Chapter 47 The Hero
Chaos erupts in the throne room, several things happening very quickly.
First: The king cries out, hands pressed to the bleeding wound at his collar bone.
His cry means that he is still breathing, but it is rather a lot of blood.
Next: The guards respond, honing in on the would-be assassin in their midst. Marton tucks and rolls off the left side of the dais, disappearing behind a display of potted ferns just as a flurry of spears and arrows fall in a violent rain in the spot where he had been standing.
Then: Guards begin shifting into their protector forms. The air fills with the sound of rending cloth and gold armor clanging to the ground.
There is a wyvern thrashing madly in the back of the room as several guards—human or in human form—try to catch its snout to subdue it.
In front of the dais, a massive serpent prowls, its swirling white eyes surveying the crowd of guards.
It must decide that the guard nearest to it is foe, not friend, because it locks eyes with the woman and she freezes where she stands.
Not a twitch of movement, barely a breath.
As I watch, a grayish cast begins to creep over her features as she slowly turns to stone.
Cherry has taken hold of a golden sword that fell to the floor in the pile of a guard's armor.
She lays about her to the left and right as a band of guards try to disarm her, all of them too afraid to actually harm her.
My mind is pulled in five directions—five distinct possibilities for what I could choose to do next.
I could go after Marton, make sure he is alright, embrace him.
I could join the fray to protect Cherry, get the guards away from her.
Though my instincts speak loudly for me to do one of these first two things, I also see that they may be the least pressing.
Cherry and Marton seem to be holding their own, though Marton has still not reappeared.
Two other options are these: Take this opportunity to kill the king of Ithyma, though it would require me to get past the gorgon in my way.
Or face the second basilisk, the one who has control of Vakhrin's mind even now.
Vakh has shifted into his manticore form, though, and is thrashing those who try to get close to the basilisk with teeth and tail.
Which leads me to the fifth option: Get this sky-cursed collar off my throat so I can rip a serpent's head off.
I go for option five.
It requires me to run in the opposite direction of all of my friends, which goes against everything that's in me, but I do it because I know I need my dragon in order to win this fight.
Yroa doesn't see me coming.
She has skirted to the edge of the melee, watching the fight with bright amber eyes, though it is impossible to tell who she roots for.
I slam into her with full force, at once pinning her to the gold-draped wall at her back.
She hisses and curses as me, failing to shake me off.
"Remove it," I bark at her.
"Excuse me," she seethes.
"The collar." My grip tightens on the front of her breastplate, knuckles digging into the skin of her neck.
My elbows and hand pin her arms to the wall.
"You said it was forged by dragon fire. Unforge it.
Get it off me."
"What makes you think I would do a thing like that?
"
My claws extend, pressing into the base of her throat.
"I don't care whose side you're on. I don't care what your reasons are.
Use your fire to get this damn collar off me.
If you do, I won't kill you."
She huffs, almost in amusement.
"If Shireen becomes queen, you must swear we will not be executed.
"
"Who's we," I grit out, annoyed to be negotiating in the middle of a battle.
"Myself. Sthenno whose hand you removed.
Several of the other guards."
I only have a second to deliberate, to decide if someone who tried to turn me to stone is too dangerous to keep alive.
"The basilisks?"
"No," her face darkens.
"Not the basilisks."
"Deal.
"
Her grin is sharp, and then her mouth fills with smoke a moment before fire billows from her mouth.
It pours out of her in a river of white hot light, blinding me, though it does not burn.
She breathes her fire in a directed stream at the collar on my neck.
The precision of it doesn't keep my clothes from going up in flames.
Luckily, the rest of me is fireproof.
It takes less than a minute for the collar to heat enough to begin weakening.
Yroa's flames cut off, and I am tearing the collar from my neck in gummy streams of molten metal.
Then I am spinning on my heal to face the room.
Then I am shifting, growing.
Then I am scale and tooth and claw and everything in the throne room looks small compared to me.
