Chapter 48 The Aftermath
By the time I make it up the dais steps in my human form, Cherry is shaking so hard she's near collapsing.
When I reach her, she is already tumbling into my arms. She doesn't shout out, doesn't cry.
She clings to me for a moment, speaking in a barely coherent whisper.
"I knew the sword was going to be sharp. "
Then she's unconscious, in a true faint just like those swooning damsels we used to tell stories about.
Marton and Vakhrin reach us a moment later. I feel arms around me, strong hands on my back and shoulder. They speak words of concern, of comfort, but my head is whirling, the shock of adrenaline leaving my body.
Cherry just killed the King of Ithyma.
She just killed her father.
It isn't until Yroa reaches us that the present begins to come back into focus. "We need orders," she speaks sharply.
"What?"
"Orders. Prisoners need to be taken to the dungeon. The shock of the king's death won't last long, which means surrender won't last long."
I nod numbly. "I have—I have the keys." I let Vakhrin and Marton take Cherry's weight as I pat my pockets, only to realize that I am stark naked on a stage in front of dozens of people. Marton's cloak comes off and is wrapped around me.
Forcing my brain to cooperate, I remember that Cherry had the keys to the dungeon. I take them from the pocket of her dress, handing them to Yroa. Trusting her may be foolish, but it's the only thing I can think to do at the moment.
"Take any you trust and lock up the ones you don't."
Yroa departs with a sardonic look, and I can only hope that I have not made a mistake.
We take Cherry to the rooms behind the dais, a mix of a dressing area and retiring room for royals during state events.
"Vakhrin—" I begin. But he is unsteady and weak, visibly shell-shocked from his recent ordeals.
I remember how my body ached when I woke from the king's control, and I wasn't even suffering from a head wound at the time.
Marton looks only slightly better off. "Stay here with Cherry," I tell them.
"Keep her safe. She is queen now. I have to.
.. I have to go see about the prisoners. Everything. Someone has to..."
"Go, Tarah," Marton squeezes my hand. "We'll keep her safe."
I leave him with a kiss on the cheek, totally insufficient and not at all what I want our reunion to be like.
When I reemerge into the throne room, I find most of the kin already gone, a few stragglers being herded out of the double doors under the watchful eye of the gorgon man who had reminded Yroa of their orders earlier in the hall. He and two others oversee the march to the dungeon.
Those who remain in the throne room are the injured and dying, and a few of the human guards.
"My, um, lady," says one human man, approaching me. "What do you want us to do about the wounded?"
"Are there no palace doctors?" I know I've heard Cherry speak of them before, but that was when she was a child.
The man looks uncomfortable. "There are. Only. I didn't know... if you would want us to dispatch them." He touches the hilt of his sword significantly.
He wants to know if I want him to go around stabbing injured people in the head and heart.
"The battle is over," I try to keep the judgement out of my voice. There has been much death here today, some of it dealt by me. "The ones who willingly followed the king can be patched up and taken to the dungeons. The others can just be patched up."
As I make my way past him, he calls out to me. "It won't be that simple!"
"Why not?" I turn.
He backs up a step, cringing. "Because. Because serpents are liars. Basilisks, gorgons, wyverns, and—" he stops there. "A fair number of them will tell you they were controlled by the king who weren't. The others will tell you they followed him because they didn't have a choice."
"Maybe they didn't." The judgement comes through a bit clearer this time.
"All due respect, my lady, but we always have a choice."
"Get the doctors," I tell him. "Patch up everyone." I hate myself for the next part. "If they aren't coherent enough to talk, or if you think they're a danger to the kingdom, put them in the dungeons with the others."
I intend to head straight for the dungeons to oversee the imprisoning of the dead king's followers and attempt to make some order of the chaos, but I am continually waylaid by more chaos on my way there.
Everyone wants to know what their orders are from the queen, and I am the one they look to.
I give tasks to the remaining guards, setting all of the humans to patrol for the king's allies that might have escaped from the throne room and to otherwise keep peace in the halls.
I set a few Dragomira I saw fighting on our side during the battle to do targeted sweeps for nobles and courtiers they know to have been loyal to the king, even with the knowledge of what he was and what his methods were.
I send servants to clean up the throne room, or fetch supplies for the doctors, or bring meals to the queen and the injured.
By the time I make it down to the dungeon, dawn has long since passed into morning, and I have not been to sleep.
The scene in the dungeon is a stark contrast to how it looked during my time spent down here.
Rather than a nearly deserted hall of dark and quiet cells, the dungeon now is filled near to capacity with prisoners.
Most of the Dragomira, those in danger of shifting and breaking out, wear chains and collars of the same kind that I had sported.
I wonder who welded them to their necks.
There is no sign of Yroa, though the gorgon I saw earlier and several of his men are guarding the dungeons.
I learn their names but promptly forget them. Then I finally spy Yroa.
She is inside a cell at the end of the hall, sitting with her knees drawn up and back to the wall. Unlike the others, there is no collar around her neck, but she is clearly a prisoner.
