“Are you mad? I’m coming to see?—”
“You will stay here.” The prince startled me by tugging me to his chest. “I do not know who he is, but he is no friend of yours and he will not come near you.” The prince faced my guard. “Am I clear?”
Dorsan lifted his chin. “Yes, Highness.”
Heated anger flooded my face. “You do not get to put your neck at risk and demand I sit back to watch. Don’t walk away . . . Jonas Eriksson, stop. Damn you!”
My protests were wholly ignored as the prince disappeared down the staircase. When I tried to follow, Dorsan held out an arm. “I agree with the prince. Do not put yourself at risk, or it will put him at risk if he is distracted by keeping you safe.”
“What says he will need to? I know how to lift a blade,” I gritted through my teeth.
“Not today you don’t, My Lady.”
When Dorsan positioned himself in front of me, I let out a hiss. “If I would not stain my soul by harming you, I would devour you in darkness, Dorsan of House Nardin!”
“Understood.” He didn’t move in the slightest.
I slammed the door and ran for the window. With care, I cracked the pane just enough to hear, but the day was silent beneath the morning breeze.
In a breath, anger bled to fear, then to a bit of awe.
They moved like a looming shadow. Without rustling a single hedge, a hooded man—from his build and height I took him as Von—slipped unseen onto the path where the assailant might try to flee. From another corner Sander and the man who’d been reading at the table drew nearer, both crouched low. Darkness rolled over the cobblestones like a murky flood, but I didn’t know who controlled it.
My heart stuttered when Jonas materialized at the front of the archway.
Jonas’s voice was low, deep, a barbed threat. “Looking for someone?”
The invader startled, but with hardly a pause, he reached for a knife on his leg and had it launched at Jonas in the next breath. My prince ducked and the assassin took the moment to flee past him.
He did not get far.
The blade Jonas carried flew after the man, and dug deep into the attacker’s thigh. He cried out in pain, stumbling.
“You’ve nowhere to go,” Jonas said with raw hate when more of his people slipped into sight along the edges of the garden.
The attacker tossed back his hood. His hair was pale and silken, ears pointed sharply.
A Ljosalfar elven.
He spun toward the window of my chamber. “He deserved to have you! Forgive me. I tried to save you before you destroy us all.”
The alvers closed in, but the elven man freed a wretched sort of laugh, like he was delirious with glee, and sprinted forward.
“Stop him!” Jonas shouted, and tried to meet the man’s pace.
It was over so swiftly. I winced and clenched my eyes when the elven raced with all his strength straight into a pillar with a jagged, wrought iron sconce on the side. The points pierced through his chest, his throat, impaling him with a wet, strangled gasp.
Bile teased the back of my throat. Blood fountained over the stones of the pillar and the elven’s body convulsed for one breath, then another, until he went still.
Dead.
Chapter 20
The Nightmare Prince
My mother could seethe final memories of the dead when a bit of bone was crushed onto her tongue.
There wasn’t a true reason to read the dead elven’s memory—most of us had been there for it—but perhaps there would be enough for my mother’s mesmer to see his actions just before his demise.
