William descended the steps of the dais and closed the distance. “Get up, woman. I bend the knee to no one.”
Katarina rose. “My whisper is only for you, William.”
“Move back.” He waved a hand at the soldiers, the action flippant, but Keris sensed the other man’s unease even before he drew his sword, holding it loosely in his hand. “She’s only an old woman. I’ve no fear of her.”
I do,Keris thought, seeing the gleam in Katarina’s midnight eyes as she slowly got to her feet.
William bent his head, and with one hand pressed against his cheek to hold him close, Katarina began to whisper.
Everyone in the room leaned closer, like starving people reaching toward a meal of gossip. Everything that happened today would spread through Verwyrd like wildfire, the theatrics of this moment growing as they were whispered in taverns and tearooms, hovels and estates, until all of Harendell knew what had happened here today. Just as Katarina likely intended it. She knew her enemy.
And she knew them well.
Keris was as close as anyone but he could not make out her words or read her lips, despite the entire throne room having fallen entirely silent. William’s lips turned bloodless and his eyes dilated, chest rising and falling rapidly as her truth poured fear into his heart.
Katarina finally fell silent and William straightened. No one spoke as they waited to see what he would do. Alexandra stood frozen before her chair, expression so blank she might have been carved of marble, but the pulse in her throat fluttered like a wounded bird.
“Well?” Ronan finally demanded. “What did she say?”
William didn’t answer, his green eyes fixed on the floor.
“William!” Ronan snarled. “What did she say? Did she confirm Alexandra’s guilt?”
The king of Harendell twitched, and Katarina said, “Well, William? What did I say? Tell your people my truth. Tell your allies what I whispered in your ear.”
Yet Keris heard the real meaning behind her words:Choose between your mother’s life and proving your father wrong.
William seethed hatred, but above all else, he seethed fear.
“Speak the truth!” Ronan shouted. “Tell us what she said!”
The king of Harendell moved. Faster and with more force than Keris had thought him capable of, William gripped his sword hilt with both hands and swung.
The edge of the blade carved deep into Katarina’s neck, striking against a vertebra with a gruesome thunk. William jerked the sword out with a curse, and Keris grimaced as blood splattered him in the face.
Screams filled the throne room, soldiers rushing forward even as the nobility fled backward. Keris only reached down to pick up his dog before she could be trampled, watching the scene play out.
The queen of Amarid had dropped to her knees, blood spurting from between the fingers she pressed against her catastrophic wound. Yet it was not fear of imminent death that Keris saw in Katarina’s eyes but triumph as she used her last breath to whisper to Alexandra, “The master should always fear the protégée.”
Whether it was because she believed no one would notice in the chaos or whether her hubris had grown to make her feel untouchable, Alexandra gave a small smile.
And William’s blade struck a second time.
It sliced through Katarina’s hand and her neck, and her head toppled to the floor with a heavy thud. Her body stayed upright for a long moment, blood pumping from the stump of her neck until the heart in her chest finally realized the end had come.
Then the queen of Amarid slumped to the floor.
Keris didn’t move as the pool of blood spread out, a slight angle in the floor causing it to flow toward him and around his boot.
William’s boots slid in the blood as he stooped to catch hold of the queen’s hair, but as he lifted her head, it came away from the wig and rolled to a stop before Ronan’s right boot. Katarina’s eyes stared sightlessly, her gold and jeweled teeth bright in the sunlight. The king of Harendell gave a wild laugh and cast the wig aside. “She told me my mother was innocent, my good man. That’s what the hag whispered in my ear. She called you a liar.”
That wasn’t what Katarina had said. Keris knew it. Ronan knew it. Every goddamned noble in the room knew it. But the king of Cardiff said nothing. Likely the wise course, but silence had never been Keris’s forte. “You said you’d spare her life if she told the truth.”
“She whispered the truth in my ear knowing you pricks would never believe me when I repeated it,” William spat. “You should be toasting my name, Veliant. It’s not just Ronan’s family who is avenged, it’s yours.”
Keris glanced down at the head, his skin still crawling with the certainty that, somehow, Katarina had had the last word.
“You lie!” Ronan drew his sword, and a dozen Harendellian soldiers moved between him and William. “Alexandra isguilty.That is what the Crimson Widow told you! Admit it!”
