11. Blood Ties #4
The King of Swords sat ready in his chest, had sat there for thirty-one years now, and its gifts never fully quieted.
He saw the heat of bodies moving through the trees.
Heard the distant clash of steel and the screams that followed.
Tasted blood on the wind that carried from the clearing where children were dying .
His children, all of them, in a sense. Every bastard in the backhouse carried de Blaise blood, however diluted. Every legitimate heir bore his name and his expectations. Every child who bled tonight bled because of choices he made or refused to make.
He could stop it.
A word to the guards and two dozen armed men would flood those woods in minutes. The fighting would end before any more blood was spilled. His bastard son would be saved, bundled back to the barracks to heal from whatever wounds he’d already taken, and the matter would be quietly resolved.
Henrik’s hand rested on the signal bell.
The King of Swords hummed in his chest, ready to flare at a thought, ready to carry him down from this balcony and across those grounds faster than any horse if the boy’s life truly hung by a thread.
He could be there in moments. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him still.
Below, the red-haired girl threw a knife that took a boy through the throat.
The body dropped to the earth, and Henrik allowed himself a small nod of approval.
Clean throw and good instincts, the kind of fighter who acted instead of hesitated.
Grit incapacitated another with the efficient brutality of someone who’d already learned that mercy cost more than it saved.
One kill and a quick takedown in as many minutes, both from angles the targets never saw coming.
And then there was Danarre.
Henrik watched his bastard son drag himself across the forest floor, broken and bleeding, reaching for a sword with a hand that no longer worked.
The boy should be dead by any reasonable measure.
The cudgel blow that cracked his ribs should have ended him, and the strikes that followed should have finished the job .
Danarre kept crawling.
Henrik’s chest tightened, an echo of an emotion he thought he’d buried years ago. The boy fought like he’d done this all his life. Like he’d been fighting in another life entirely.
Henrik recognized it because he’d seen it before, in veterans who’d survived a score of campaigns, in men whose bodies remembered violence the way most people remembered breathing. In his own reflection, on mornings when the dreams of old battles refused to fade.
“Clarissa,” Henrik murmured to the empty night. “What did you give me?”
The words hung in the cold air, unanswered.
Henrik found himself remembering things he’d tried not to think about for seven years.
The first time he saw her, at a gathering hosted by her father, Lord de Hellen.
She was young, sharp-tongued, and looked at him without the fear or deference he’d grown accustomed to from lesser nobles.
Just curiosity, and something sharper underneath.
Intelligence, perhaps. Or recognition of a different kind.
He remembered the conversations that followed, stolen moments in gardens and corridors where a married lord had no business speaking to an unmarried lady as if she were the only person in the room.
Her wit that cut sharper than any courtier’s.
Her observations about the great houses that saw through every mask he’d learned to wear.
The way her hands glowed faintly when she was upset, a talent for healing that she kept quiet because the Temple didn’t take kindly to those who practiced their art without divine sanction.
He remembered when she told him she was carrying his child. The mixture of joy and calculation on her face, the way she’d already prepared arguments for why she should be sent away quietly, given coin and a story that wouldn’t shame his name.
He remembered refusing.
“Keep her here,” he’d told the steward. “Give her comfortable rooms and anything she needs.”
“My lord, if anyone were to learn…”
“Let them learn.” The words had surprised him even as he spoke them. “I’ve sired bastards before. This one will be acknowledged. In time.”
In time. As if time was something they had in abundance. He remembered the promise he made as she died, holding her hand while the physicians failed and the child that killed her screamed its first breath into the world.
“I’ll watch over him,” he’d said, knowing she couldn’t hear him anymore, saying it anyway. “Whatever it takes, I’ll keep him safe.”
And then, softer, words meant for no one but himself: “I’ll love him, the way I should have loved you.”
Below, in the clearing, Danarre finally stopped crawling. He lay still among the leaves, chest heaving, blood painting his face. The largest boy stood over him, ready to end what the cudgel started.
