My vision tunneled. Someone entered the room.
“King Mattock?” Ryssa’s shadow-logged voice whispered from behind her veil.
“Don’t come near me!” I held out a blood-soaked hand. “Go...”
Ryssa’s cloaked form approached. She seemed to look down between us, and I followed her gaze.
Haward.
A flash of him saying, “My brother is not made for royal life. He will need to be handled.”
So callous, so calculated. And then I slashed his throat. Amber smoke surrounded him, removing the color from his face, causing his cheeks to sink in. Then the tendrils of it ran up my nose, and the evil within felt fed.
My mouth turned dry to see the repercussions of my actions—the stiff look of shock written on Sybilla’s cousin’s face. He lay in a pool of murky scarlet, which seeped into the gray grout between the black marble tiles.
“King Mattock, is it you?” Ryssa whispered.
Eerie how her words nearly matched Darvanda’s.
My hands shook. “Yes? Who else would I be?”
My broadsword lay next to Haward’s body, and I reached for it.
“Don’t,” Ryssa ordered. I’d never heard that tone from her before. “Let me take the sword. I’ll hide it. We will smooth this all out.”
What atrocious loyalty.
I deserved to be in a prison cell.
“I killed him?” I asked. Just like I’d killed those women in the pleasure hall, just like I’d killed countless others whose faces haunted my dreams.
“It was not you,” she answered before she picked up my broadsword. “Go clean yourself up. I will handle this, my King.”
With shaking hands, I said, “I can’t...You can’t.”
Her cloaked head tilted. “Trust me,” she said. “Go.”
On trembling legs, I left her there to clean up a mess that was not hers. I deserved worse than a dungeon…I deserved the gallows.
Chapter 33
Sybilla
Iwoke up groggy and weak. My sweat had soaked the sheets—pooling at my hips. Wait…
Oh Sources. No.
The blankets around my bottom werefartoo wet to be from sweat alone. There was a brooding warlock snoring quietly in the armchair beside the cot. Those infuriatingly thick, dark lashes lifted as though he’d sensed me wake.
No, no, no.
“Get out!” I croaked.
Krait leaned toward me. “You’re awake.”
“Out!” I demanded again, mortification setting in that, at some point in my fever-riddled sleep, I’d wet the bed like a fucking child. I wore a different nightdress than I remembered having put on. That heated my cheeks—had hechangedmy clothes too?
He glanced down and seemed to notice the source of my embarrassment. “Oh.”
