Dornar shrugged and walked away to sit on the side of his cot, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped over the back of his head, not looking at her.
She sank onto her cot and ate the lumpy gray porridge just to spite him.
She had taken the last mouthful when the guards began to call attention in the lower levels of the tower. Boots stamped loudly while spurs and weaponry jangled on the winding stairs. Everything she’d just eaten surged upward in an acidic heave, and she had to swallow repeatedly to make it go back down.
She was a princess. The queen, now. And she would not embarrass herself. She stood and smoothed down her heavy black skirts.
The king walked slowly into view, flanked by palace guards in their distinctive dark blue tunics embroidered with silver fighting boars, and stopped in front of her cell.
He was almost unrecognizable. His chestnut brown hair was hanging in greasy strands while the purple-black rings beneath his eyes stood out starkly in his sallow face. His muscular bulk seemed almost corpulent beneath a soiled and rumpled tunic that looked as if he’d slept in it. He’d even forgotten to put on his usual heavy, golden, jewel-encrusted chains of office.
If she had imagined that he had a heart, she might have thought it broken. But this was not like any grief Alanna had ever seen. This was insanity. And rage. He wasn’t mourning Grendel. He was mourning what Grendel had given him.
Ballanor gave her a slow look, filled with hatred. “Wife.”
She stood still, chin up, gaze fixed on a point far behind him. And didn’t answer.
He kicked the iron bars with his heavy boot, and she flinched reflexively.
“Guard, get the door open. I want this done.”
Alanna firmed her spine, clasping her hands behind her back so no one would see how badly they were trembling. “Your Majesty, on what grounds are you holding me? You have no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Ballanor sneered at the guards as they scurried to open the cell door, and then stepped inside with her. “You are guilty of treason.”
She spoke clearly, so that everyone could hear. “I never committed any crime. All I’ve ever done is try to uphold my part of the treaty so that my people could be safe. Your people too.”
Ballanor’s lips were pursed in a thin white line as he ran his hands through his hair. Behind him, she could see Dornar stepping to the front of his cell to watch.
“You tried to kill your king,” Ballanor said eventually, as the door swung open. “All of the palace is witness to how you burned our rooms and tried to drug and murder me. You’re a traitor, and you will die today.”
“No!” Alanna stepped back, away from the hideously open door. “I did not try to murder anyone; I was as helpless in the fire as you were. More even. I’m the queen, as well as a princess of Verturia, and I demand a trial.”
Ballanor shrugged. “A trial is unnecessary. Lanval admitted, in front of a room full of witnesses, to conspiring to kill my father. And you helped to free his accomplices while viciously attacking both me and the Lord High Chancellor. It’s obvious to everyone that you intended regicide. What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”
She hadn’t thought of anything beyond getting Nim and Keely away, of giving them a chance to free Val. And if her life was the price she paid, so be it. But she wouldn’t accept it without a fight.
She clasped her hands together and tried to make him see reason. “I didn’t free anyone, and I didn’t attack anyone—I was unconscious. Please, Your Majesty, I beg you, let me stand trial in the Nephilim assizes.”
There was a flicker of interest in the eyes of the men—even Dornar was watching her with curiosity—and she let out a soft, relieved sigh. Maybe, just maybe, she was finally being heard.
But the king saw it too, and instead of swaying him, it incensed him. He clenched his fists, his lips pulled back in a vicious snarl.
She’d seen that face too many times. The veins standing heavily in the mottled flesh of his neck. The spit gathering in the corners of his mouth. And it always meant pain. She stumbled back, hitting the wall in her terrified rush to get away. Her breath caught in hard, panicked pants as she strove not to cower against the fists she knew were coming.
Then he was on her, his hand tearing her hair as he ripped her head back, the other hand wrapping around her throat as he heaved her up to dangle helplessly against the wall.
“What did you say?”
“I…” She struggled to force the words past the savage pressure on her throat. “The… assizes….”
“I am the king! My word is the law!” he roared in her face as he shook her, cruelly smashing the bruised side of her face into the unforgiving stone.
She scrabbled for footing, desperate to stay upright as he released her throat to drag her by the hair to the cell door.
“Please!” she cried out to the guards, “Help me!”
But no one met her eyes. They looked away, faces blank. In the opposite cell, Dornar turned his head and stared at the wall.
