
She couldn’t very well throw herself through a window, and the doors through which she had been escorted were sealed shut and blocked by the scarlet-clad Kastonian soldiers she could feel were itching to lay into her.
‘Careful, Dragonhart. You mortals are breakable and I can’t save you from out here.’ Thara’s voice rumbled softly in Arla’s mind.
It went against everything Arla had become to take half a step backwards, edging her body closer to the doors.
Elrod would not give up – that much had been clear from the very moment she had stepped foot in the room – and if she wanted him dead, she needed a clear escape route, preferably with Hark in tow.
She didn’t know where Reuben had run off to. She hadn’t even noticed him disappear after he’d led her into the hall. But then, why would he stick around after the way his own father had spoken of him?
‘If you have any self-respect, Arabelle,’ Arla began, frowning at the look of sheer surprise on the queen’s face at being addressed, as if it were such an unimaginable thing to happen in her own court, ‘you’ll take the next carriage to Hadalyn and ask for shelter in Cyrus’s court. We don’t hit women in my kingdom.’
Arabelle stupidly stepped towards Arla, as though her body yearned to be free of this gods-damned place and already on the road to Hadalyn.
Arla watched undiluted rage spread across the king’s face, like ink blotting silk. She saw the movement in his shoulder before he had fully lifted his hand to strike the woman he claimed to love.
Before she’d thought through any sort of plan or consequence, Arla’s hand was sliding the blade disguised as a hair accessory from its hold and with a flick of a well-practised wrist, sending it hurtling towards the King of Kastonia.
Time stopped.
The soldiers lining the room paused with swords half-drawn, and not a single eye blinked as the blade flew through the air, spinning wildly, as it was supposed to, and pinned the King’s black velvet tunic sleeve to the solid ebony of his throne.
‘You little bitch!’
And then the chaos that had been simmering since the moment she had stepped foot in Larkire Palace boiled over.
There would be no mercy for her – not now that she’d let her temper fly. The best she could hope for was to get out of here alive, with Hark, and hope to come back at a later date and deliver the fate the King deserved.
Elrod tugged at his pinned sleeve, bellowing at being restrained as his soldiers descended upon the assassin from Hadalyn.
Arla moved with expert grace, ducking beneath blades, and kicking out at the ankles of those who aimed for her, dropping them where they stood so she could leap over them and make her escape. She had no weapons, but nothing would stop her now.
Arla used the body she had spent years crafting to knock guards off balance, to shove her way through the heaving mass of red and gold. She twisted, spun, and ducked until the huge double doors were two strides away. If only she had thought to make sure they were open…
As if blessed by the gods, at that moment the doors swung open so that a dozen soldiers could rush in. As they trampled through the entryway, confusion smeared their features as they tried to locate the threat to the king.
But Arla was already winding her lithe body through the chaos, slipping behind the guards swarming the throne room and sprinting to where her knives lay discarded when Reuben had stripped her of them. She had no idea where the prince had gone.
She swiped the array of blades as she passed them, ignoring the irritation at having to leave her bow behind.
There was no time to secure it to her body and there would certainly be no room to fire it inside the castle walls.
Her feet carried her forwards, the map of the palace laid out in her head as she sprinted on and on, through the winding corridors and vast expanse of open halls.
She knew they would follow her as soon as they discovered the threat had slipped away amidst the chaos, and they would be on her like bloodhounds.
But her years lurking in shadows allowed to her to slip away unseen, and as she sped through the palace, one destination a flaming beacon in her mind, she was wrath, and fury, and vengeance.
She was blood, and fire, and truth, and she would never again be useless.
She would never again be that child locked in a dresser, watching her kingdom fall before her.