I cannot think how much my dragon ate on the journey down from the Trove to Tombland Lake.
How man deer and boars and poor unsuspecting rabbit families.
More, probably, than I had eaten in the entire year before then. Maybe longer than that.
Consequently, my dragon form has nearly doubled in size since the last time I was in a fight with another Dragomira.
I am not the littlest beast on the scene this time.
Actually, I think I am one of the largest.
The others in the room begin to notice it.
Me. I see humans and gorgons and wyverns all bracing for impact or scrambling to get out of my way.
It doesn't matter. I only have eyes for the manticore and basilisk, in the corner to the right of the dais.
My goal is simple. Kill the basilisk.
Don't kill the manticore.
I stalk in their direction.
Contrary to what the king taunted me with, I take no pleasure in killing or the prospect of another's death at my hands.
I only intend it with a grim determination, because it is the only way I can see of making my friend free.
There is no time for words and speeches to try and wake Vakh from his trance.
Vakhrin is bleeding as I approach, run ragged and wounded in a dozen different places where other guards have nicked him trying to get at the basilisk.
They clear out when I approach.
Vakhrin and I face each other across the marble floor.
I wait to see something in his eyes—a hesitation, a recognition.
It doesn't come, but that's alright. Vakhrin and I have fought a thousand times, practicing and sparring until I know his strength, his speed, and his moves as well as I know my own.
I am prepared to face him.
That's what I think, until he comes at me claws first, aiming at my eyes, and I remember Vakhrin is not the one controlling the moves.
We tumble across the floor, crashing into marble plinths and statues that decorate the edges of the space.
Vakhrin's strength I know well, and I know that in recent weeks my strength has overtaken his own by a significant margin.
This version of Vakh is sloppy, uncontrolled.
I can practically hear the basilisk's cackle in every overbalanced move the manticore makes.
He fights like someone with no regard for his own life. It makes it easy to subdue him.
Pinning him would probably be impossible, but after a wild strike of his tail and his overcorrected dodge away from my returned offensive, I manage to slam his weight into the wall, hard enough that his head cracks against the stone and I can only hope I have not done any permanent harm.
He slumps to the ground when I release him, furry body in a dead faint. Breathing, though. He is breathing.
That leaves my path to the basilisk wide open.
As I am turning, his mad-eyed human form is being replaced by a coiled serpent, bunched up tight as if he can protect himself from my fury.
The serpent hisses, spits. As I stalk closer, it raises its head from the coil of its body like a cobra preparing to bite. It doesn't bite, though. Instead, a vision pulls at the edges of my consciousness.
Everyone I love is dead. I am nothing. I have nothing. I should give up. There is no reason to fight. There is no reason—
The vision cuts off when my jaws crunch down on the serpent's head. Vile blood spills into my mouth, and I release the basilisk, shaking my head to fling the substance away.
The serpent is down. Dead or not, I can't tell. It's body doesn't twitch and writhe like I have seen dead snakes do. It doesn't move at all, which is good enough for me.
I turn to survey the rest of the room. Vakhrin is still down, as are many of the kin throughout the room. The wyvern from the skirmish in the back has more swords in it than needles in a pincushion. The gorgon before the dais has been rent into pieces by something's claws.
I don't see Cherry, but Marton is up, sword in hand, helping a human and another Dragomira guard subdue a rampaging dragon.
I start across the room to help but am waylaid by a pair of serpents. They are basilisks, and they slither and spill over one another in an unsettling fashion, their hypnotic gazes fixed on me. The visions come fast, disjointed.
I am rich and happy and successful. The basilisks are my friends. They have helped me achieve greatness.
I am broken. I am dying. Every breath is agony. I cannot go on.
I fight through the lies, roaring. Flame pours from my open mouth, billowing out around me. The serpent before me shrivels and retreats.
