Liana got up and lurched down the alley, leaving a bloody trail behind. She couldn’t outrun the priestess; her only chance was to get out of this quiet corner of Abia and hide in the crowd.
She’d run for her life before, but it had never stung so badly.
Footsteps echoed behind her, her death in hot pursuit.
She broke out of the alley. The street wasn’t crowded, but there were people there, giving her strange looks and steppingout of her way. She briefly contemplated asking for help, but no one carried weapons and there were no guards around. They couldn’t help her.
Liana ran towards the harbor. The sound of Ferisa’s chase disappeared in the growing noise, but still she pushed on, hoping that even a murderous priestess wouldn’t be so mad as to rush to the main square on the day of the royal wedding, swinging a bloody Seragian blade.
In the square, Abia celebrated. Liana slowed down. A dozen long tables were laid out in her path, and the people crowded around them to get free food—white bread, fish stew, roast pork, sweet buns. The aroma of sizzling fat, garlic and herbs, and melted butter made Liana’s stomach growl but there was no time to eat, no time to listen to the musicians who played on a dais, no time to admire the floral garlands and colorful banners flapping in the wind. She needed to find her father, tell him what was going on.
She stumbled through the crowd in a bubble of anguish that kept people at a distance. They refused to even look at her, averting their eyes as soon as their brains registered something was amiss. An intruder in the sea of happy people, a wrong note in a sweet song. Only small children stared—for a little while, before their parents pulled them away. No one wanted to deal with Liana’s bloodied face, her injured arm and torn clothes, the anger and panic in her eyes.
She rushed towards the main gate of the palace. There was no time for sneaking in, no time to search through the maze of corridors: Darin needed to know about the Elmarrans right away. As she approached, two dozen guards poured out of the gate and cleared the crowd gathered before them. “Make way for the king,” they shouted.
Trumpets blared, piercing her ears as she pushed through the crowd and slipped behind the guards’ backs. All she could thinkabout was getting in and finding her father. The cleared path was just a lucky coincidence, and she stepped forward, meaning only to use the absence of the pressing bodies to reach the gate. Her way was instantly blocked by the guards, though.
A horrified gasp surged through the crowd, followed by the ring of steel as the guards pulled out their swords.
“Wait,” someone said.
At that moment the fog that filled Liana’s head finally cleared and she saw herself as a seagull flying above the square might see her. The enormous mass of people filling the square, the path leading from the palace gate to the harbor, the guards surrounding the empty space, the white flagstones reflecting the sunshine. And herself.
Why didn’t she realize what she looked like? Her dress was torn, the sleeves and skirt shredded to ribbons, her left arm covered in blood from shoulder to wrist. She’d lost her sandals, her feet leaving bloody footprints on the white stone. Her hair was a mass of twigs and leaves, her face and neck battered and bruised. And in her hand—in her right hand—she held the Seragian blade.
“What is going on?” The same voice she’d heard before, demanding, annoyed.
“Sire—” one of the guards said.
“Move.”
The guards parted to reveal a tall, bearded, golden-haired man dressed impossibly fine in ultramarine velvet and cloth of gold, the sapphire-and-diamond chain around his neck and the rings on his fingers shining so bright they blinded her. His eyes, deep blue and calculating, took in every embarrassing detail of her appearance, while his right hand rested on the hilt of a sword that didn’t look ceremonial at all.
Liana should have thrown herself to her knees, begging for mercy, but her body refused to cooperate. She stared, frozen,at the dazzling figure. Then her eyes slipped to the brightly dressed, bejeweled crowd behind him. Somewhere, a tiny voice in her head screamed at her not to mention Darin, not to humiliate her father before this man, but her eyes still searched for him in the crowd, in vain.
“Do you plan to attack us?” the king asked, drawing her attention back to him.
She looked at him, at herself, at the yatagan in her hand. Why did she have the weapon? Ferisa had had it in the house, she’d cut Liana with it, chased her over the wall and down the streets to the square. Liana’s eyes searched the crowd, but there was no sign of the priestess. She looked at her hand again, her fingers snug around the hilt.
She was holding a bloody blade before the king on a day when carrying weapons was punishable by death in Abia. If she kept staring stupidly at Amron V, she’d die.
She threw the blade down, it slid over the stone and stopped before the king’s feet.
“This is proof of the Elmarran conspiracy to accuse the Seragians of the attack on Prince Amron. I found this in the house belonging to Roderi of Elmar.”
In the silence that followed, the king nudged the blade with the tip of his shoe. “Is that true, Roderi?” he asked.
A black-haired, black-clad man stepped out from the crowd of courtiers. There was nothing particularly frightening about him, Liana was surprised to discover. He didn’t even carry the sigil of the Dark Goddess, no smoky tendrils, no cloak of darkness. A perfectly ordinary man, with a forgettable face set in a calm expression with only the faintest shadow of confusion.
“I’d say it was a ridiculous accusation if it weren’t so grave, sire.” His tone was unperturbed, smooth. “My whole retinue is lodged at my house here and I assure you none of them are Seragian.” He lowered his eyes to the blade, lips curving indistaste. “As for the yatagan, I have hundreds of them in my armory at Syr, taken from the dead hands of my enemies, but I don’t carry them around.”
It took the king less than a heartbeat to decide. “Hang her,” he said.
Two guards grabbed her before she remembered to beg for her life.
Someone was thinking faster, though. “My lord!” The queen caught the king’s hand, inserted herself between him and the Black Lord. “Mercy, please.”
The king flicked his other hand and the guards froze, but didn’t release Liana.
