Thebraziers’lightwashedover the scene in a hot, wavering glow. Liora turned toward him at the burst of cold air. They both froze.
Wilhelm’s gaze dropped, stupidly, to where Hunter’s body joined his wife’s. The reality of the scene—his most trusted man buried deep inside the woman he had raised from the gutter to share his throne—hit him like a physical blow. His eyes widened, the color draining from his face; he took a staggering step back, his hand lifting blindly to his chest as if searching for a wound that wasn’t there. “Liora,” he said, his voice a torn whisper. “Hunter.” The name tasted like ash. For a heartbeat after the king spoke their names, no one moved.
The enchanted mirror loomed behind them, throwing back the scene in merciless clarity. The intimacy of a moment ago turned to something ugly and exposed under the king’s gaze. “Liora,” Wilhelm said again, as if maybe this time the name would belong to someone else. “Hunter.”
Liora’s heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs. Then a strange, icy calm slid in behind it, as if a second self werestepping forward, taking control. She let her body go loose and sated, as if they had been interrupted only in some innocent game. Slowly, unhurriedly, she shifted her weight and began to climb off Hunter’s lap. “Wilhelm,” she said, voice low and lilting. “You startled me.”
“Startled?” His voice cracked on the word. “I … I startled you?”
She rose to her feet beside Hunter and turned to face her husband fully, making no move to cover herself. A smear of saliva gleamed along her throat where Hunter’s mouth had been. In another context, she would have enjoyed the way her husband’s eyes flickered over her body, unsure where to land.
Now his gaze was not hungry. It was broken. “I—” He dragged a shaking hand over his beard. Color had drained from his face, leaving his skin a strange, mottled gray. “How long?”
Liora tilted her head, considering. She could lie, of course. She could say this was a single lapse, a moment of madness. But the truth held its own view. “Long enough,” she said.
Something inside him seemed to tear. “I am your husband,” he said hoarsely. “I raised you from nothing. I gave you a crown, a place at my side, my child.” His eyes cut to Hunter. “And you. You were my brother in arms. I trusted you with my life, with my kingdom, with my family. And this is what you do with that trust?”
“Majesty—” Hunter started, scrambling up, hands out as if he could somehow rewind the last ten minutes by sheer force of will.
“Don’t,” Wilhelm snapped, the word laced with more steel than he’d used in years. “Don’t you ‘majesty’ me, not while you’re—” His hand flung outward, as if warding off the image.
Liora watched him with interest, even as a small, inconvenient pang twitched somewhere near her heart. She hadexpected anger, yes. Hurt. Perhaps accusations. She had not expected him to look so … small.
“I should have seen it,” Wilhelm said. He laughed, an awful, raw sound. “The way you lingered by her chair at feasts. The way she smiled a little wider when you entered a room. The way your eyes went to her, even when you were speaking to me.” He took a step into the room, the heavy furs of his cloak brushing the floor. “I told myself I was imagining things. That my queen was too wise, too devoted, to risk what we had built together for—” His voice faltered. “For this.”
Liora’s lips tightened. “What we built?” she repeated softly. “You think you built this?”
“This kingdom bears my family’s name,” he said. “My ancestors—”
“Your ancestors . . .sat on cold chairs and played at war while their wives starved in back rooms,” she cut in. “You did not raise me from nothing, Wilhelm. I clawed my way here with my own two hands.”
“By spreading your legs,” he said, and then flinched as though he’d struck himself.
Liora’s eyes sharpened. Hunter shifted, instinctively moving half a step between them, though there was no sword yet in the king’s hand. “Careful, husband,” she said. “You know who truly rules in these rooms. On that throne.”
“And is this how a ruler behaves?” he demanded, gesturing wildly at the cushion, the discarded clothes, Hunter frantically pulling up his trousers. “Like a tavern whore rolling on the ground with the captain?”
Hunter flinched at the word; Liora’s expression went very still. “You were always weak,” she said. There was no heat in it, just flat assessment. “Easy to guide. That is why I chose you. A man eager to worship is easier to rule than a man eager to command.”
“I loved you,” he threw back, the words ripped from him. “I would have done anything for you. I gave you everything you asked for.”
Hunter shifted again, uncomfortable. “Majesty,” he said, to both of them, trying to find some way to stitch this rift closed. “Please. Let me—”
“Be silent,” Wilhelm snapped. His hand went to the sword at his hip, the movement half instinct, half something darker. The scrape of metal leaving leather seemed louder than it should have been.
Liora’s gaze flickered to the weapon, then back up to her husband’s face. His knuckles were white around the hilt, the blade trembling.
“I could have forgiven almost anything,” he said. “A lie, a single moment of … of madness. But this? In our chamber? With him?” The point of the sword lifted, not quite steady, to aim at Hunter’s chest. “You took my wife,” Wilhelm said to him. “You took my trust and ground it into the floor. By rights I should hang you from the outer wall and let the crows take you.” Wilhelm lunged, overcommitting. His weight came forward. For a split second, his throat was exposed, unguarded, the pulse there jumping like a bird’s.
Hunter’s hand closed not on the king’s arm, but on the hilt of his own dagger. He lunged in behind Wilhelm, his arm snapping around the king’s chest and yanking him hard back against his body. Wilhelm grunted in surprise—and then the dagger’s edge kissed his throat.
There was a terrible, suspended moment where steel met skin, where both men could have chosen to stop. Then Hunter’s grip tightened. The blade pulled across in a swift, practiced motion. Wilhelm’s next inhale turned into a wet, choking sound. A sheet of red opened along his neck, blood welling bright andhot. It sprayed in an arc, spattering Hunter’s hand, the stone, and Liora’s bare torso.
For the first time that morning, the queen flinched. Her hands flew up instinctively, and for a single, terrifying heartbeat, her mask shattered. Her eyes went wide and white, pupils trembling, gasping in sharp breaths as the sheer irreversible reality of the act crashed into her. The gallows loomed in that silence, closer than they had been since she was a beggar on the streets. Then she swallowed and the steel slammed back down over her gaze.
Wilhelm’s sword fell from numb fingers. His hands flew to his throat, trying uselessly to hold in the life spilling out of him. His knees buckled. Hunter eased him to the floor without meaning to—muscles still remembering how to catch this man, how to protect him, even as they killed him. The king’s eyes rolled, unfocused, toward the ceiling. His lips moved around words that never quite formed. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. Then his body jerked once, twice, and went slack.
The quiet fell, heavy and thick. It was a suffocating silence, broken only by the crackle of the firelight in the corners, indifferent to the life that had just ended. The room was suddenly too hot. The cloying sweetness of Liora’s juniper oil mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of fresh copper—a scent that coated the back of Hunter’s throat and made him want to retch.
