His eyes moved over my head, to where you fought the whole of the Queen’s Guard. The best of her warriors, storied and glory ridden, against a woman who had already fought two battles today. I still hadn’t looked at you, but I could hear the bellows of your lungs working hard, roughening with exhaustion, and I could see Ancel’s face whitening with horror. You were not unscathed, then.
I wrenched my ankle free and dove for the book. My hands slipped sweatily on the wood, but then I had it—Ihadit—and all I needed was you. I whistled shrilly, desperately, hoping you could hear the signal over the clamor of battle.
But there was no clamor. No clash of blades, no cries of pain or anger. The hall had fallen suddenly and eerily quiet, save the heavy, ragged breathing of one person.
I turned slowly, heart seizing, fighting the urge to shut my eyes like a child afraid of the dark—but you were still standing. Your hair had been half torn from its braid, viciously enough that the roots were bloody, and your left arm hung limply at your side, but you were still alive.
There were bodies humped around you like red hills, and Hen—who had broken free of his attendants—had posted himself at your back, gore painted up to his fetlocks. You were easing Sir Gladwyn gently from theend of your blade, and there were watery pink tracks down your cheeks where your tears had slicked through the blood.
You looked up at me—at the book, clutched tight to my chest—and your face filled with longing. To go home, to go back to a time when none of this had happened. To the very beginning, you’d said.
You had taken one step toward me when Vivian said, sharply, “Alright, that’s enough.” Then she clapped her hands twice, and there was an odd ripple in the crowd. I looked, and saw cloaks thrown back, arms lifting, burred arrowheads pointing directly at you. I knew by your sudden and total stillness that you’d seen them, too: Archers hidden among the courtiers, holding the kind of crank-wound crossbows that could punch straight through steel. That wouldn’t be invented for another two hundred years.
We had not anticipated her, after all. My limbs felt suddenly stiff and wooden.
Vivian stood from her throne, brushing irritably at her skirts. She said, in modern Mothertongue: “Well, you’ve fucked this one up beyond all hope of repair, haven’t you?” She looked out at the frightened remnants of the crowd.
Half of them had crammed themselves through the door, and the other half were huddled against the walls, staring glassily at the dais. There was no legible story here, no playwright’s careful staging to tell them who were the villains and who were the heroes. Their champion had become a devil, covered in the blood of her comrades, and their queen’s white gown was turning red at the hem.
Vivian rubbed her temple, as if she had a very bad headache. “We’ll have to start over. This time maybe I’ll take one of the children along with me, as an incentive for good behavior. Toss me that book, please.”
I didn’t understand who she was speaking to until I felt the butt of a crossbow strike hard between my shoulder blades. I hadn’t seen the men at my back.
One of them wrested the book from my grasp—my nails left pale, desperate scores in the wood—and the other wrenched my arms behind me. I thrashed, contriving to knock into one of them just as he made the toss. The book fell short of the dais, landing instead where Ancel lay wanly in a widening pool of his own blood.
The queen looked at the book. You looked at the queen. I looked at you.
Your face was waxen and pale, but familiar. It was the way you’d lookedon your bier, I realized: Beyond fear or anger or hope. Beyond everything, save death.
Abruptly your eyes left the queen to study the archers now lined up like pallbearers at the edge of the crowd. Your expression grew a little distracted, as if you were doing sums. Could you kill the queen before the arrows killed you? Could you reach her before she reached the book, and escaped?
You nodded to yourself.Yes.
You wouldn’t survive it, but neither would Vivian. And if you couldn’t have your future or your freedom—if you would never see your children again—at least you would have your revenge. You would be a tragedy, still, but you would not be hers.
“No!” My scream was hoarse, shattered in my throat. “Don’t do it, please, Una—I can’t—” I threw myself forward against my captors, twisting my arms backward in their sockets. One of the archers cursed and drove his fist into my kidney. I doubled over, still screaming, unsure whether it was pain or grief or sheer fury that I would have to watch you die again.
Then: theclopof unhurried hooves. A mild, sinister whinny, which I associated with imminent injury. A rush of air above me, followed by the split-melon sound of a bone breaking.
The archers’ hold loosed instantly. I staggered upright to find Hen standing nearly atop me, all four legs once again on the ground. There was something slimy and grayish on his hoof, like brain matter.
The queen was cursing at her men. “Don’t waste arrows on the fuckinghorse,keep her in your sights—don’t youdare,Mallory.” She’d seen me staggering toward the book and swept up her long white skirts, ready to race for it.
Both of us stopped, abruptly, because the book was no longer on the flagstones. It was in Ancel’s long, graceful hand.
Sir Ancel of Ulwin was no longer especially beautiful. His hair was sweat soaked, pressed unflatteringly to his skull, and his skin was the color of unbaked pastry. He turned the book curiously in one hand, studying the device on the cover. “This is how she does it, then.” His voice wouldn’t have been out of place at a dinner party, idly polite. “This is how she makes it happen again and again.”
I wet my lips. “Yes.”
His eyes raked over me, unimpressed. “And you must be Owen.”
“How did you—”
He gestured toward you with his chin. “She talks in her sleep.” This hedelivered with an expression that might have been a leer, on a man who wasn’t mostly exsanguinated. “Surely you’ve noticed.” I wished, fervently and jealously, that you’d put your sword through his heart instead of his shoulder.
His attention returned to the book. He ran his thumb over the circle of the dragon, rubbing at the place where its teeth swallowed its own tail. Then he craned his neck at an awkward angle, so that he could meet Vivian’s eyes. He smiled up at her, and I saw suddenly why he had been named the Knight of Hearts. It was not a rakish smile or a charming one, but a smile of pure and perfect sincerity. In Ancel’s shifting, twisted character, warped by centuries spent as nothing but a sharp tool in a cold hand, this much was true: He loved Queen Yvanne the First.
“Fret not, my queen,” he said, lightly. “I remain yours.”
