I wanted to draw my sword, to rely on the skills I had honed with the Guardians, but the space was too cramped, and there was too little time. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of my longest dagger instead.
Light from the hall flooded the music room, glinting off my blade just as the guard came into view. Harkin reached for me, but I lunged too quickly. Safiya was quick to my side. She dropped to her knees, a hand pressed flat to the floor. The stone beneath the guard’s feet cracked, and he stumbled. With an upward motion, I sliced through his shoulder.
He clutched at it with a groan, already opening his mouth to yell for his fellow soldiers, but Harkin stole the breath from his lungs with one twist of his ready hand.
We converged upon him, drove him down into the ground.
Safiya stifled a scream, biting hard on her lip until blood welled. The guard had landed a cut on the back of her bent knee.
“Are you alright?” I asked in a panicked whisper.
“Fine,” she choked out. “Finish it.”
I turned back to the guard. He still struggled, though he was heavily outmatched.
“I’m sorry,” I said—such meaningless words—and I plunged my dagger into his heart.
Harkin tore the guard’s tunic and bound Safiya’s wound tightly. Already, blood soaked into the pale fabric.
“Saf…”
“I don’t want to hear it. I’ll live, and I’m not letting you do this without me.”
“We have to go,” I urged them.
It was only a matter of time before the other guards came looking.
Chapter thirty-five
Ayla
Screams awoke her. They echoed through the palace, punctuated by the stomping of armored boots on polished floors. They rang like broken church bells, discordant and panicked.
Ayla tore herself from her bed, threw her blankets to the floor when they tangled around her legs. She tripped over them, only just catching herself against the foot of the bedframe.
Anxiety pierced her lungs and twisted her stomach in knots.
Something was terribly wrong.
Her door rattled in its frame as heavy hands pounded against it.
“Ayla!” Prince Claudian’s voice boomed, an inevitable, demanding crack like thunder splitting the night sky.
She wrenched the door open, fingernails catching as she fought against the tremors that wracked her body. Sweat trickled down the line of her back, soaking her dressing gown.
Claudian began speaking before he had fully entered her bedchamber, his speech harried and without preamble. “I have lied to you for a very long time, and I have regretted it every day of your life. I only hope that telling you the truth now will have made it all worth it. I pray to Lunanya and Soliana that you may forgive me, and that the Gryffem will not come for me, for what I have done.”
Lunanya and Soliana. The celestial gods. The Moon and Sun Goddesses of Szrestia, from whom, at the birth of Stellány, the Star Daughter, all mágik and the universe had been created. Ayla knew her uncle was no saint, but surely he had not done anything so terrible as to be dragged by Gryffem to the Underworld.
“Uncle—” Princess Ayla was promptly silenced by his raised hand. She pressed her lips together, fingers lacing against the bitter air spilling from the hall. It tasted of sweat and smoke.
“That is precisely the lie, dear girl. I have deceived you, our family, and our kingdom since the moment of your birth, but I cannot continue to hide the truth from you. I did not mean to tell you this tonight, but my hand has been forced… I cannot wait a moment longer.” He seemed almost nervous, a quality she had never seen in the unflappable prince.
“What is it?” Ayla heard the blood rushing through her ears, felt it racing through her veins as her anxiety spiked anew.
“King Tarquin is not your father, Ayla. I am.” He said the words so simply. For a moment she thought she misheard him, but he waited expectantly, the words hanging in the air between them.
Her first instinct was to deny it. It could not be so. Confusion echoed through her bones. Her tongue went suddenly dry, and a whine rose in the back of her throat.
