Thirty-six
Ariadnne
Brentworth raised his hands in surrender, despairing at Ariadnne’s inattention and dismissing her early that afternoon.
‘I don’t know what to do with you when you are like this,’ he grumbled. ‘The Council expect me to work a miracle if you are to be fluent in Braemish by next year.’ He turned back to his musty tomes and let Ariadnne slip gratefully from the room, under the watchful eye of her guard.
Sascha found her lounging in her quarters.
‘Here you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was looking for you. Melixanthe requested you meet her for dinner tonight. She had me set the table in the small dining room. Said she had some good news for you.’
She bustled around the room, straightening cushions.
‘I hope you’ll not say anything about last night? She’ll have my head if she finds out I lent Nieve the key.’
‘Oh, Sascha.’ Ariadnne smiled. ‘I don’t think you need to worry about Melixanthe.’
Sascha raised her eyebrows and Ariadnne forced her mouth to behave, to stop smiling at the thought of Nieve. She felt giddy with joy after their night together, and now knowing Melixanthe was trying to help them, perhaps she could even arrange times for them to be together—
‘I can promise you won’t be punished for helping her.’
Sascha looked visibly relieved. Ariadnne’s... mother… could be quite intimidating.
‘Dinner should be ready in an hour,’ she said with a warm smile before heading for the door.
An hour had never passed so slowly.
Anticipation plucked at the corners of Ariadnne’s mind as she readied herself for the meal.
This would be her first chance to be alone with Melixanthe since her revelation, a chance to ask all the questions that had been circling her brain that afternoon.
She brushed out her hair and braided the sides in the way she knew Melixanthe liked.
She chose a midnight blue jerkin with silver detailing, pairing it with dark leather breeches and examined herself in the mirror.
Why did she feel nervous? Melixanthe hadn’t changed.
And yet she had, in every way that mattered.
As the castle clocks struck eight, Ariadnne made her way down the grand corridor with her guard, towards the dining room. It wasn’t unusual for Melixanthe to ask to dine with her there, and she supposed tonight’s meal was significant enough to warrant the setting.
Without warning, a sharp pang of fear reverberated through her chest. The bond. She stopped. She didn’t know how she knew, but Nieve was close by.
A second wave of shock jangled through the bond, jarring and sharp, setting Ariadnne’s teeth on edge. Her hand clutched her chest, gasping at the sudden burn while her guard looked on in puzzlement.
Melixanthe. She needed Melixanthe. The dining room was just around the corner. She picked up her feet and ran, leaving her guard in the dust.
The metallic tang of blood slowed her as she rounded the bend, a dreadful sense of foreboding pooling in her gut. Fully alert, she stalked towards the door.
Her fingers tingled as she touched the wood, a muffled clattering audible through the oaken panel. With a grunt, she flung open the door.
A heartbeat later and she wished she never had. Wished she’d run the other way and not looked into the waiting, macabre scene.
Nieve.
Nieve.
She stood, twin swords drawn, over the bloody body of Melixanthe.
Over her mother.
Anguish, pure and unadulterated spiralled through Ariadnne’s breast, ripping her into bleeding pieces. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to run and run and run and go back and stop this from happening.
Her thoughts screamed loud enough that Nieve glanced up, eyes wide as something like guilt flashed across her perfectly carved features. She took a step back, dropping the blades. Raising her hands.
‘No… you shouldn’t have to see…’
Any further words were lost as a low, keening wail filled the room. It took a moment for Ariadnne to realise it was from her own lips. Nieve had killed her.
No.
‘What have you done?’ she cried, falling to her knees. She clutched at her midsection, trying to staunch the pain as the reality of what she’d lost overwhelmed her. ‘How could you… How could you?’
‘Wait.’ The sob escaped Nieve’s lips, desperate and pleading, followed by waves of anguish that came crashing through the bond as she tried to reach out to Ariadnne, whose draconic rage surged—if she could have clawed the bond from her chest, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
‘She was my mother!’ she screamed. The revelation fell from her lips like broken glass as the fragile future she had dared to imagine shattered into jagged shards. ‘No. No. No… Get out! Get out! You are dead to me!’
