Page 144 of The Sun King's Noon

“I see my eldest.”The voice gentled, its tenderness unbearable.“My firstborn, who already carries toomuch weight. The light of my life and yet, the one who never stops breaking my heart.”Aralynn bent, her hair falling like a curtain around them.“I see him collared. A prisoner in his own castle. I see him pinned to my own wedding bed as a man lays siege to his body. I try to scream. I try to stop it all. But I am but a ghost in the future, helpless, as he does not even fight.”

Richard went lax, a horrified buzzing filling his head. The great oak bed in his parents’ chamber—the same chamber he now used. The canopy his father had carved, the wedding bed his parents often teased they’d all been conceived in, until Elara threatened to burn the thing.

For him to be pinned to it?—

“My poor boy,”Aralynn crooned.“Dost thou see now? Dost thou see why mercy is best? Thy knight hath known these things for seven long years. He hath looked upon thy and thy siblings’ faces and remembered them, hath loured at himself in the mirror for failing to alter the future. He carrieth more, even”—a giggle, wet and wrong, slithered out of Aralynn’s mouth—“a small warning thy queen mother gave him concerning thee. Oh, kingling. Wouldst thou know? Wouldst thou know what thy mother bade him do, and what thy knight hath sworn to do, when the hour comes?—”

The point of a sword burst from her chest. It punched through the plum bodice, exactly through where her heart would be. Aralynn choked, her eyes blinking in slow bafflement.

The sword wrenched free, and she pitched forward. Behind her, panting, swaying, his doublet torn at the shoulder and a line of blood running from his temple, stood Kaelen.

The sun pendant blazed at his throat.

Before Richard could say a word, Aralynn’s face stretched and split. The plum gown unravelled into white, pointed legs, her body swelling outward in a sickening pulse, and morphing into the wagon-sized horror that had descended from the web. The crater in her chest gaped wider as she grew, golden blood weeping down in glittering ropes. Her eight eyes rolled onto Kaelen, and she leapt.

Kaelen tried to bring the sword up, but she rammed him into the ground. He sprawled onto his back with a grunt, dwarfed under her abdomen as her legs straddled his ribs.

Richard bucked against the sword through his palms.

The pain was unspeakable. Steel grated against the small bones of his hands. The urge to vomit flared, and his vision dimmed at the edges. All he could see was Kaelen pinned beneath the spider’s belly, Kaelen’s face twisting into a defiant glare, Kaelen’s fingers locking around his sword’s hilt.

With a roar, Kaelen drove the blade up.

It speared the underside of the siren’s belly and disappeared to the hilt. Gold liquor poured over Kaelen.

The siren shrieked, her mandibles snapping repeatedly, and her hind leg drew back and pierced down.

It went straight through Kaelen’s guts and into the mud.

Kaelen gasped. Blood spurted from his mouth, running into his hair as his body spasmed.

“KAELEN!”

Richard barely recognised his anguished scream. He threw his weight against the sword, twisting his fingers around the hilt and wresting it up. The blade scraped through skin, tissue, muscle, and the pain that exploded forced another cry, but it didn’t matter, nothing else mattered?—

His knight—his knight was out of reach, bleeding on the ground—his knight—Kaelen?—

The siren shuddered and listed sideways. The leg buried in Kaelen’s belly tore free, ripping out the way it’d gone in, as she toppled onto her back. Her legs drew inward, curling towards her centre, and with a final click of her mandibles, she stilled.

And so did Kaelen.

CHAPTER 53

Richard crawled to Kaelen on his forearms. He’d wrenched the sword from the ground, then used his boots to brace against the hilt and yanked his palms free from the blade. The pain had been a distant thing—buried under layers upon layers of fear—but he did not trust himself to stand for the forest tilted dizzyingly around him.

After what seemed an age, he reached Kaelen and hauled the man into his lap.

“Kaelen. Kaelen, look at me.”

Richard cradled Kaelen’s head against the crook of his elbow and pressed his other hand—shaking, holed clean through—flat over the wound in Kaelen’s belly. Blood spurted out in hot, thick pulses, escaping the cracks of his fingers. Richard pushed down harder, ignoring the lance of agony.

A dusky pallor settled over Kaelen’s skin. And yet, when his eyes found Richard’s face, they lit up.

“My…prince,” Kaelen croaked.

“You.” Richard forced the words through his tightening throat. “You are not permitted to leave me. Do you hear me, Sir Kaelen?” He bellowed at the canopy. “FLINT! I NEED YOU! FLINT!”

The trees gave nothing back. Only spiders that scuttled in confused arcs around the trunks. Richard’s mind raced past the suffocating panic. Flint’s tarot card. The Lady of the Stars. She could heal. She could heal mortal wounds?—