You rose smoothly, uninjured, without arrows lodged in your ribs. “Don’t do this, Ancel, please.” Your face was pale and frantic, a prophecy of grief. “Can’t you remember? We’ve done this before, over and over. Don’t make me do it again.”
There was, perhaps, a flicker of doubt in Ancel’s face. Then it passed, and he said, with a shrug, “Sorry, love.”
He meant it, I thought. But he was a man who had ceded all his choices tosomeone else, who believed he had none left remaining to him. His motions were the motions of a wind-up doll: inevitable, preordained.
You nodded once, to show you understood, and did not blame him. Then you struck.
It was a hard blow, and fast—but not fatal. Ancel smacked it aside with the flat of his blade and turned the motion into a nasty sweep at your legs. You were forced to step back toward the dais, and the crowd inhaled like a single, many-throated animal.
You recovered before their breath was fully drawn, lunging up and under Ancel’s guard—and finding nothing but air, as he slipped, eel-like, around the blow. You circled one another, guards up, and I felt my brows lowering in confusion.
I wasn’t sure how many times I’d seen this duel fought, but I was sure it had never lasted longer than twenty seconds. It wasn’t even a duel, really, so much as an execution with extra steps.
But this—this was the kind of fight beloved by bards and bloodthirsty young boys. The two of you came together and apart, losing advantage and then gaining it back, striking and defending with flicks and flourishes that caught the light. A slim cut appeared along Ancel’s lovely cheekbone. The tip of his sword made a tiny red gouge in your jaw.
Your blade hit his and screeched upward, until your hilts were tangled and your faces were brought close. You struggled, as if you were evenly matched, as if you weren’t strong enough to snap both his pretty wrists.
Ancel hissed, beneath his breath: “Finish it, damn you.”
“Yield, you ass,” you answered, calmly, and I understood: You didn’t want to kill him, and he didn’t want to survive.
Maybe he never had. Maybe he’d betrayed you because he hadn’t been able to disobey his queen, and then he’d let you kill him because he hadn’t wanted to live with it. Because there were always some choices remaining to us, no matter how small and bitter.
Vivian was leaning slightly forward in her seat, watching the fight with an expression of false shock. She hadn’t noticed me yet. A weakness of hers—assuming that the only players on the stage were the ones she put there. I slipped my hand inside my trouser pocket.
But then Ancel swore, viciously, and I looked away to find him disarmed, sprawled at your feet. Valiance was buried in his shoulder, pinning him like a moth to the board. You drew out the blade. “Yield.”
His eyes cut once to the throne, then closed, as if in pain. Then he rolled desperately away, scrabbling for his fallen sword, unable to yield while his queen watched him.
You permitted yourself a brief, black grimace, and then you hamstrung him. It was a neat blow, almost clinical, drawn like a scalpel across the backs of both legs. Ancel went down, and this time he did not rise again, and never would.
It was an abrupt ending to the fight, brutal and unromantic. The court murmured uncertainly to itself. Even they felt the strangeness of the moment, like a wrong note in the middle of an old tune.
You ignored them, turning to face Vivian with something furtive and stupid in your eyes. Hope, I thought—that she had been telling the truth, after all. That she would let us both go as she’d promised.
But then, from behind the throne came a great metal slithering, as the Queen’s Guard drew their weapons in perfect synchrony. Bodrow the Giant, who was even taller than you, and Carnock the Elder, who had slain the White Boar with a single spear-throw. Sir Gladwyn, with his dark skin and his winged lynx shield. You looked at them—your comrades, your friends, your fellow heroes—and the hope withered in your eyes.
Vivian had never intended to let you survive this fight. She wanted a tragedy, and she would have one. I’d known it, and so had you, and the only reason we’d played our parts at all had been to reach this very moment: when the Queen’s Guard would rush out to meet you and leave the throne unguarded.
I heard the sharp clap of metal on metal, a roar of battle fury, the rising panic of the court—Hen screaming again, and the hollow pop of hooves on flesh—but I didn’t look toward you. Couldn’t, if I wanted to keep going. Instead, I took the last three steps to the throne, pulled Vivian’s slim silver knife from my pocket, and pressed it across her windpipe.
“The book. Now.”
Vivian’s nostrils flared. “Goodness, Mallory! I’d almost mistake you for a protagonist. But let’s not—”
“Shut up.” My hand was shaking. Not with fear, but with the effort it took to keep myself from burying the knife in her neck, hilt deep. But the book was still in her lap, and all it would take was a drop of blood.
One-handed, keeping the knife to her throat, I knocked the book from her hands. The cover clacked and slid across the stones.
Vivian’s eyes met mine, and I knew a moment’s pure joy. We had outplayed her, at last, and now she was going to die. My hand tightened around the knife—
And a pair of arms grabbed me around the knees and bore me to the ground. My head smacked against the flagstones. My spectacles crunched into the bridge of my nose.
I twisted to look behind me, blinking through shattered lenses, and caught the glint of flowing hair, as false and yellow as fool’s gold. I wanted to laugh or cry, or maybe hamstring him again. “Oh, for God’s sake, man.”
It was Ancel, dragging his useless legs behind him, squirming pathetically on his elbows to defend his queen. He’d left a smeary red trail behind him, and his hand was clamped, with fanatical strength, around my ankle.
“Still?” I kicked out and caught his injured shoulder. He screamed a little, helplessly, but didn’t let go. “You still think if you’re good enough and loyal enough and fuckingblondenough, you’ll be her favorite? Look at Una”—I kicked him again, harder—“look at herand see how the queen treats her favorite.”