Nieve’s eyes shone with fear as she took a step forward. ‘No…This isn’t what it…’
Ariadnne couldn’t hear. There was a roaring in her ears loud enough to mute the diorama before her, blurring the edges until it became dreamlike and surreal. She stumbled through the fog to Melixanthe’s side, slapping away Nieve’s hands as she crouched by her handler.
‘Melixanthe…’ she whispered, her eyes raking Melixanthe’s weathered face and wishing her brown, sightless eyes would flutter.
There was a gaping, leaking wound in her chest, right above her heart.
From this her life had spilled out across the flagstones, creating a crimson, sticky puddle that haloed her form.
The edges were beginning to soak into the rich brocade of the nearby rug, giving it a vivid, crimson stain.
Beneath Melixanthe’s prone form, a tiny flash of white caught Ariadnne’s eye.
Her vision swam through her tears and, blinking, she reached out a tentative finger to touch the white object—the corner of an envelope, stuffed into Melixanthe’s waistband as if she had tried to hide it in a hurry.
Without thinking, Ariadnne pulled it free and pushed it into her own pocket.
Nieve was making no move to go. Instead, she was holding her hands out. ‘Ari, I didn’t… I know how this looks…’ she was saying with an edge of panic.
Ariadnne’s dragon was thrashing and trying to break free, and it took every shred of will she had to hold herself together.
She hated her.
With pounding feet, her guard burst into the room, gasping as he took in the scene. He yelled to raise the alarm. Soon he was joined by the two from the door, all equally pale.
‘Hold her!’ one of them cried and leapt to grab Nieve.
She didn’t fight or struggle. Instead, she held her head high, a sliver of tears glistening on her cheeks as she whispered something lost to the roaring in Ariadnne’s ears.
They forced Nieve’s arms behind her body, casting a binding rune before the larger guard manhandled her towards the door.
Ariadnne didn’t care. She couldn’t look at her. Whatever reason Nieve had would never be enough for the atrocity she had committed.
She stared at the body of the one person who had always been there for her.
She shuffled closer on her knees until they were adjacent to the blood pool, and she took Melixanthe’s outstretched hand in her own.
The General had no weapons drawn, and her face was fixed in surprise.
She had been stabbed in cold blood. Nieve was a coward.
Ariadnne was motionless when the other guards arrived. Followed by more bodies and the heavily robed forms of important people.
One such robe shuffled forwards, and a wizened, gentle hand was laid on her shoulder.
‘Come, girl…’ Councillor Vesta said quietly, applying a little pressure to pull her back from the scene.
‘You don’t need to see this.’ With his other hand he gently extracted her fingers from the corpse.
Ariadnne shuddered, letting out a shaky breath as she tilted her head, his form hazy through her tears.
What was he saying? She only knew that she didn’t want to leave Melixanthe like this.
‘Who can take her to her rooms?’ Councillor Vesta addressed the crowd gathering in the room. From the back, Kayla pushed her way forward, her slender form squeezing past Councillors and guards alike.
‘I can, sir.’ She bowed her head. ‘I’m from her company.’
Ariadnne dragged her eyes up at the sound of her voice.
The usually laughing lines of Kayla’s face were still, and she was terribly pale with a slight tremor edging her voice—a mirror to the stone-cold grief clutching Ariadnne’s chest. The other faces in the crowd were unfamiliar spectators.
Kayla was the only one of her company to have arrived, the only person in the crowd she would consider a friend.
‘Very well.’ Councillor Vesta nudged Ariadnne towards her. ‘Ariadnne, it is time to go to your quarters. I understand that this is a shock, but let us look after Melixanthe. We’ll take care of this.’
Take care of this. As though it was an inconvenience and not the most devastating loss Ariadnne had ever felt.
Her feet were heavy, she didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave her mother’s side, but everyone was staring. It was too much; the looks, the hushed voices and piercing eyes. She weakly took the hand Kayla held out to her and let herself be led from the room.