"What's going on? Why is Yroa locked up?"
The gorgon—Pytor?—follows my gesture. "She volunteered for imprisonment."
"She what?"
He shrugs. "Take it up with her."
If I hadn't personally seen him help take down a slew of guards who had been fighting against Cherry, I would be highly suspicious of him.
I pass the first gorgon guard Cherry and I faced, Sthenno, in the cell next to Yroa. His hand is bandaged in clean linens but he is slumped against the wall, sleeping or unconscious.
I kick at the bars to get Yroa's attention. She somehow manages to give me a superior look even from the floor of her cell. "What the hells are you doing?"
"I could ask you the same question. Why are you locked up?"
Her lip curls. "Trust me. This is where I ought to be."
"You helped us," I deny.
"I helped myself."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You don't know my story, little dragon. I'm not some self-sacrificing hero standing up against the tyrant king. I saw the way things were turning, so I went along with you, to be on the winning side. But before that..."
"Before that a tyrant king rooted around in your head with his magic and made you believe you weren't worth the shit at the bottom of his latrines?" I guess.
She growls at me. "Before that, I let a basilisk king sweet talk me into—into some bad shit with just a few little visions of how great my life could be if I followed him. I chose him. That part was all me."
"I don't believe that."
"Doesn't matter what you believe."
"It does." I bring my face close to the bars, stooping down as I try to catch her eye. "You forget that the king was in my head, too. I know it's not just a few little visions that he shows you."
The look she turns my way is the opposite of friendly. "Aye, the king was in your head, too, and what happened? You were all sunshine and rainbows and you told him to get the hells out, and he did. Because you got good things inside you. Not all of us are like that. Some of us take the bait."
"Bait is what people use in traps. You fell into a trap. That doesn't make you bad."
"Get out of my face, little dragon. You don't know what you're talking about."
"I could order you released."
"I won't go." She turns away from me.
I make a noise of frustration, rising from my crouch. "You stubborn—" I break off there because there's no point in having this argument out. I've said all that I needed to.
On my way out of the dungeons, I tell the guards to unlock Yroa's cell. She can have them lock it back as soon as I'm gone, but at least I've tried.
The sun is burning high in the sky before I am finally able to return to my friends.
I ease open the door the antechamber to find the three of them slumped against one another upon the lone couch in the room, dead asleep.
Fond exasperation pinches at my chest. There is evidence that Vakhrin and Marton intended to keep watch.
They sit on either side of Cherry, feet planted on the floor which Cherry is curled up against Vakhrin's shoulder.
Vakhrin has his head tilted all the way back, mouth open wide in a snore.
Marton's cheek is turned to rest on the cushioned back of the couch.
There is less than a person's worth of space between Cherry and Marton, but I make myself at home there.
Marton stirs, blinking slowly at me.
"Go back to sleep," I command him gently.
He says nothing, instead reaching out his arm to blanket me with it.
We are pressed closer, his forehead dipping down to rest against mine.
Sudden emotion fills me, and I fist my hands in the front of his tunic.
"You woke up." I don't mean now, but before.
On the dais. I wished he would wake, like wishing for a miracle, and I got it.
"I heard you call for me," he says simply, voice thick with sleep.
"Is that—Is that all you heard?
"
"Mm." He rubs his forehead against mine, burrowing like a sleepy cub.
"You said wake and I woke."
"And.
..nothing else?"
It takes him a moment, but he pulls back and blinks at me.
Curious, confused. And I realize. He does not remember me saying I loved him.
He did not hear.
I try to voice the words now, to shape them, but they will not come, bunching and sticking in my throat.
Something blocks them and I can't be sure what it is.
"What did you dream about?
" I ask instead. "In the visions the king showed you.
"
His smile is wry, but he blushes.
"I dreamed about you."
"What about me?
"
His blush intensifies, creeping down his neck and up to the roots of his hair.
He pshaws. "Sometimes—" He cuts off, adding, "It was ridiculous.
It was like the king couldn't really see you clearly at all, but he had these ideas about who you were, about who you would be to me, in my daily life or my wildest fantasies.
"
"Your fantasies.
"
He is positively crimson.
"It was all...draconic seductress. Claws trailed sexily across— And anyway— I didn't—"
I burry my face in his chest, in his scent which is finally right, as it was not in the visions the king fed me.
I smother my laugh in his tunic. It feels good to laugh.
Incredible. The relief in my veins is almost as strong as the exhaustion.
"I dreamed about you, too," I confide.
"It was how I woke up, the first time. The king showed me a vision of you that was.
.. I knew it was a lie. You said things you would never say.
And even in the later visions, when he tried to fix it, to make you more believable for me, more loving, it was not right.
You were not you."
He wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tight.
"I'm glad you knew it was a lie."
Here in his arms, safe for the moment, done, victorious, I want to ask him about the ring from the king's version of events.
The thing Marton used to pay the knight at the gate, whatever it was.
Was it truly a ring that he intended to give me?
And what did it mean?
But before I can formulate the question, exhaustion claims me and I fall into a heavy sleep.