Renick
My pulse hammers, blood roaring loud in my ears. “Search—?”
“It’s protocol,” the steward says idly, marking something off on his parchment. “No one enters the king’s presence without being searched, of course.”
The moment one of the guard’s hands closes around my booted ankle, my muscles tense, ready for a fight—
“There,” the steward remarks, nodding his head to a table loaded with weapons. “You’ll get your…dagger,”—he narrows his eyes at the rusted metal—“back afterward. Now, name.” He holds his quill over the scroll.
I swallow. “Renick Ashbourne.”
He scrawls it on the parchment. “Off with you.” He literally shoos me into the throne room.
I glance back once at the table, at my dagger just lying there. I could grab it. I could rush past the guards…and I might make it halfway to the throne before I’m struck down.
Seven hells.
Unsure how to proceed, I enter fully into the throne room, and my jaw falls open. Eyes wide, I take it all in. The throne room is obscene.
Vaulted ceilings textured with gold. Columns of pale marble veined in silver, soaring upward like the bones of some ancient beast. Tapestries the size of cottages drape the walls, woven with scenes of hunts and conquests.
Crystal chandeliers drip from the ceiling, each one worth more than every life in my village combined.
And everywhere…people. Courtiers in silks and velvets, draped in jewelry, their faces painted and powdered. They lounge on cushioned benches and lean against pillars with goblets in hand, watching me with bored expressions as I wander toward the center of the room.
The stone floor feels slanted beneath my mud-caked boots. My footfalls echo, the tarnished bells on my hat make a crude jangle, catching the gleam of light through an arched window. I’m leaving tracks on the king’s pristine floor with every step. Some petty part of me gloats at this.
The same steward announces me—or tries to, pausing to look my way with a raised eyebrow.
“Your name?” he asks, quill poised over the parchment.
My mouth parts to remind him, until I realize he’s asking for a stage name. A jester name. Something clever.
“Ren,” I tell him. “Just Ren.”
There’s no reason to give him anything other than that. Standing here before the king, hand fisting at my side, I want mine to be the one known for ending this smug bastard’s reign.
Even if I now have to kill him with my bare hands.
Staring right into Aldric’s narrowed blue eyes, his smirk tipping his lips, I feel as though I can.
Besides, I’m going to be dead within the minute anyway, so what does it matter?
“Now presenting,” the steward calls out, his voice ringing through the hall. “Just Ren. The…jester.”
The pause is telling. He looked at me, looked at my clothing, and clearly couldn’t bring himself to say the word without that hesitation. A few courtiers snicker. Whispers circle the room. I feel their judging eyes like a blade lodged into my back.
As I walk toward the center of the room, my gaze lands on the elevated dais of dark stone, where, three steps up, sits the fucking king on his throne.
King Aldric Vaelstrom of Kravenholt himself.
I’ve never, not once in my miserable existence, been this close to him.
He’s taller than I expected. More toned, too.
For a young king who’s been catered to his whole life, I admit, I was expecting a more delicate build, weaker.
No matter. Even if I’m malnourished and lack his muscular definition, I have enough loathing in my shriveled heart to take ten of him down.
His crown sits on a head of white-blond hair, just like the late Queen Mother before him. His eyes are pale blue, ringed with deep gray. Adorned in dark crimson and gold, a goblet rests loose in one hand, and he’s watching me approach with a lazy, half-lidded expression.
I hate him immediately. I hated him before, in the abstract—the faceless king whose taxes bled the countryside. But now, seeing him in all his excess, draped in lavish wealth, my hatred grows sharp teeth.
My hand twitches at my side. I mourn the loss of my rusty blade. Maybe I could shove one of my bells down his throat, watch him choke on it. Then I spot my opportunity just a couple feet from me. A dinner knife lies on a tray. I start to ease toward it, ready to snatch it.
Only when my eyes land on the throne left of the king, I stop moving entirely.
And the world falls out from under me.
She sits in a throne slightly smaller than his, slightly lower—and she is nothing like what I expected, either.
I’d heard the rumors around town of her, of her dark dominion and its wicked dealings. In an effort to describe her, the men at the tavern had used the word beautiful. They’d also said sad. Neither word is adequate. Neither word even belongs in the same language as the deity I’m staring at.
The Princess Seravyn is pale and dark-haired and still, carved from something as ethereal as moonlight and misery.
She wears a black gown, as if she’s in mourning, as if she arrived in this kingdom grieving a loss.
A delicate crown of dark silver and amethyst sits in her silky hair, and her hands are folded in her lap, calm, motionless—the echo of a girl who’s stopped living.
I stop breathing, the sight of her unmaking me where I stand.
It’s like she’s trying to make herself small enough, quiet enough, where the world might forget her.
Impossible.
Because her eyes… Angels above.
Her eyes are dark and deep and devastating, lined with something smoky that makes them look bruised, and they’re staring straight through me. Down to my gods-damned rotten marrow. So utterly haunted, as though she left herself somewhere far away.
I swallow thickly.
I stop before the base of the dais, the opportunity to pocket the knife lost. I’ve stopped moving. Stopped breathing. The court is watching me. The king is watching me. The steward coughs, a nudge that screams perform, fool.
I should do something. A joke, a tumble, a cartwheel—anything. I should buy myself enough time to execute a real plan…
Instead, I bow.
It’s not practiced or graceful in the least. Deep and clumsy, one hand pressed over my chest, the bells on my hat jingling in sad little protest. But I’m not bowing to him.
