47. Chapter 47
Owain
Luna will be safe , I told myself as I forced myself to keep walking. No distractions.
The public corridors were already crowded by the time we arrived. Half a dozen of my own men ringed the main hallway—but they weren’t the ones that mattered. Bannermen. Courtiers. Two of the visiting lords from the eastern reaches whose eyes I could feel tracking me the moment I appeared.
The time Camrick, Reina, and I had spent strategizing yesterday about our overall plan for handling the Assembly while they were in residence was already paying off.
Increasing the guards wasn't just a precaution for the king’s life.
It was a trap. We needed witnesses for whatever scheme the Assembly planned to pull while they were here.
At least, that had been the intention.
I scanned the corridor once more. An excessive number of men positioned along the walls displayed yellow and red over their armor, the colors of House Coryanthus.
Unwelcome certainty sank into my stomach like a stone. In my haste, I’d given him more men but neglected to mention the exact number. He’d taken liberties. There were nearly as many of Coryanthus’s guards as my own.
My father had said, “Never let your enemy stand better armed than you beneath your own roof.” I’d been far too young to understand the lesson then. But now…
The opposite was true about the Assembly mages. My gaze swept across the crowd, noting the complete absence of stark black robes, only one glaring purple one. Vaustin Maeron watched from the far side of the chamber, hands folded inside his sleeves.
Vultures always knew when something had begun to rot. I looked at Camrick. His face reflected the same realization. Vaustin was the token attendant—meant to make us think even they were surprised. What was more worrisome was where the others might be. Cleaning the blood off their hands, perhaps?
Everyone had gathered near the entrance to the dungeons, waiting for the entertainment to begin. Voices hummed in low, urgent threads. Speculation. Accusation. The beginnings of panic.
But all conversation stopped when two of my guards forced their way through the knot of bodies, their burden slung between them.
Even under the sheet they’d covered him with, I could see that the assassin’s limbs hung loose with the unmistakable weight of death, his head lolling with each step.
A dark stain had soaked through the front of the sheet.
The crowd recoiled as they passed. Some turned their faces away. Others leaned in, hungry for a better look at the man who’d nearly killed the king. At least he’d gotten what vengeance he could by talking. I’d find a way, somehow, at the end of this, to save his daughter.
My arrival seemed to quiet the whispers a little.
But then a disturbance rippled from the far end of the corridor. One of my captains broke through the press of bodies at a near run, breath short, expression grim.
“Dowager wing,” he said, not even attempting formality. “The Duchess’s apartments have been sealed by a ward from within. I have battlemages battering at it. Nothing is working.”
Ice slid down my spine. The timing of both events had to be tied. Instinct urged me to return to Lunette, but she was safe. I’d made certain of that. Reina was the one threatened now because they wanted their damned device back.
The chaos that had been around the entrance to the dungeon caught on to this new excitement and moved to follow us to the dowager’s wing. There were far too many gawkers, but we were in far too much of a rush to stop them from following.
As I approached Reina’s door, the air ahead of me warped and buzzed with an unnatural, rhythmic hum that made my skin crawl. My shadows stirred, responding to the wrongness of it.
Two Assembly mages stood, hands raised, expressions the picture of concentration as their magic felt at the barrier.
One I recognized as a mid-ranking evoker with careful eyes—probably the glorified bodyguard of the group.
The other was younger and doing a worse job of appearing neutral to my presence.
Everything in me wanted to remove them as a danger immediately.
To search the castle and go one by one through the entire mage conclave with an axe.
The moral implications of murder faded from my mind, leaving only the perception of it as the correct action.
A single thought was all it would take for their heads to tumble to the stone floor.
Except I couldn’t do anything until I had proof of the Assembly’s treachery—not without starting a war. I wanted to break the walls down in frustration. What made the feeling worse was that not a single yellow and red tabard had followed the mass of gawkers.
What is Lord Coryanthus up to now?
If he was bothering Luna in any way, I wouldn’t stop at cutting off his balls. I’d flay him alive then strip his family of its lands and title.
“Prince Regent.” The senior mage inclined his head with a precisely perfect degree of deference that conveyed nothing whatsoever. “We were alerted to the ward and came immediately. It’s a complex construction. We’ve been attempting to identify the anchor points, but—”
“Move,” I ordered brusquely.
He hesitated one breath too long for Camrick’s patience. My best friend shoved the mage roughly out of the way and didn’t apologize for it.
“Treat our guests with care,” I drawled, utterly insincere.
I put my hand against the door. The buzz traveled up through my palm. I couldn’t pick apart the structure of the ward in the way Lunette seemed to see into bodies, but I had enough training to feel where the magic failed to account for intrusion.
I sent my shadows to search along the seams. They moved into the gaps between things, forming a picture of the structure of the ward. It was intricately layered, designed to keep people out, not to hold them or anything else in.
Pulling it apart was going to take time. Especially when I had to be careful because I had no idea where Reina and Richart were in the room. Anything destructive I tried might put them in harm’s way.
