I had a wild urge to turn away, to take your hand and flee, but a sense of inevitability had fallen over the scene, as if every step and breath had already been decided.
I walked to Yvanne without looking back.
There was a gap at her right hand, where Sir Ancel should have stood. He was never far from Yvanne’s side, especially when I was away—for her protection, he said, but then he would let his collar fall open so that I could see the marks she left on his throat.
Yet still: I did not believe you. I knelt before the throne and bowed my head.
“And so, you have returned to me at last.”
“Yes, my queen.”
“And you have slain the last dragon of Dominion.”
“Yes, my queen.”
“And you have brought me the lost grail, which they say restores all that time takes from us.”
“Yes, my queen,” I said again, and lifted the grail between us. I heard the court inhale all together, like a many-headed animal. They had heard enough ballads to know when they were witnessing one.
Yvanne stroked my face once, gently, and I closed my eyes against a rush of shame and devotion.
I heard her call softly for wine. Then scurrying steps, the glottal splash of wine into wood. A single, delicate swallow, then silence.
The queen of Dominion stood and addressed her court. “So long I have prayed for one thing and one thing only,” she said, and her voice was not the frail, cancerous whisper I recalled. “And now, by the grace of God and Sir Una, I am given it:time.”
I opened my eyes just as Yvanne pulled back her veil. The last time I’d seen her face it had been fatless and gray, the skin stretched like cobwebs between the sharp bones of her skull. Her hair had been so thin I could see the blue veins of her scalp, and her eyes had been a pair of candles at the bottom of a well.
But the face beneath the veil was smooth and young, her eyes blazing once more with vital purpose. She smiled down at me, and all the years between us seemed to slough away. I was a girl again, lost and desperate, struck dumb by the sight of her.
From outside came the high, wild scream of a horse. The queen’s beautiful face creased in irritation. She hissed something in a language I didn’t understand. The horse screamed again, and this time I recognized it as the warning Hen gave in battle, when enemies were approaching unseen. I heard the madcrackof hooves against the Keep door—and then sudden, sickening silence.
Oh, Hen.
Only then, too late, did I look away from the queen.
He came at my blind side—no fool, was Ancel—and by the time I turned my head he had already cut through the crowd and thrown back his hood. There was his dyed golden hair, there was his proud and perfect face, there was his blade falling through the air. I watched its descent with a strange, detached lassitude, almost like boredom. It would land above my collar, right where my neck met my shoulder.
But then—youwere there, between us. You took the blow awkwardly across the middle, your body bowing around it. Ancel flinched. You staggered.
I was on my feet before you hit the floor. Ancel met my eyes. He smiled, and it was not his glittering court smile, nor even the caustic snarl he wore in private. It was sad and tired, and strangely gentle.
“Sorry, love.” The tiniest lift of his shoulders. “Make it quick.”
I would like to say I hesitated, before I killed the only brother I ever had, but I didn’t. Valiance was drawn and the blow was struck before either of us took another breath. His head smacked heavily on the stones, still wearing that weary, sorry smile.
Then I was crouched at your side, rolling you onto your back, and you were—not dead, after all.
You were speaking, a near-whisper that was difficult to hear over the desperate rush of blood in my ears. “It’s alright, I’m alright, it’s really quite shallow—I think he pulled the blow, to be honest—”
“You…” I paused to swallow something; I decided it was fury. “Youbastard—what were you thinking? Why would you—”
I stopped speaking then, because there was a knife in my left lung.
The blade had entered my back between the fourth and fifth ribs, right below the wing of my shoulder. A second knife entered closer to my spine, angled upward, and I found myself admiring the precision of it. Someone, at least, knew where to find the heart. Ancel had chosen his fellow traitors well.
“Una? What’s—”
I coughed. Blood splattered across the glass panes of your spectacles. I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t seem to draw enough air, and there was something wrong with my vision. I closed my eyes, briefly.
