Blind to Renard, she thrust her bound hands against the stone wall with a tinkling crash. The glassy noise surprised the king enough that he hesitated at the top of his knife’s deadly arc, his gaze shooting to her hands for clarification—
Right as she stabbed him in the cheek with the jagged edges of broken vial.
The king’s head wrenched back, his cheek a bloody mess, and Geneva used every ounce of leverage and pressure she had to smear blood, poison, and glass shards straight for Renard’s gaping mouth.
“Pure hemlock!” she screamed at him, while kicking at his off-balance feet. “Let’s see if it’s potent, shall we,boy?”
Renard’s footing failed and he fell to the floor, catching himself on palms full of steel—keys and dagger clattering melodically against the stone as his body went down with a graceless thump.
The king’s profile was awash with blood running from his cheek to his lips as he gathered himself and lunged for Geneva, who dodged, only to trip as he got her off balance, backhanding her with the keys.
He hauled her up and jammed her into the corner where two of the cell walls met. Then his knife sliced under her ribs hard enough to lift her off her feet.
Her whole body was suspended against the stone. Geneva’s eyes widened, lips parting soundlessly, as her skull thudded against the cradling corner, her hair a messy cushion around her as he thrust upward, twisting the dagger.
“You have survived many men, Geneva, but you won’t survive me.”
After one more twist, Renard removed the knife that kept her in place. She immediately slid down the crevice, and slumped to the floor, her binding sliced as her freed hands pressed weakly to her middle.
Renard stared down at her, his blade dripping lifeblood onto the stone.
“When this is through, you will see your daughter in the stars with the same death blow. Fitting, I think.”
Renard headed for the cell’s exit, the guard stumbling away but never removing his aim from Ferdinand’s face as the king delivered a promise. “Behave, Prince, or you’ll be next.”
The king locked the cell and stalked away, the guard hot upon his heels. It wasn’t until the exterior door slammed that Ferdinand looked to Geneva. She’d come to a rest in a loose ball against the corner, her brilliant blue eyes stuck upon him, tears running down her face.
He’d never seen her cry.
Ferdinand’s body moved without direction from his mind, his heart driving as he crossed the cell and gathered the woman who had been his mother into his arms.
He’d done this once just days ago and now he would do it again, his heart forever cracked after Koldo’s death, every single shred of pain he felt with Koldo’s last breaths latching onto this one, even though Geneva had been her end.
The mother who raised him ended the mother who birthed him. And now the mother who raised him was dying in his defense, too.
It was tragic and unfair in the way that made good firelight tales and songs.
Yet leagues worse than any could ever accurately describe.
So painful Ferdinand wasn’t sure he could ever take the full brunt of it. It might be a lifetime of pain, dribbling from his head to his heart every day until his own breath stopped, a water drop from a cave flower, filling his life with a sea’s worth of sorrow he might never be able to view at once.
“Why?” His voice came from far away, leagues from where he clutched her to his chest, awkward with his bound hands. Her heartbeat already waned, featherlight. Her breath was failing, too—short, thin, labored. And yet, she had enough strength to press a bloodied finger to his face.
“Renard was right. He needed you—but in truth, he only needed one of us. I wanted to make sure that if he ended one of us, it would be me. Not you.”
His own tears were coming now. Despite everything, Ferdinand couldn’t believe this would be the end. This way.
A flicker of a smile crossed her lips.
“Ferdi, all the lying I’ve done was to protect us—you, me, us. I told the truth that day in the council room at the Itspi. I fell in love with you as my son. But I don’t think I deserved your love back.”
He shook his head harder. “No. No, you did.”
That bloodied finger of hers moved up to his hair, where that one curl which always seemed to fall into his eyes had managed to do just that with his furious denial. As she’d always done, Geneva smoothed it away, even though they both knew it wouldn’t stay. Her mouth curved up at that dumb lock of hair, showing plain as day that she knew this would indeed be the final time she fought to make it behave.
No. No. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to happen.
That endless welling of sadness grew as Ferdinand watched that little grin wane. Her lips were turning blue, her chest barely rising now, the blood from her wound warm and wet between them. Geneva’s stained finger slipped from his face to the arms that held her. “Ispent your life lyingtoyou, now I end my own lyingforyou. Fitting, isn’t it, son?”
