Our parents’ men were moving. Subtly. But they were moving.
Swords ready in hands. Axes flipping in the air.
“When this fight breaks out, remember who our enemies are,” Vero whispered.
That understanding—the shared one that made me, Vero, Ivren, and Geord dig our feet into whatever this pathway was made of—spread through my body. Even Rakkel moved forward, her eyes filled with regret. But when none of us flinched away, her chin lifted an inch.
“Do you not know he’s been toying with you this entire time?” my mother continued as if the air hadn’t just shifted—as if decisions and loyalties hadn’t been decided.
I turned off the part of my mind that cared. She could say whatever she wanted about Darcke, but I knew—Ifeltthe truth. Darcke was on my side. No one else’s. Not willingly.
Torden shifted as Borje lifted his axe. Darcke still stood frozen, but it didn’t matter as the world pulsed with tension.
“Get ready,” I breathed.
My mother rolled her neck, preparing herself for a finale I didn’t give a shit about. “Darcke and the king have been using you as a pawn this whole time.”
The words didn’t even settle in my mind, with how ridiculous they were.
Then the first iron-bound fell with a cry as Borje’s axe cleaved his chest in two.
All Hel broke loose in a spray of splintering metal and shouted orders.
Forty-Eight
“Heirs! We protect each other,” Ivren screamed as we were attacked. “No one else!”
“Darcke,” I cried as a blade nearly slammed my own out of my hands. “Move!”
But my second didn’t even twitch as duels broke out around us. I moved to stand before him, parrying every blow directed his way, and Torden took his back, kicking and punching as much as using his axe to keep the chiefs’ men off. I didn’t mind Darcke’s fury this time, because it made my every strike more forceful—my every move more precise.
Our enemies were too many. Blood from the king’s men spilled atop the white pathway, running like deadly rivers down its sides. Vero slipped on the crimson pools, barely surviving a strike from one of Ivren’s mother’s iron-bound. Only because Ivren managed to get his blade in between did she keep her head attached to her body.
“You’re coming afterus?” Ivren screamed. “We are your legacy!”
“Not if you stand between us and the king,” his mother shouted back. “You are no son of mine if you protect him.”
“We’re not protecting him,” Geord screamed. “We’re protecting one of our own.”
I couldn’t help but shoot him a look.
Geord grimaced as he ducked beneath a sword. “What’s to say”—he got a blade out of one of the men’s hands, kicking it down into the water rushing by our side—“that they don’t come for me next? I have no loyalties to these people.”
As I struck a man in the shoulder, finally getting him away from Darcke, an amused exhale left me. Geord’s motivations might be selfish, but he was right.
If they went for one of us, they might well take down all.
“Fuck, there are more coming!” Torden gestured to where dozens of men climbed up the sloping pathway. “Darcke, we need you to move! We can’t protect you and ourselves.”
I turned from where Borje and his men were being overrun, to where our parents were fighting the three warriors who’d been shielding the king, to Darcke.
“You won’t be able to move unless he tells you,” I whispered as his beautifully chiseled features remained still, only his eyes warning away. “We can’t have that.” While Torden fought another man to keep him off my second, I lifted on my toes and pressed a hard kiss to Darcke’s lips. “Because my mother was right.”
His eyes flashed, and there was something bottomless—a pain I could barely fathom—spreading within him. He wanted to speak so badly it made me breathless.
“I’m going to save you.” I placed my hand over his cheek before I turned to his warrior. “I’m going to save him.”
“I’ll”—Torden groaned as he kicked off the man he’d just impaled on his sword—“keep them away as long as I can.”