Henrik’s Brand flared in his chest, the King of Swords responding to his intent. One word and he’d be moving, one breath and he’d be through those trees before the cudgel could fall again. His fingers tightened on the signal bell.
But if he intervened now, Danarre would live as a weakness.
A liability that required constant protection.
A boy who survived only because his father’s power shielded him from consequences.
If the boy couldn’t survive this, he couldn’t survive what was coming: the Tournament, the endless machinations of a household that saw bastards as threats to be eliminated rather than assets to be cultivated.
Better to learn now. Better to die trying than live kneeling.
Henrik watched the red-haired girl’s knife take the big one through the throat.
He let himself exhale. His Brand settled back into readiness, still humming, still waiting, but no longer straining toward violence.
The fight ended, or at least the killing part of it did. The survivors fled. The victors limped toward each other, holding each other up, because that’s what pack animals did when the hunt was over. They supported their own.
Henrik watched them go.
He should feel pride, perhaps. His blood proved stronger than the six who came to end it. His promise to Clarissa remained unbroken. His bastard son lived another night.
What he felt instead was something colder.
Something that looked at the bodies cooling in the moonlight and calculated consequences.
Lady Meresin would learn of this by morning.
She’d know her plan failed, know that her pawns died in the dark, know that the bastard she’d tried to kill yet again had survived.
She’d be more careful next time, more patient, more dangerous.
And the boy would need to be more dangerous still.
Henrik turned from the balcony and walked back into his chambers. There were servants to summon, questions to prepare, a wife to confront about promises made to desperate children.
But first, a moment alone with a memory .
He stopped at the small table beside his bed, where a single item rested on dark wood.
A ribbon, faded blue, the kind a lady of minor house might wear to a gathering where she hoped to be noticed by someone worth noticing.
The kind Clarissa wore the first time he saw her, standing in her father’s hall with that sharp look in her eyes that said she’d already taken his measure and found it wanting.
She shouldn’t have mattered. A lord de Hellen’s daughter with a talent she had to hide and a tongue sharp enough to cut. He was already married, already a father, already bound by obligations that left no room for whatever she stirred in him.
She mattered anyway.
“He has your stubbornness,” Henrik said to the ribbon, to the memory, to the woman who’d been dead for seven years but never quite left him. “Your refusal to fall down when falling down would be easier.”
He picked up the ribbon and held it for a moment, feeling the soft fabric between fingers that had signed death warrants, held newborn children, and done everything expected of a lord of the realm.
“I’ll keep my promise,” he said. “As long as he keeps standing.”
He set the ribbon back in its place and went to wake the guard captain. There were bodies to collect and questions to ask and a lesson to teach about the cost of failure.
◇ ◆ ◇
We reached the stone last.
Every other team finished while we were still bleeding in the forest, and now they stood in clusters around the weathered marker, whispering and staring as four battered children limped out of the treeline. Rulfen waited beside the stone with his arms crossed and his scarred face unreadable.
I don’t know what we looked like. Bad, probably.
My head was still bleeding sluggishly from where the cudgel connected, and every breath sent knives through my broken ribs.
Maise’s bandages had soaked through completely, her hands more red than white, and she favored her left leg where someone’s boot caught her during the final scramble.
Perrin’s face was pale as bone, his earlier bravado stripped away by the reality of watching people die.
Only Grit looked untouched. But then, Grit always looked untouched.
“You’re late,” Rulfen said.
“We got delayed.” I tried to stand straighter and nearly passed out from the pain. Maise’s grip tightened on my arm, keeping me upright. “There were complications.”
“I can see that.” His eyes tracked across our injuries, cataloging damage with the assessment of a man who’d seen worse. “Care to explain?”
“Not particularly.”
A murmur ran through the watching children, because nobody talked to Rulfen like that. Nobody refused to explain themselves when an instructor asked a direct question.
But Rulfen didn’t press. He studied me for a long moment, then nodded.
“The exercise is over. Return to barracks. Those who need the healer, go now. Those who don’t, get some sleep.” He paused. “Danarre. My office, dawn.”
“Yes, Master Rulfen. ”