He turns and our eyes meet. Even this far away, all I feel from him is profound love and acceptance. He places a hand on his chest, mouths the wordsmy queen, and bows into the wind.
I swivel back before I ruin everything. Before I run from this good man who would be king to the great man who owns my heart.
Desmond steps beneath the boughs in a simple white tunic and leather breeches, his arms spread wide. “Are you ready, darling?”
I know how this ritual ends, with us both saying our vows, then Desmond laying me down upon the soft needles and taking my body as his. Claiming the seed of novillum within me. Our lives will synchronize, and we will rule.
The moment seems too banal for so grand an outcome. But maybe that’s what makes it easier to accept when Desmond places his hands on my waist, presses his forehead to mine, and whispers the vow I must repeat back to him.
Despite everything, my voice is steady. “By the life in my veins, by the will in my heart, by the persistence of my soul, I choose you as king, Desmond Macán. I am yours to command.”
His chest thumps as I say the vow. I am not foolish enough to think it thumps for me. But perhaps over time we could learn to love one another. He pulls back, cups my cheeks, and smiles. A stunner. Broad and dazzling and full of joy and wonder. It’s regal. Beautiful, really.
He’s about to start his own vow when there’s atwang.
And athump.
He jerks forward, grunting, and his smile turns red before it falls away. His brows furrow as he glances down at the arrow pierced through his chest.
Oh, no. Oh,god.
He falls forward, and I try to catch him, but he’s far larger and heavier than me, so we tumble to the ground instead. Iron-rich warmth splashes my face, my hair, smears my jacket and hands and pants. There’s so much. Too much.
I maneuver his head into my lap, screaming for help before I stop myself.
What if it was Torvil? What if he’s about to kill me, too? Can he extract the novillum from a dead woman? I’m not keen to find out.
I scan the pines for the archer, but Lachlan reaches us first, bursting around a tree then skidding through the needles, chest heaving and eyes blown wide.
“Help,” I croak, pressing my hands against Desmond’s chest, trying to keep his blood, hislife, in. It’s not working. He’s too still. Growing too cold.
Lachlan crouches beside me, panicked. “Is any of that yours?” he barks, his usual cool calm completely abandoned as his hands rove over my skull, my back. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” My hands are slippery and this is not working and there’s still a killer out there and I can’t … “Help him,” I scream at Lachlan. “Help him!”
More rustling surrounds us as Aowen and Sabre come crashing through the trees. Aowen wears the most placid expression I’ve ever seen on her face. Which means below her surface churn eruptive levels of fury.
Sabre’s dragging someone behind her in a headlock, and when the man lifts his silver-haired head?—
Sir Quinn.
The cloaked third by the river with Torvil. So obvious I want to scream.
Sabre knocks Sir Quinn to his knees, then fists his hair and pulls his head back, giving Aowen full access to the throat of the man who, based on the quiver of arrows over his shoulder, killed her brother.
The birchwood bow bounces against Aowen’s back as she stomps over and hooks her thorn under Sir Quinn’s throat. Sabre pushes him into it, and a thin red line trickles into his collar.
“Look at him.” Aowen’s voice is glacial, but Quinn—the stupid bastard—snaps his eyes shut. “Fuckinglook at him!” she roars, digging the thorn in further.
Sabre pries Quinn’s lids open, forces his head toward me and Desmond, and Quinn’s lips curve into a lunatic smile. His voice is a laborious wheeze. “And thus concludes House Macán’s bid for the crown. How pitiful an ending.”
Aowen’s beautiful face transforms into a gleeful, terrifying mask. “Less pitiful than yours is about to be.”
She whips back her arm, then slams the thorn into the corner of his neck, right beneath his left ear. She drags it slowly, deeply toward the other side.
I may be more immune to violence and gore than I was several months ago, but this is too gruesome to witness. I look away and cover my ears, but it’s not enough to mute the squelching gurgle of Aowen sawing through Sir Quinn’s throat.
A hand lands on my shoulder with gentle, comforting pressure. I’ll recognize that touch until my bones have crumbled to dust. I press my cheek to Lachlan’s fingers, tense until he whispers, “It’s done.”