I was dimly aware of the gawking courtiers edging closer.
Of Camrick placing himself two steps to my right, facing outward, as my personal shield.
Of the murmur that ran through the gathered lords like wind through dry grass at the height of summer.
I didn’t need to see all that was happening to understand how easily a spark could set it to flames.
I moved deeper in my search. The ward pushed back. I worked at the edges, trying to pull it apart carefully. Brute force would break it, yet it might also injure my observers.
Behind me, the younger of the two Assembly mages shifted his weight—the unconscious adjustment of a man waiting for something rather than doing something about the problem before him. But my hands stayed on the door instead of wrapping around his neck like they should have.
It was only then that I thought to ask myself why the Assembly would install something so complicated. They were stalling. I was nearly certain of it. But why…
The answer arrived like a bucket of ice water to the face: they were likely hitting multiple places at once.
I couldn’t protect Reina, Lunette, and Berian simultaneously. And where I went, Camrick followed. Every step we’d taken toward one piece on the board had been a step away from the others. The Assembly had planned for it when they’d built this entire afternoon around diverting me.
Before I could even begin to work out what to do about it, a terrifyingly familiar surge of dark magic—far more potent than anything I’d felt from her—built on the other side of the ward.
Oh shit.
There was no time to move everyone. Nocthel instinct overrode planning. My only choice was to prevent catastrophe.
The magic working to break down the ward snapped back to me instantly.
Then it thrust outward, weaving itself into an impenetrable obsidian wall that surrounded the courtiers, guardsmen, and mages just as the world tore apart.
The stone wall dividing the dowager’s apartment from the corridor exploded outward in a spray of debris.
The sound rattled my teeth and slammed against the obsidian shield with a deafening crack.
Chunks of stone the size of skulls, dust, and jagged shards of mortar slammed into the conjured wall I’d constructed to keep my people safe.
I planted my feet firmly on the floorboards, muscles tightening, using every bit of my strength to hold the shield as their faces were contorted with terror.
For a long, agonizing beat, there was only the roar of falling stone, holding strong against it, and the blinding, choking grey of pulverized mortar. By the time the rain of debris finally ceased, my entire body burned.
Reina would only have risked that if she was desperate—but desperate meant alive.
Everything afterward happened so fast, it felt like the gods had sped up time.
Slowly, I let my protective shield fade away into wisps of smoke.
The air outside the shield was a solid wall of choking white.
Beside me, Camrick stepped forward, his hands cutting through the haze as he summoned a gale to tear the dust away.
That one isolated burst had been enough to change everything in unexpected ways. The murmuring had stopped. And my people, not just my soldiers who knew and trusted me, were looking at me as though they were seeing me for the first time. I was used to their curiosity and underlying wariness.
But now? Now it seemed as though my people weren’t merely waiting for a chance to escape.
One of the eastern lords had pressed his back against the wall when I’d entered this corridor earlier.
Now he gave a brief nod then righted himself, appearing almost startled by his automatic show of respect.
Everyone shifted subtly inward, as though my proximity now offered safety instead of threat.
Yet a single isolated burst had accelerated the shift that started when Berian took ill.
I’d become someone who might be relied upon in their eyes. Someone respected. A leader worth trusting.
I’d wanted this forever. But in this moment, I would’ve traded it without hesitation to be able to split myself in two so one of me could be in the family wing protecting Lunette.
With the dust cleared, I saw Richart, butter knife in hand, slumped over a bleeding man in black robes. He’d been so drained of magic he hadn’t been able to call his usual fire to defend them. While still recovering, he’d tried to save my aunt with the only thing at hand.
He was more than steady. He already had my acceptance, but now he also had my undying gratitude.
Reina, hair in disarray, dress ripped, eyes blazing with shadows, stood over the body of a second mage. She didn’t have the martial training I had, but she’d torn a hole through the mage and the wall with the force of her rage alone.
Though she was swaying on her feet, the sound of her shout echoed through the hall, reaching everyone’s ears. “They stole the device. The Assembly aims to kill the king!”
She’d barely finished the sentence before Camrick and a group of guards subdued the two mages that had been behind me. And I’d already started running.
Reina had been the distraction. This had been too easy… Far too easy for something they wanted us to waste time on. Priority one was to get Lunette as far away from Vaustin as possible before he could silence my powers.
Halfway back to the main hall, I felt a sudden lurching tug inside my chest. Something that was the emotional equivalent of a scream drowned out the warm, constant hum of our mate bond in the space of a single heartbeat.
Fear. Anger.
Neither belonged to me.
Lunette.
I sprinted, heart thumping, breaths turning ragged. The corridor opened into the great hall, and the moment I crossed the threshold, I stopped.
A line of soldiers in yellow and red stretched across the breadth of the hall, shields locked, spears angled just enough to make movement past them impossible. A line of my reserved men—far fewer in number and now weaponless—were on their knees before them.
This wasn’t just a distraction. It was a coup.