20. Fen #2
I’d just killed two men for a woman who’d spilled water on my boots and informed me I wasn’t her prince.
And I’d do it again.
Blood dripped from my blade onto the carefully cultivated grass. My hands didn’t shake, though they should have. I’d killed two men outside of crown sanction for reasons I couldn’t name in any official report.
I wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s jacket and turned back to her.
She stood frozen, her blade still raised, blood speckling her gray dress. Her eyes were too wide, her breathing too fast.
A problem. I’d just created a significant problem.
The efficient thing would be to report this. Call the guards. Let them handle the cleanup and the investigation and whatever needed to happen next.
I didn’t call for the guards.
Her chest rose and fell. The blade trembled in her grip, catching moonlight with each small shake. A talon, somehow fashioned into a blade.
“You—” Her voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. “You just—”
She couldn’t finish.
When training took over, you executed. But she’d never seen anything like this. Nothing close enough to smell the blood.
Heat seared through my chest.
She looked down at the remaining body and back at me. Her knuckles whitened on the blade’s grip.
She was bleeding from a cut on her forearm where one of them must’ve clipped her. Not deep, but enough that blood was seeping through the fabric of her sleeve.
“You’re injured,” I said.
Her gaze dropped to her arm like she was surprised to find it there. “It’s fine.”
“It needs—”
“I said it’s fine.” Her voice came out harder than before, snapping me back to the present. To who we were. Prince and commons. Not allies. Not anything.
I stepped back. Right. Of course.
“They’ll send more.” I kept my voice neutral, stating a fact. Whoever wanted her dead had resources. Two assassins meant serious coin, serious intent. “You should stay in your quarters. Don’t leave without an escort.”
Her laugh came out bitter. “An escort from where? My fellow commons? We’re down to four, but I’m sure one of them will volunteer to die with me.”
Fair point. “Then stay inside.”
“And when the race starts?” Her chin lifted. “Should I stay inside then too?”
I opened my mouth, but what could I say? She was right. If someone wanted her dead badly enough to send professionals, they’d find another way. The Scorching would give them plenty of opportunities.
The thought made my jaw ache. “Then you learn to fight better than that.” I nodded at her blade. “What you did was instinct, not skill. Instinct runs out.”
“Why did you follow me out here?” Her voice came out raw. Not angry yet. Just shocked.
“I saw the men trailing you.” True, but not the whole truth. I’d been following her first.
“So you killed them.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the body, then back at me. “Just like that.”
“They were going to kill you. I stopped them.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact. This was a problem I’d solved, not a line I’d crossed. “That’s what happened.”
“You didn’t call the guards.”
Also a good point. “There wasn’t time.”
“You could’ve called them after. Before you…” She gestured to the body.
I could have. The fact that I hadn’t was the thing I couldn’t explain.
“I’ll call them now.” I pulled a signal stone from my pocket, the kind that would bring castle guards without questions. But I paused before using it. “Unless you’d prefer I didn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“An official report means an official investigation. Questions about why you were out here. Why they targeted you. Your fellow survivors might be questioned. One of them could be involved.” I watched her process that. “Or I can handle this quietly. The body disappears.”
“Burned to ashes like the other.”
I shrugged. “No questions. No complications.” I met her gaze. “I’m offering to eliminate a problem. Your choice.”
She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze went to the body, then to the ash settling on the grass, then to the garden gate.
“A commons woman alone in the royal gardens after dark, two dead men, and a prince my only witness. Who do your investigators believe?”
“Me.”
“And when you’re not in the room? When it’s me, a records clerk, and a family in Shaleside they can starve by docking one man’s wages?” Her voice went flat. “I’ve seen how questions end for people like me. I’ll be dead or tossed into the mines.”
She wasn’t weighing right against wrong. She was counting doors, and every legal one opened onto a cell.
“I guess I have my answer then,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Make the body disappear.”
“You’re certain.”
“It’s not about trust.” She swiped her blade through the grass without looking at me. “It’s math. Yours are the only hands here that get to be clean.”
I nodded and pocketed the signal stone.
