Liora looked down at the crimson streaks across her breasts and torso. The contrast was stark, almost beautiful in a sick way. She touched two fingers to a rivulet, lifted them, and studied the color. It was darker than the wine she’d drunk at dinner, thicker than the oil on her skin. She had grown up around blood—her own, other people’s. It had never frightened her. Now, it stirred a complex mix: revulsion, triumph, inconvenience. “Idiot,” she said.
Hunter jerked his head up. “I—he—” He scrambled back from the body, leaving smeared handprints on the floor. “He was trying to kill me. I was only—”
“Protecting yourself?” she supplied coldly. “Is that what you will tell the council when they find you kneeling beside a dead king, your knife at his throat, your trousers undone?”
His hand flew to his waistband, as if only now remembering his state. He fumbled to fasten himself, face turned pale. “I thought—” His voice broke. “You said—”
“I said nothing,” she cut in. “You acted. Without thinking. As usual.”
He stared at her, as though seeing a stranger. “You told him he was weak. You goaded him. You said he would be killed if he fought me.”
“Yes,” she said with a shrug. “Hardly my fault if he insisted on proving me right.”
“Liora,” he said desperately. “Tell me this is what you wanted. Tell me this—”
“What I wanted,” she interrupted sharply, “was a king who would do as he was told and a captain who understood which way the wind blew. At the moment, I have one corpse and one fool.”
His mouth opened and closed. The blood on his hands was beginning to dry, darkening to rust. “I thought,” he whispered, “that I was giving you what you wanted. With him gone, you—”
“Would be a widow with a dead king and a living lover,” she finished. “How long do you think it would be before they whispered that I’d had you kill him? Before his brothers and cousins came knocking with armies, claiming the throne had been usurped by a whore and her pet swordsman?”
He flinched at the word, more at the coldness in her voice than the insult itself.
She crossed to the door and listened for a moment. The corridor beyond was quiet. No shouts. No running feet. No one had heard. Good. “We don’t have long,” she said briskly. “Help me.”
“With—what?” His voice sounded hollow.
“Making sure I don’t hang,” she snapped. “Do you want your little act of passion to lead us both to the block? Or do you want me on the throne, able to shield you from the consequences of your own stupidity?”
Something in him rallied at that—at least enough to move. “What do you need?”
“First, we clean me.” She gestured at the blood painting her chest and arms. “If anyone sees me like this…” She went to the washstand and poured water into a basin, dipping a cloth. The water turned pink as she wiped at her skin, methodical as ever. “Open that window,” she said over her shoulder, nodding toward the narrow casement set into the far wall. “We’ll say an intruder came in that way. A hired blade, perhaps. A robber.”
“A robber who somehow made it all the way to the royal apartments without being seen?” Hunter asked, even as he obeyed, shoving the shutter open. Cold air knifed into the room.
“The assassin will never be found,” Liora said. “We will weep and curse and say he vanished into the night. People will imagine whatever monster frightens them most. The truth will never occur to them.” She wrung out the bloody cloth and tossed it into the hearth. The flames hissed and flared.
“Move him,” she said.
Hunter stared at her. “He’s heavy.”
She gave him a look. “You have carried him before.”
That memory twisted the knife in his gut. Once, on that northern field, Wilhelm’s weight had been a reassurance—proof that the king still lived as Hunter hauled him out from under a dying horse. Now, the limp drag of the corpse was obscene. Heswallowed bile and bent to the task, sliding his arms under the dead king’s shoulders and heaving. Wilhelm’s head lolled, blood smearing across Hunter’s tunic. He carried the body toward the bed, as if they were merely putting a drunk man to sleep.
“On the floor,” Liora corrected. “By the window. Swordsmen don’t usually crawl into bed to be murdered.” He adjusted course, lowering the king’s body awkwardly near the casement.
Liora crossed to the spot where the sword had fallen and picked it up delicately by the hilt. “Here,” she said, setting it near Wilhelm’s outstretched hand. “He must look like he tried to defend himself.”
Hunter watched, numb, as she stepped back, assessing the tableau: the dead king in his tunic and boots, the drawn sword nearby, the open window with frost creeping along the sill.
“Next,” she started and then said to herself,Scream.
He blinked. “What?”
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing, you oaf. Next, you leave.”
“Leave?”