I know somewhere in the trench of my sternum that if this princess ordered me to kneel right now, I’d fall to my knees.
I straighten up and grab my hat before it falls, once again meeting those dark, impossible eyes. Focused for the first time since I entered the room on me. Her expression registers that strange melancholy the flyer claimed always surrounds her.
And I suddenly want nothing more than to banish it, to make her smile.
I truly am a fool, standing here before her in a dead man’s motley with mud on my boots, staring at her like she’s the first breath to enter my lungs in days. The first real thing I’ve seen in ages.
Which, divines help me, she is.
“Well?” the king says, his deep voice thick with wine and amusement. “Get on with it, fool.”
My jaw clenches tight.
The silence stretches. A courtier laughs. Then another. I feel the heat crawl up the back of my neck, and somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, the part still capable of rational thought is screaming at me to make this his very last obeyed order and get on with it.
“I…uh—” I clear my throat. “I had something prepared. It was—” I gesture vaguely, as though I can summon the words from the air. “It was going to be funny.”
More laughter from the court. Not with me. At me.
“The truth is,” I hear myself say, and my voice has a too raw quality for this gilded room, “I’m not actually a jester.”
The laughter dies out. The king raises one dark eyebrow.
“I bought this motley two days ago with the last coin I had. The bells sound awful. The hat smells like something died in it—and I have reason to believe something, or someone, did.” I tug at the collar, which is fraying.
“I can’t juggle. I can’t tumble. I once tried to tell a joke at a tavern and a man threw a potato at my head.
Hit me right here.” I point to my temple.
“Drew blood. The potato, I mean. Not the joke. The joke just died a lame death.”
No one laughs.
But she—the princess—her lips twitch. Just barely. A flicker at the corner of her pouty mouth, so small I might have imagined it.
And something ignites in my chest. Something reckless.
The court remains silent, glassy eyes staring at me. A ferret-faced man in fine motley near the dais watches with narrowed, beady eyes. The king’s expression has shifted from one of amusement to a hard edge of annoyance. As if he’s trying to decide whether I’m clever or simply—in fact—just a fool.
I ignore every single one of them and look at her.
Only her.
Her fathomless eyes are more open now, her lips slightly parted, and there it is—devils below, take me now—the faintest smile graces her mouth. It’s small and startled. Involuntary. Cracking through that porcelain stillness like the first fracture in ice before a thaw.
She’s smiling.
At me.
And my heart vaults against its cage of bone.
Everything else falls away. The king. My botched plan for vengeance. The life I may have forfeit just by walking through the throne room doors. All of it goes white and silent, because she is smiling and it’s the most devastating thing I have ever seen.
I need to leave. I need to turn around and walk out of this room before I do something more reckless than simply standing here gawking at the king’s betrothed with my heart doing things in my chest that make it feel like it might just explode.
I bow again, too quickly, and turn to go—
And trip over my own gods-damn boot.
I hit the stone floor with a grunt and an oath that echoes off every gilded surface of this room. The bells on my hat ring out in a mournful, jangling chorus. Pain lances my knee. My palms slap the rough stone and slide, smarting with a hot sting.
My next whispered curse is met with silence, whole and merciless, a whip of pain across my ego. Without a backward glance, I push to my feet.
Then one sound fractures the silence, stopping my heart.
I turn, watching as a tinkling giggle escapes past her soft, delicate lips.
Another taut beat of quiet, then the court erupts with a roar of laughter. The steward pinches the bridge of his nose.
But the king, he’s not laughing—he’s watching me closely, a calculated look to his icy eyes.
My eyes return to her. One hand presses over her mouth, her dark eyes bright above her fingers, her shoulders shaking with the effort of containing it.
It’s such a beautiful sound, like real bells, not the dull ones on my hat.
It’s warm and startled and alive, and the entire court goes quiet once again just to hear it, like they’re hearing an angel for the first time.
Princess Seravyn is laughing at me, with mud on my boots and my dignity in pieces, and it mends something broken in my chest.
I gave away my angel to get into this room, and the room has bestowed me a new one.
The king surges forward in his throne, his grin so wide it distorts his handsome features. “Him—” the king says, jabbing a finger at me.
Jester hat askew, knee throbbing, I glance around, knowing this is the moment before my death. Somehow, Aldric has realized I’m a fraud, and he’s about to have me run through with a sword. I’m at peace with this, so long as I get to stare into her beautiful, smiling face as the blade cleaves me.
“You are a fool,” the king says, waving his goblet. Wine sloshes over the rim, staining the dais red. He beckons his steward forward. “Find him quarters. Feed him, clothe him. Whatever he needs. He’s made my bride laugh. Announce it to all.”
Shock nearly drops me to my bruised knees. Wait—fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
A servant hauls me toward the other side of the throne room, my legs unsteady. The court is buzzing at the sad princess, laughing at the worst jester in the kingdom.
As I’m led farther from the hall, I risk a glance back.
The princess is watching me from her throne, her hair shielding her face once again. And yet, right before I’m escorted past the door, I see the hint of her sweet smile resurface.
So soft and lovely and—gods, I don’t have a word for it. For the way this girl is looking at me, like I’ve cracked open something she’d sealed shut.
The smile is gone now, tucked away behind that careful stillness, but her eyes hold the ghost of it.
I walk out of the throne room with my heart slamming against my ribs and a feeling in my chest like falling, like drowning, like being dragged beneath the surface of something I don’t know how to survive.
I came here to kill a cruel king.
Instead, I fear I may’ve just damned myself to a whole new realm of hell.