I continue my advance, gaze fixed on the giant snake. I've somehow forgotten there were two of them. The other strikes from my right, fangs burying themselves deep in my throat. The pain is instant and agonizing. I thrash and claw and manage to throw the serpent off of me.
Blood drips from the wound at my throat, though I'm fairly certain basilisks aren't venomous. In my periphery, I see Vakhrin beginning to stir, picking himself up off the ground on shaking haunches.
I am readying for a lunge, and the snake is rearing up for another strike when a very human cry splits the air.
"Stop!"
I do, and it doesn't take long before others in the room do too.
I stopped at the sound of her voice, but the others fall still when they catch sight of Cherry in her tattered dress, holding her golden sword.
She stands on the dais with the basilisk king on his knees before her, both of them facing the larger room.
The tip of Cherry's sword rests against the king's already wounded neck.
"All of you," Cherry commands the stragglers. "All of you, stop."
The room falls deathly still, filled with the sounds of panting and the quiet whimpers of the injured.
"The King of Ithyma is a liar," comes Cherry's high, clear voice, spilling out to reach the whole space.
"He has held this palace, this city, and this nation captive with his control.
Many of you know, because he has done the same to you.
" A disquieted murmur moves around the room.
Cherry nods sharply. "I am not a basilisk," she continues.
"I have no power to influence the wills of others, and yet my father's blood in my veins means that I cannot be influenced. He has never been able to control me.
"It is my belief," she says, "that Ithyma is in need of a new monarch.
One who will not exert unfair control, and yet also one who cannot be controlled, whether it be by mind control, or by self-interest and greed.
I vow that I would be that monarch for Ithyma.
That I would put the good of all before the good of myself.
That I would not see any unjustly treated, shut out, or harmed.
That I would do my best to help humans and protectorkin live in harmony. "
Her speech trails off, and the room sits steeped in silence for a drawn out moment.
"Will you make the king your prisoner?" It is Yroa who speaks up, cradling what looks like a wounded shoulder.
Cherry stares back at her. "No," she finally says. "Today. Right now. King Coatl is on trial. Either he is fit to be your king, and he is the ruler you want. Or he is an abuser and manipulator, a danger to the kingdom. And he will be sentenced to death."
The silence this time is staggering.
Many of the kin shift back into their human forms, including the two basilisks before me. Identical twins, they appear to be. They are quivering with fear or adrenaline.
"And what about us?" one of them calls. "Do you expect us to surrender to you?"
"I expect you to look around," says Cherry. "You are outnumbered and outmatched. Your leader is on his knees. Your fiercest fighters fallen. Do you expect to win?"
They have no answer to that. Looking around the room, as she said, I see that Cherry is right. Most of those remaining upright are the guards who were under the king's control, who began to fight against him the moment he was wounded.
"Well," it is Yroa who breaks the silence again, staring up at the king and princess on the dais, "I certainly don't want him."
The resultant cacophony is deafening.
They shout and clamor and bang their weapons, calling for the death of the King of Ithyma.
There is no joy on Cherry's face as she stares out at them. She meets my eyes. There seems to be a question there in hers, a seeking. I give her a nod, to let her know she is doing the right thing. She exhales a breath.
As we all watch, she kicks the king of Ithyma forward with one bare foot. He is barely conscious, pale and woozy from the blood he has lost. He struggles to blink, growling at the crowd. "I am your king."
"True enough," says Cherry. And then her words go crisp and formal, and I realize something I had missed. "King Coatl of Ithyma, Firstborn and Heir to your father before you. I sentence you to death for crimes against your kingdom and people."
I am taking a step forward, mouth trying to form words at the same time as Cherry is raising her gilded blade.
She brings it down in a sweeping arc, all of her might behind it. Her father's head splatters wetly as it hits the dais, no longer connected to the rest of his body.
There is no hesitation this time. The response is instant.
"The King is dead! All hail the Queen of Ithyma!"
Half of the crowd picks up the chant and roars it. The other half is silent.