“Who do you think sent them?” she asked.
“Someone who doesn’t want you in the Scorching.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” Not quite true. I could guess. But guessing meant investigating, and investigating meant caring more than I should about keeping a commons woman alive. “It could be anyone who bet against you. Someone who thinks commons shouldn’t be allowed to compete. Or it could be—”
“A person who doesn’t like that I didn’t die in the trials.” She shook her head. “It could also be someone like your mother.”
The accusation gouged deeply.
My mother had nodded when I’d asked her to let the protocol violation stand. She’d smiled during the trials like she was watching theater, not slaughter. She most certainly would’ve noticed when I’d followed Eradin out of the ballroom.
“My mother doesn’t send assassins,” I said. “She doesn’t need to. If she wanted you dead, you’d no longer be breathing.”
Eradin’s expression didn’t change. “Then who?”
“I don’t know.” But I needed to know, because whoever it was would try again, and next time I might not be there to stop them. “I’ll find out.”
“Why do care?” She took a step back, putting distance between us.
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
Meckard had been walked out the gates for a few whispered words in an arena.
What would two bodies in a garden cost and which person would the queen eliminate to pay it?
A fountain trickled nearby, water over stone, carefully controlled.
Like everything in the elite world. Except this.
This was chaos I’d stepped into willingly, and I still didn’t know why.
“You should go back inside,” I said. “Stay with the other survivors. Don’t be alone.”
“Is that an order, Sire?”
We were back to that, were we?
I bristled, wanting the authority to command her to safety. I didn’t want to watch her walk back into danger.
But I couldn’t order her to do anything. She wasn’t mine to command.
“It’s advice,” I said. “From someone who just killed two professionals who were going to slit your throat.”
She held my gaze for a moment, then sheathed her blade.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“From a friend.”
“You fought well enough,” I said.
“Without training.”
“You tried. That’s more than most would’ve done.”
Her eyes jerked up to meet mine. “Don’t make it noble. I swung a blade I barely know how to hold and got lucky it connected. If you hadn’t—” She swallowed. “I would’ve died.”
“Yes.”
“So don’t pretend I did something brave.”
But she had. Clumsy and desperate and useless, but she’d pulled a weapon and fought instead of freezing or begging.
It told me a lot about her.
She sucked in a breath and released it. “Thank you.”
“Put it on my account,” I said.
“Your account is getting expensive, Sire.”
“I can afford it.” I tilted my head toward the fortress. “Go inside. Stay with the others.”
“Alright.” She passed close enough I caught her scent under the taint of blood. Soap and herbs and something wilder underneath. The same scent that had clung to her when she’d challenged me in the ceremonial chamber.
When she’d made me question things I’d stopped questioning years ago.
She walked away without looking back. I waited until she disappeared through the garden gate, then turned to the body.
The crown prince, killing outside of sanction, without calling guards, and for a commons woman. If I was lucky, this wouldn’t reach my mother by morning.
A flick of my finger and the body incinerated, leaving nothing but ashes behind.
That wouldn’t take care of the blood in the grass, the signs of struggle.
I pulled the signal stone back out of my pocket and sent the message to my private channels, though I no longer knew which of my channels ran clean. The retrieval crew would come. They’d be quiet and efficient. By morning, there’d be no evidence this had ever happened.
Except for the blood on my blade, and whatever was shifting in my chest that I didn’t have a name for.
I’d eliminated a threat. That’s what I’d tell myself. That’s what I’d tell Mother if she asked.
It was close enough to the truth.
Close enough that I almost believed it.
I followed Eradin to the fortress entrance and stepped inside, watching as she walked down the hall to the ballroom. Then leaned against the wall to make sure she was safe.
A commons woman would never be safe.
Terrant waited outside the ballroom doors, a bottle of Vellish red in his hands, his face blank. His eyes touched my cuff and moved on.
Music drifted through the hall. Strings and laughter and the sounds of people who’d never had to choose between what they were built for and what they wanted to be.
I’d just learned the difference.
I should regret my actions.
I didn’t.