49. Chapter 49
Owain
My lungs burned from the run. I could feel my pulse in my throat, my temples, the tips of my fingers—ragged and unsteady since the bond had screamed at me.
As I burst into the great hall, the nightmare came into focus.
Three ranks of warriors in yellow and red stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their interlocked shields forming an impenetrable wall between me and the corridor leading to Lunette.
On the floor before them, my own men were forced to their knees beneath sword points.
I forced my sabaton shod boots to skid to a halt, though every instinct screamed at me to throw myself forward like a battering ram. Coryanthus. That piece of refuse had been plotting this with the Assembly for weeks.
A profound silence fell over the great hall at my entry. Everyone in it, gawking from the sides or wearing full steel, understood that what transpired over the next few moments would change history.
Camrick stopped half a step behind me. I heard the faint whisper of leather against steel as he readjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword.
He was ready to act but waiting for my call.
The path toward showing everyone who I really was—the man they’d seen defending them from a blast—was one I could still walk.
But it rested entirely on my next decision.
Except my choices were turmoil, ripping me asunder from the inside.
In one direction was Lunette; her fear felt like a cold, insistent hand around my throat, suffocating me the longer I stayed away.
In the other were my people—first and foremost my men, kneeling with treacherous blades at their necks.
And caught between them was my Nocthel blood, screaming that losing either was unacceptable. Shadows writhed against the stone beneath my boots, betraying my instability as surely as the thin black veins tracing across my skin.
Every second you stand here debating…
I knew exactly what delay could cost. My jaw ached from clenching it so hard.
But I had to do the right thing. No matter how furious I was. No matter what.
I lifted a single hand, far steadier than it had any right to be, and flooded the hall with shadows. They swallowed torchlight, raised aloft by the rage roaring in my chest like an angry lion. A wall of black rose around the assembled men, looming in the shape of a topless dome.
Gasps came from the gawking civilians. Despite their training, fear showed itself. The nearest rank of enemy shifted on their feet and adjusted their grips.
Inside my mind, the battle raged on. Move, the bond demanded, desperate for Lunette. Destroy them, the power urged. What are you waiting for?
My chest burned with the effort of holding it back, of forcing breath into lungs that wanted to feed the violence building beneath my ribs.
Every heartbeat felt stolen. Every second I stood still was another in which she was unprotected.
I couldn't waste time fighting them, but I couldn't become the demon they feared, either.
Honing the rage into a razor-sharp edge, I forced the shadows into utter stillness around the soldiers.
“Step aside,” I said, my voice cutting easily through the charged silence. “Your lord has betrayed the crown.”
The line held. For a breathless second, no one moved. Then, an officer in a decorated helm snapped a command under his breath.
The shieldwall took one unified step forward.
My blood screamed in triumph. I’d given them a chance.
Slivers broke off from the umbral dome and wove through the spaces between men, seeking out the officers like a flock of ravens swooping in to feast at the gallows.
That first commander turned his head, frowned at me, and then the shadow at his throat morphed into a blade and punched forward.
He fell to the ground with a clatter of crashing steel.
Another leader down the line reached for his sword, trying to fight, but stopped halfway.
His eyes went wide with the morbid understanding of what held his arm back right before the light behind them died.
Three more sharp impacts echoed as other bodies fell to the stone floor in a pool of their own blood. The soldiers watched as their leaders sank soundlessly to the ground. Every decorated helm now held a corpse.
Gasps broke through the formation as the shadows that had hit their marks withdrew into the dome like a patient tide.
The shieldwall wavered. At its edge, a boy swayed under the weight of a shield too large for him, some lord's promise of glory having clearly cost him his childhood. His eyes found mine over its rim, and what I saw there wasn't courage. It was raw terror
I stared back at him for one moment, acknowledging his presence, letting him see who I was—letting him see that I was making a choice. Then I looked away, because he hadn’t chosen this.
“Step. Aside,” I repeated. “You are Larethian. The same as the men you hold at sword point. Justice has been served to those who are responsible for you being here. Make the choice. Now!” I roared the last.
Then I walked forward. The soldier to my left shifted first, a half-step back that opened the smallest gap. The next man did the same. Then another. The formation unraveled in quiet increments until the shieldwall became an avenue.
