The room exploded in a thunderous cheer as I stared at Myrin, both in shock of her choice to reveal herself, but also at the overwhelming sense of determination and passion that her speech had pulled from me. Not only was it inspiring, calling the soldiers to action to fight and save others not in their own lands, but it was filled with a strength that I knew all of the soldiers would pull on for time to come.
Tears welled in my eyes as Myrin’s gaze fell on mine. The weight of her eyes were filled with a barely disguised hope, and relief oozed from her, evident in the way her shoulders loosened and color returned to her cheeks. She feared their reactions. Not because they posed a threat to her, but because she loved her empire and her people.
The fact that she was met with such a welcoming response didn’t surprise me, however. Because Myrin had led this empire successfully for years, regardless of her gender.Shewas the reason the empire prospered to the extent that it did, and her subjects seemed to recognize that.
Turning her gaze from mine, she offered a small smile to the crowd and turned to walk back towards her throne. I looked at Dakath, and I saw the determination and emotion in his own gaze. We’d both experienced horror and trauma at Malakai’s hands, and I had a feeling her speech affected him as much as it did me.
Dakath’s mouth fell open, as if he were prepared to speak, but a sudden explosion of sound cut him off entirely. The door to the throne room clattered open, and my head snapped in that direction confused about the new source of noise in the room. When I heard a bellow from one of the guards near the throne, my stomach dropped hard, a sensation of dread filling me. My head whipped back around, and I watched as a man darted out from behind the guards with a sword in hand.
He was tall with broad shoulders and an ugly sneer on his face. The shortsword in his hand had a nasty look to it, the metal reflecting in the warm glow of the throne room. My mouth fell open as he moved, brushing past guards and skillfully dodging hands that reached for him. If his graceful movement wasn’t a telling enough indicator of his background, the way he easily cleared the steps to the dais, swinging his sword in a brutal arc certainly did.
I staggered forward, a cry catching in my throat as Myrin turned toward the warrior, an eyebrow arching as she opened her mouth to speak.
“No!” Elijah cried, and my eyes widened as the man whipped his sword with efficient brutality toward our friend. Surprise coated her expression before it was muted by pain, followed by the briefest moment of shock.
“Myrin!” I screamed, jolting forward another step as the sword sliced cleanly through her neck—decapitating her. The man’s sneer gave way to a triumphant, mad smile as his eyes danced back and forth between his dripping sword and the lifeless body collapsing before him.
A low roar filled the room, murmurs of shock gave way to exclamations and finally shouts as her head rolled down a few steps to my feet. A scream lodged in my throat, and the noise in the room dulled to static noise around me. Shock permeated everything in my being as my knees gave out and I melted onto the floor.
Blood pooled from around Myrin’s slumped body as I looked down into her blank, lifeless eyes, and my body began to shake and my breathing turned ragged. Her crown laid a few feet away, having fallen off, and her dark hair was soaked in the bloody trail that followed her demise.
How…how had this happened?No, this wasn’t real. This couldn’t be possible. She couldn’t possibly be dead. Surely, I was trapped in a nightmare. Yet no matter how hard I tried to rationalize it, I knew the truth.
He had killed her. He had killed Myrin.
My gaze moved slowly toward the bastard in question. A sneer pulled his lips into a taut line, and he flicked blood from the tip of his sword in my direction. My eyes caught on the gleaming instrument, fixated on the damnable piece of metal that has been used too…
My stomach churned at the thought.
The piece of metal that had been used to…To kill Myrin.He had fucking killed her.
Breathing through my nose, I felt my stomach turn into a pool of simmering acid at the scent of the blood spilling from her body, strewn haphazardly at his feet.
Her gold robe was soaked in red, and when his dark boot gently prodded her frame, I looked back up at him, seeing a clinical yet smug expression on his face.
He was proud of himself.
Suddenly, and without warning, a rage I had never experienced roared up inside of me, violently—I would fucking slaughter him.
Chapter Twenty-two
Elijah
“You bastard!” A guard roared out, snapping out of his shocked state. The animosity coloring his face at the realization of what happened left him looking absolutely feral.
Our Empress had been killed—in a brutal manner that would be forever seared into our memories.
When he lunged forward, I boomed out a command, “Don’t!” and infused as much strength into it as I could. He halted in his steps as I muttered, “His death will come, but I require answers from him first.”
My heart hammered in my chest so loudly it was hard to discern the thoughts and emotions that threatened to consume me over the roaring of the organ. My thoughts were those of the Empress’s right hand, because even in her death, I would hold that title in my heart for as long as I lived, with fond memories and a respect that had grown over all of our years together. Why had I told the guard to stop? I yearned to see the murderer dead. However, I was Myrin’s right hand, through and through, and killing him isn’t what she would have wanted right now. She would have insisted we pry all the information we could out of him, to better understand our enemies so that we might prepare for their next strike more effectively.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if people didn’t listen to me, but to my relief, the command seemed to makeeveryonehalt.
The killer took the moment of stillness as a chance to escape, scrambling over Myrin’s body and slipping in the pool of her blood covering the ground like a crimson pond. Shouts of alarm sounded, and I quickly called for two of the guards nearest to him, “Phin, Dru, apprehend him!”
They were on him in a split second, each grabbing one of his arms before shoving him to his knees roughly. The guards sneered down at the assassin when he let out a bone-chilling laugh, one that made me want to shove my sword down his throat until he was gurgling and choking on his blood.
“I will never give you the answers you seek,” he taunted as the edges of his mouth curled up into a smile. “That bitch is dead, and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact. My own death won’t bring her back to you.”
