Chapter 46 The Reckoning
They take us to the throne room, the same grand audience chamber where the king first received us.
It looks much the same as I remember it, though I cannot be certain how much of that memory is true and how much was planted in my mind by the king.
The carpet runner now is black and gold, the king's robes a match.
The king.
King Coatl.
The man who has been smiling at me and offering me kindnesses in my dreams for weeks.
The man who has reached his talons into my brain and sifted through my gray matter, seen all that I hope and fear.
He sits on his throne, unsmiling, spine perfectly erect.
When I look up at him, his danger complex is like nothing I have ever felt before.
It is not like the gorgon's, a swirling cocktail of fight, flee, run, defend.
Instead, it is like the moment the gorgon used his power on me, a ton of bricks dropped onto my chest. It is knowing what an insect feels like, insignificant, powerless.
A litany of give up, cower, die that nearly makes my knees bend.
Around the room, the gold plated guards have taken up positions pinning us in.
Vakhrin stands among them, blank faced.
The king taps his index finger on the arm of his throne.
Once. Twice.
"Shireen," he says flatly.
Cherry is trembling, held between the gorgon man who spoke to Yroa in the hall and a wyvern woman.
There are guards on either side of me as well, but they do not touch me.
I think the guards are worried Cherry will fall if they let her go, or possibly that she will launch herself at the king.
Every part of her body quakes as she stares up at her father in defiance.
He turns his bored eyes on me.
"And Tarah." He becomes momentarily more engaged.
"What an interesting mind you have. Such a stark mix of confidence and insecurity.
Ruthlessness and need. Delicious," he hums.
Without warning, a vision takes me.
I am young. Thirteen again, first come to the palace.
The king has taken me into his home, welcomed me like a father.
He raises Cherry and I side by side, as sisters.
I am loyal to him. I love him. He has taken the place of the father I never knew.
I would never betray him—
WHAM.
Pain explodes in my cheek and I am back in the present.
Cherry stands before me, eyes wild, the knuckles on one of her hands gone glowing red.
The guards who were holding her now stand back a few feet, looking startled.
She has punched me in the face.
It would be funny, almost, but she is shaking even worse now, and there are tears streaming down her face.
She is screaming at her father. "Don't! Don't do that to her!
She isn't yours; she's mine!"
The king is amused, a cat playing with its dinner.
He waits for Cherry to quiet down before he responds, laconic, "All things are mine.
"
Cherry clenches her fists, breath uneven.
"Shall I prove it to you?
"
We are at the breakfast table in the East Parlor, sun pouring in through the windows.
The king has been a father to me for eight years.
I am a princess. My father smiles at me from the head of the table.
Cherry sits at his right hand and to his left sits.
..
"This is Marton Hastings," my father introduces the handsome young man.
My heart leaps in my chest at the sight of him, heat rushing to my face at the way his hazel eyes take me in.
"It's nice to meet you," says Marton with a smile.
"I think the betrothal will be a wonderful thing," says my father.
Cherry laughs.
"Look how she blushes!"
The vision seems to freeze as the king meets my eyes.
"I could give this to you," he promises me.
"You could all be safe together, and happy.
You could have everything you want. Just say you're mine.
"
I come back to myself with heaving chest and swirling stomach.
Cherry clings to me as a feeling of supreme violation crawls under my skin.
I am afraid of how, in the short vision, before the king put an end to it, there was no part that felt wrong.
It felt...happy.
It was a desire of my younger self, mixed with a desire of now.
More dangerous than the king playing on my fears, I see how this tactic has the potential to break me.
It takes me a moment to realize the king is looking at me expectantly.
"You can't...really expect me to say it?
"
He frowns, put out. Then his lip curls in a smile.
"No? Perhaps you need a bit of practical incentive.
"
He taps his finger, and a door up on the dais, behind the throne, is pushed open from the inside.
Marton emerges, dressed just as he was in the vision, in a fine blue tunic with white trousers and a gray cape, blond hair pulled half back from his face.
His skin is golden and glowing with health.
He smiles radiantly. His eyes are empty.
"Marton." I don't mean to say it.
My throat aches. My chest. Heart.
I am rewarded by the smug look on the king's face as Marton comes to stand beside him.
"No mind games, Tarah," the king assures me.
"Vow loyalty to me, and all of your friends can be safe.
I'll give you their minds back. You and Vakhrin will join my guard.
Shireen and Marton will be treated as nobility.
And the two of you can be together in any way you wish.
All will be well. Isn't that what you really want?
"
It is. I do. More than anything, I want my friends safe.
I want us to be together, happy. I want.
..
I realize there is a pressure in my mind, like someone has taken their hand and is pressing on it very gently.
Like a mild version of the headaches I kept having when the king was controlling my mind.
"I don't want that," I grit out, a reminder for myself more than anything.
"My friends wouldn't be safe anywhere near you.
Not after what you've done."
"And what have I done, Tarah?
"
"You're a liar.
" The words come out on a fume of smoke.
"Oh dear," says the king, and Dragomira around the room laugh.
"Is that my worst offense?"
"You took my mind and violated it.