I could’ve driven every man in this hall to his knees. Could’ve crushed every throat at once until loyalty was all they remembered.
The darkness demanded it.
The bond urged anything to hasten my steps.
But dead men were martyrs. Dead men didn’t carry warnings and tales. Every man walking out of this hall was a message—to Coryanthus, to the damned Assembly, to anyone else who thought they understood who and what I was.
I passed through the mass, shadows trailing, purposefully brushing them against armor and skin without harm. Reminders. I could feel the weight of their stares, the understanding settling in its wake.
I could’ve slaughtered every last one of them. But they would remember that I hadn’t.
Out of the hall, I was done being patient. My boots hit the stone floor hard enough to feel it in my teeth. As we neared the family wing, the pull of the bond became almost unbearable.
Camrick was half a step behind me, sword drawn, his men following further back. We moved too fast to talk. Reina had said they intended to kill the king, but I had definitive proof from the bond that Lunette was in danger.
I'd left her well-guarded. I hadn't accounted for treachery from within. My mind had been consumed by the Assembly, the danger to Berian, a conspiracy I thought I was close to unraveling. Coryanthus had never crossed my mind as anything but an annoyance.
He’d used my own blind spot against me. And now she was paying for it. Shadow gathered at my chest, conjuring guilt into a blade only I could feel, and buried it to the hilt.
Through the bond, fury joined her fear, which meant she was fighting. That fury was the only thing keeping me sane as we crept toward the last bend before our rooms, household soldiers at our backs.
Camrick peeked around the corner and mouthed, More of Coryanthus's men.
I was in for another fight.
But then, something scratched at the window five paces behind me. My attention snapped to the sound of claws scraping glass, catching the sight of a small silhouette forcing its way through the narrow gap where the window had been left ajar.
Muffin fell to the stone floor below the window, scrambled, and immediately threw himself at my shins with full-bodied desperation.
His fur was standing in a full ridge from neck to tail.
The sound coming out of him wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a cry—the same sound that had sent me running after Lunette when the mercenaries had grabbed her what felt like a lifetime ago.
“I know,” I said, pausing to lean down. “I’m going—”
Muffin sank his fangs into me hard enough to be extremely clear about his opinion on me taking another step.
Camrick lowered his sword slightly. “Is that—”
“Yes.”
Then Muffin was off, a tan streak arrowing toward the left, where he stopped and threw himself against the wall. With a thud, his little body rebounded off it, and he scurried to his paws again.
He looked back at me with green, unblinking eyes, and did it again.
There was nothing there. Bare stone, the same as it had always been.
As it had always appeared.
I crossed to the wall in two strides and struck it with a pulse of magic. I felt the unmistakable give of the illusion falling apart.
By all the magic.
My parents hadn’t even known about this entrance to the tunnel out of the keep. The illusion must’ve been in place for more than a century.
Muffin made another pained whistling sound, begging me to open it for him so he could charge in and save his lady. This ridiculous, beloved creature had no business being braver than half the men I’d met.
“All right,” I said, trying to calm him. His entire body was shaking.
Camrick was already assembling the guards, rolling his shoulders, getting ready for a fight in the hall. “Go,” he said. “We’ll go through the front.”
Before I could respond, a woman with brunette braids piled high on her head slipped through the same window Muffin had used. It was Anne, the servant/spy I’d asked Reina to have assigned to Lunette.
She was the most disheveled I’d ever seen her. Hair falling out of her updo, dress torn and dirty from what must’ve been a difficult climb—especially in a corset.
“She’s in her room,” Anne panted. “She sent me. Coryanthus took her there by the king’s order.”
If I hadn’t despised my brother before, this sealed the deal. Did he even know that he’d been double-crossed yet? I looked at Camrick, and he nodded, understanding passing silently between us.
I wasted no time lifting the latch. The cold black mouth of the tunnel yawned before me. Muffin didn’t wait. He plunged into the darkness without a backward glance.
“Start breaking down that fucking door!” I ordered with one final glance at Camrick.
The last thing I heard was “Yes, Prince Regent!” before sliding into the dark.