The words that came next shook as they entered the cooling night, as unsure as each step he took away from the pointed sword. “No. No. You hadhelp. My men helped you—they fear what I’ve become.”
The king forced himself to stop backing away. Amarande was next to Luca now, Renard’s own bejeweled sword in her skilled grip, hers stowed. Was that her plan? To kill him with his own sword as she’d once threatened? As he’d had the opportunity to do to her?
An opportunity he squandered.
“I am amiracle,” Renard insisted as his driving vengeance surged. “Yet all want me to fail! I was given a second chance—why would I be given a second chance if I was to fail?”
Renard gaped at Amarande, yelling at the top of his lungs, all the strength and spittle and defiance he had left releasing in one furious wave.
“Perhaps because you were always going to fail.” Amarande drew in a deep breath and set her jaw. “Recognize when you are defeated, Renard.”
Just as he realized she’d tossed his own words right back in his face, Renard caught on that Amarande didn’t just hold his sword in one hand, but a dagger in the other.
The same one she’d used to destroy him at their wedding.
The Basilican steel twinkled like a star above—death itself, coming at him without warning.
The blade entered Renard’s windpipe and knocked him stumbling back. Toward the balcony wall, toward the open air.
As his balance retreated and gravity took control, his body suspended in a Pyrenee night, Renard’s eyes snagged upon the brightest star in the sky.
That was where he was looking as he plummeted.
As he hit.
As a final, glorious black closed in, hugged him tight, and whispered what he already knew.
This is the end.
CHAPTER 54
ASdawn yawned wide over King’s Crest, so did the reality of what the night before had wrought.
Amarande and Luca stood on the balcony of the king’s quarters, watching the day’s first light illuminate the truth of what had come to pass.
The ivory perfection of the walls and pathways of the Bellringe were awash in blood that would likely be a forever stain, seeping into the stones and never fully coming clean. The dead lay silent in nearly every corner, spread from the entry through the hallways, in the gardens, the chapel, the stables, and every niche and shadow between.
The Bellringe was a glittering, white crypt.
At least two hundred Pyrenee soldiers and guards were lost. Their souls in the stars before Renard’s death led cooler heads to surrender. Aubergine-clad soldiers had dropped their weapons and bent the knee under the full dark of a mountain night. At least these men knew when they were defeated—even if their king hadn’t.
It should have been a cause for celebration, but Amarande and Luca understood this victory was simply a battle, not the war.
That was coming with the procession of caravans from the remainder of the Sand and Sky. Basilica, Myrcell, and the diplomatic party from Ardenia would top King’s Crest by sundown. The war, arriving in gilded coaches, rolled straight off ships and into the Port of Pyrenee, which was already likely rife with gossip of what had happened here overnight.
“They won’t like what they find.” Luca’s eyes were downcast to Amarande’s hand in his own, as they sat with their backs against the Bellringe wall as the morning faded from dawning blue to salmon. “We ambushed a castle and killed a king within his home.”
Amarande shifted, her shoulder pressing into his upper arm, and swept a curl off his temple. “After he dangled my brother and mother before us. It’s only fair.”
Luca sighed, his thumb rubbing a slow circle along the top of her hand. “They don’t believe in fair.”
“They believe in their own hides—that’s the truth of it.” All the gentleness Amarande had for him was not shared with the other members of the Sand and Sky. Her words were as searing as the new sun. Luca was never so harsh but he agreed. “Andthey are still alive because we’re the ones who can tell them what happened here to their faces, rather than scream voicelessly from the dead as Renard sets his trap—you know he planned to attack them.”
Indeed. They’d found the plans drawn up on the gate ramparts. The archers had been given descriptions of the major players—King Zavier, King Asan, Princess Osana, Queen Sumira, Councilor Joseba, Amarande, Luca—along with which poisons they were to use to ensure an effective kill.
The poison bottles hadn’t been about, though. Renard had realized very quickly they’d been tampered with.
But death came just as easily with regular arrows and regular blades; tinctures and trickery weren’t needed to end a kingdom or four. It wasn’t a stretch to say the leaders of the Sand and Sky would’ve been dead in their traveling clothes.