And Vakhrin's and Marton's. You locked your daughter in a dungeon to starve.
In a tower to rot. You expect me to believe—that you would be kind to us?
That you're some hero? You're a monster.
"
The king's face has lost all expression, chiseled from stone.
"Rich words from someone who has killed as many people as you.
Tell me," he leans forward faux conspiratorially, "how many of those kills did you secretly enjoy?
I know you still think about Inobar. That moment of satisfaction when you had his throat in your hand, his blood running down your arm.
You killed him, and it felt good.
"
"It didn't—"
"It did.
You enjoyed it. Sure, you used the excuse of protecting your friend.
That's always been your excuse, hasn't it?
You had to kill them, right? For Cherry's sake?
Why didn't you just leave the tower, Tarah?
You knew they would keep coming, that you would have to kill them.
Admit it; you wanted them to come. You loved it—"
"I didn't!" The words are torn from me.
The king laughs gleefully at my near scream.
"If anyone deserves the title of monster, Tarah, it's you.
" The words are not spoken by the king. Horribly, a million times more painfully, they come from the mouth of Marton beside him.
His flat hazel eyes look down at me in disgust. "I never asked you to kill for me. I never would have asked for that."
"Marton—" I know it's a lie and I still can't help the part of my heart that breaks at the look on his face, the sound of the words spoken in his voice. They are real, taken straight from my nightmares.
"Do you honestly think I could ever love you, Tarah? After what you've done?"
I freeze.
And the king loses me, right then. All of his influence on my mind, my feelings, gone at once.
It's not in spite of anything or because of anything.
It just is. I love you. I can see Marton's face in my mind, the exact way he looked peering down at me beside the moonlit waters of Tombland Lake.
Does there have to be a reason?
No, I realize.
There never had to be a reason. Not a reason for Marton to love me, or for me to love him.
Not a reason for me to love Cherry or for her to love me.
We loved each other because we could.
And looking at the King of Ithyma, I don't think he can.
I don't think there's anything in him that can love the way someone like Marton does.
He'll never understand what it means, or how it can make doubt impossible.
"Marton," I try, gazing up him with tenderness, despite the fact that he is regarding me with revulsion.
"Marton, wake up. I love you. Wake up."
The king makes a sound like a laugh, but it falls flat.
There is no amusement on his face. "He's human.
His mind is the weakest of any creature.
He will not wake up."
I glare at the king, hand gripping the collar at my throat almost unconsciously.
I want it off with a sudden fury that makes it difficult to see straight.
I want my dragon form, claws and scales and bulk and fire.
But I can't have that, and it makes me rash.
"You're doing this," I say, "because no one will ever love you.
Because people have to know someone to love them, and a liar can never be known.
And that's all you are, isn't it? A liar.
One deception on top of another. How many of them," I fling a hand out at the palace guards still arrayed around the room, "have you influenced with your mind control?
Did they choose you? Really? Or did you force them?
"
"That's enough," the king snaps.
"Forced them," whispers Cherry.
A number of palace guards turn to look at her when she speaks.
She looks back at them, but she speaks to me.
"I grew up in this palace. Most of them weren't here then.
But I remember. How quickly palace guards would disappear.
How I'd find some of them crying in the corridor and they couldn't explain why.
I remember how their personalities sometimes seemed to change from day to day.
I didn't get it at the time, or even after.
.. It took coming here to realize. He doesn't just command them.
He plays with them. They might be his guards, but they're not really free of him either.
They'll never be free. He has them.
"
A few of the guards—not many—shift on their feet, discomfited.
Hands tighten on weapons and teeth are bared.
"What an excellent speech," says the kind without inflection.
"But my guards are loyal to me. Isn't that right?
"
I am watching closely for it, which is the only reason I notice how many of the guards go perfectly stiff, motionless, in the moment before they all raise their weapons in a salute.
"Hail King Coatl!" I pay carefully attention to the guards that don't stiffen, the ones who seem perfectly at ease and just a fraction of a second out of step with their peers.
One of them, standing just to the right of the dais, meets my eyes with an unhinged grin when I look his way.
Something about the expression strikes me as wrong, off.
..familiar. The man is young, with grayish skin and long brown hair.
His eyes are swirling pits of madness, and looking at him makes my hackles rise.
And then I realize: he wears the exact same smile Vakhrin was wearing when he was not Vakh, just before he attacked us in the hall. Which must mean I am looking at the true owner of that smile.
Basilisk.
How many of them are there in this room? I have no doubt that the king is the most powerful of them, that he holds many of the guards' minds in his grip. If we can loosen his control, perhaps we will not have to fight the others alone. Maybe some of the guards would fight with us.
I look up at Marton on the dais, desperately miserable, wishing for a miracle.
It takes me a moment to realize a miracle is looking back at me.
Those are Marton's beautiful leaf-and-bark eyes, full of life and energy and all things hopeful. There is a jeweled dagger at his belt, part of the ensemble of nobility they have put him in. His hand is on the hilt.
I have a heartbeat to celebrate. A heartbeat to fear. One to hope.
And then Marton's dagger is in the soft space between the king's throat and collarbone.