“Go ahead,” she dared him. They still moved. “I want you to! I want you to guarantee me your dismissal. Do it! Do it so that I may rescue her from your–”
Hellveig stopped abruptly and realized where she was, just as I noticed the staircase, too.
“I’ll never write him again!” I called.“Please!”I said.
Elías seethed. “I am morally obligated to inform you that you are treading on such thin ice with me, Miss Hellveig.”
She used her cane to brace her position at the top. “What are you going to do, push me?” she asked.
“I have half a mind to, yes,” he said.
“W-What an example to set,” she added, nodding to me. “And how will you explain the murdering of an innocent woman to the Princess?”
“You’re hardly innocent,”he said.“Or did she justfallagain?Did she shut her hands in another drawer? I can’t remember the last excuse, just that it was pathetic.”
“I’ve tried tohelpher,” she said. “She is ungrateful; uneducable, un-!”
“Unaware of how poorly she trudges on?” Elías finished. “Sounds familiar.” He took another clunky step her way, and she took one back, down another step.
“Elías,”I said.“No, no one will believe her.”
“Yes they will,”Hellveig said.
But Elías was not afraid. Not like I was. He was stoic, brave, and unimpressed. Leaning his head one way, then the other, as if the motion somehow enhancedhowhe heard the governess. She began to rant about propriety.
“Your room, Princess,” he reminded me.
“N-Not without you,” I whispered.
“Now.” It was not an option.
Hellveig furrowed her brow, gripping the head of her cane and used it to point at me. “Is this how she will see her Knight forever?” she asked. “Wielding fear as his weapon?”
“You’ve mistaken me for yourself. I wieldmy weaponas my weapon,” he said.
She glanced at it.
“You will not touch her,” Elías began. “You will notyellat her. You will not try to isolate or control her,everagain.”
“You cannot hurt her,”I pleaded.“Please, Ser. They’ll take you away from me.”
She nodded. “Listen to the girl, Blade.”
“Stop it, please,” I whined, clinging to his armor. It was hard to hold.
“This is unacceptable!” Hellveig laughed. “You think that I can be so easily threatened by a suit of armor? That I will stop disciplining the Princess because her knightaskedme to? This is exactly what’s wrong with her! If there is no consequence for her disobedience; how can she run an empire? What if His Majesty dies tomorrow? Then what? Who must we entrust with Oreia’s future? The whore who can’t commit to her husband?”
“She’sfourteen,”Elías said.
She shook her head. “I’m all the reason she has. Withoutme, Svana will hang herself like her mother, and not before too long!”
“That’s not how I’ll do it!” I cried.
They looked at me.
“See?” Hellveig said. “Her days are numbered, just like Eliza’s.”
Elías stilled. He said, “Tell your tongue to forget that name or I will cut it out.”
