Namreth is another matter.
Across the chamber, he’s watching the scene with a bored look on his cold, handsome face, so like and unlike Dietan’s. He stands up from his throne, and a wild wind stirs around him as he stalks the room, killing masked servants, one after the other, stealing their breath with a twirl of his finger.
Slowly, Namreth makes his way through the party, a nightmare come to life. Blood stains the floor. Servants are snapped like twigs.
Tess tried to warn us.
We’re not faster or stronger than the wind. We cannot beat the Unseen Death.
Tears blur my vision. This was a mistake. We should have fled the city. We should have run far away during this banquet, rather than return to the site of so much suffering.
Namreth stops to lift the mask from the face of a slender girl of maybe sixteen. She trembles as he shakes his head, sighing. “Did you really think you could win against me? Have I not done my best to make you all understand? Have I not crushed every breath of dissent all these years? All of you live only because of my mercy.”
Then with a snap of his fingers, she falls to the floor, dead, the breath stolen right out of her.
He stalks through the hall, death walking—emotionless, pale, precise. He rips through bodies, breaking them to pieces.
It’s sick. He’s sick.
Even the soldier who’s holding me is stunned by the king’s cruelty. He loosens his grip, and I pull free.
I roll out of his reach even though he makes no attempt to follow me. Like the rest of those assembled, he’s transfixed by Namreth’s rampage of destruction. The soldiers, the guests, the servants—everyone is paralyzed. I creep away and resume looking for Dietan.
Oh, goddess, don’t let him be dead.
I elbow through the crowd, past rebels and loyalists alike, shoving past the last of the guests who are still pressing toward the doors to flee the banquet, desperate to be free of the slaughter.
I duck between two guards, nearly colliding with a fellow servant—and then I see him. He’s alive but surrounded by a handful of dead bodies and a phalanx of soldiers, leveling spears and swords at him. There are so many of them. Too many.
His wolf mask is torn off, and he’s bleeding from a cut on his forehead. He doesn’t have a chance, he only has his knife not his sword, but that doesn’t stop him. He is brave and fierce, but if we don’t find a way to turn the tide, he’ll soon be dead.
“Dietan,” I call, running up behind him.
“Aren,” he breathes when he sees me. My heart thunders with joy that he’s alive.
We stand back-to-back, just the two of us against the whole damn world. And hell, it might have been easier to fight the rest of the world, because at that very moment, Namreth sees us.
He twitches, and a glint of recognition crosses his face. “The prince and the barmaid,” he says as he strolls through a wave of people who fall dead, one after another, in his path.
I kneel to grab a knife at my feet. It feels too small in my hand, much smaller than a frying pan. It’s useless against Namreth, but I hold it up anyway, Dietan at my side. How did we ever think we’d best Namreth?
The mad king’s cold eyes bore into mine.
Namreth raises his hand…
The sensation starts with a tingling in my throat. Then a tightness in my chest. Then…Harvest Mother, I think as the air rushes out of my lungs like a bellows being squeezed. My head spins and I choke. I’m going to die.
So, this is the Unseen Death.
Namreth stands so nonchalantly, as if he’s enjoying watching me suffer. Maybe he’s killing me twice as slowly as any of the others. Or maybe I’ve lost all sense of time. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of my pain. Even though I’m on my hands and knees, I won’t beg.
“Fuck you,” I say with my last breath.
He doesn’t flinch. His eyes are fixed on me. His face is steel and iron, malice and hatred.
I’m going to die. I can feel it. The world goes black at the edges, and my head—my whole body—is on fire, like I’m going to explode.
So, this is the end. Maybe Namreth feels it, too, because he’s grinning a madman’s grin, relishing my death, dragging it out.
