Sweat slicked her palms—though her body shivered with cold—as Ayla pressed her hands over the wound in his chest. Blood spilled from between her fingers, persistent as it fled his body. Her nailbeds stained a gruesome red as it rushed forth still, dripping onto the floor and soaking into her dress where her knees pressed painfully into shattered marble.
“Please… No! Goddesses, please, don’t take him,” Ayla pleaded to the Goddesses, voice warbling through her grief and panic, but there was no answer.
He was already gone.
Ayla leaned over the king, the man who she had believed to be her father for so much of her life. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, fingers slipping away from the wounds in his chest. Defeat smoothed across her brow, settled over her body as she wilted.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen…” Ayla hiccuped, her throat thick with tears.
A still silence pressed over them.
The air turned frigid, ice crackling across the floor in frosted spiderwebs that might have been beautiful—so fragile and sparkling—had it not been a harbinger of the Gryffem.
Her breath fogged, stilted and puffing, settling over the king like a burial shroud. The chandelier guttered then died. Darkness washed over them as the light left her father’s eyes, leaving them glassy and vacant.
Ayla stood, her chest heaving as she tried to suck in breath after useless breath. Her lungs were a popped balloon, filling and filling but never satisfying—never calming her racing mind. She pressed her fingers hard against her eyes, smearing the lids with blood as she tried to quell the ache building behind them.
“No… No, no, no, no…” She gasped, her denial slipping forth again and again.
Blood squelched, sticky and cold in her slippers as she stepped back. Away from him, away from the empty husk of the king.
He was dead. Her father, the man who had claimed her as his own for twenty-five years, was simply gone from the world, taken as quickly as a snuffed candle. There was not even any trace—any trail of curling smoke—to prove that he had once been alive.
Aylawas frozen, locked within her own panicked brain. She braced her hands against her knees—willed the blood to return to her spinning head.
Warm fingers wrapped around her shoulder, steady and strong.
Safiya touched her with the comfort of a lover, but Ayla flinched away. The spymaster—the woman Ayla had fallen in love with, had planned a future with—had dealt the killing blow. She had plunged her dagger into his chest time and again, yet her hands were clean.Howwere her hands still clean—still perfect, soft brown—when she had taken his life?
“Ayla…” Safiya's whispered voice was loud in the heavy quiet.
A gasping sob ripped free of her, followed by an incredulous laugh. Ayla lifted her head to look Safiya in the eyes. She fixed her expression into one of cold fury, the emotion rising above the pain and indecision. Her voice was a low rumble, throat clogged with tears and vitriol. “I never want to see you again.”
“Ayla, please, I had to do this. You know that I did. I told you how he ruined me. It was his fault that Alora died. I had no other choice.” Tears slipped down Safiya’s cheeks now. The sweetness of her revenge—the relieved smile that had overtaken her face—was a thing of the past.
“No. You had plenty of choices. You could have chosen to walk away. You could have chosen to return home to your family. You could have chosenme. Instead, you killed my father, and you expect understanding from me?” Her laugh was humorless.
“He was an unfit leader. He allowed his people to suffer for so long. I have done Acsilla a service. Surely, you can see that.” Safiya was pleading now, hands clasped as if in prayer. Reverent.
“That’s the thing about love, Safiya.” Ayla straightened, the skirt of her dress heavy with the weight of the king’s blood. Her hands were stained to match. “Love does not determine between good and evil. Iknowthat the king was not right for this kingdom. Iknowthat he did not love or protect me as he should. But that does not stop me from loving him, all the same. He was my father, and you are the one who took him from me. I will never forget that.”
Safiya stood there, mouth agape but without any words to say.
“Did killing him finally heal what was broken inside you?” Ayla asked the question as if she already knew the answer. “Did his blood wash away your darkness?”
“I don’t know.” Safiya’s head dropped, tight curls falling into tear brimmed eyes.
Ayla hummed, unsurprised. “You do know. You just don’t want to admit it. Killing him did not heal your heart. You only succeeded in cutting me from it.”
The guards reanimated in the ensuing silence, shock draining from their slack faces. They hardened and moved to the king’s body, lifting him with too little care. His limbs dragged limply, head lolled. Ayla watched until he was out of sight, overwhelmed by the crushing feeling that this was not what was supposed to happen.
“Guards, deliver Claudian Sgalier to the dungeons under the charges of high treason,” Harkin ordered.
“On what authority?” The King’s Guard questioned. They eyed him warily.
“On the authority of Princess Seren of Acsilla,” Harkin barked.
Seren nodded her assent, still pale with shock at the revelations about her origins and panting against the pain of her wounds. The wounds Ayla had dealt unto her.
