Page 11 of The Stolen Crown

There were no second chances in the courts of Erik Bloodsinger. Brutality came from Filib’s sedition.

Nothing more.

I tipped my head side to side, cracking the knots free of my bones. “Lucky for you, I’ve grown bored, Filib.”

The sea singer—battered and bruised—spat blood from his mouth. “Don’t have to be this way, Heartwalker. W-we ought to barter a deal. The king enjoys a good deal, don’t he?”

“At times.”

Blood soaked the singer’s lip. A frenzy of strikes from my fist had split his skin to the point that the edges of his teeth showed through the pulpy strings of flesh. One eye was swollen enough that it looked as though it sat crooked on his face. Perhaps that was more from the misshapen angle of his cheekbone.

“What d’you say, lad?” Filib spoke with desperation. His arms trembled from the angle of his position. Halfway through our discussion, I flattened both of his palms to the floorboards of the brig, then pinned them there by stabbing twin knives through the tops of his hands. He lifted his chin. “Let…these bygones be bygones.”

“Hmm. What do I say?” Sweat had pasted the strands of my dark hair over my brow. I used the back of my wrapped knuckles to push it aside. “I say the Ever Seas will be better off without the likes of you.”

One of my crewmen used his boot to push a wooden chair forward. I did not even look behind me before I gripped the back of the chair and cracked the legs across Filib’s rotted face.

The sea singer slammed onto his side over the laths of the Sea Void, groaning and whimpering when the blades of the knives dug deeper into the flesh of his hands.

I slammed the legs of the chair against his spine. He cried out, pleading. My boot met his ribs. There was a heat-edged thrill in my veins when something snapped under his flesh.

He gasped and flattened over the floorboards, unable to move.

With the toe of my boot beneath the guard of each knife handle, I plucked the blades free. I kicked the sea singer until he rolled onto his back and slammed the stool back into place, each leg scraping along the sides of his arms, making a cage over his chest.

Filib’s mouth tightened, his body trembled, but his swollen eyes lifted to mine when I straddled the seat of the chair and propped my elbows on the back. With my height, I could easily peer down at his wretched face.

Filib’s brow furrowed. “End it or leave me. Please, Heartwalker. A bit of mercy, however you see fit.”

The heel of my boot crushed the small bones in his bloody hand. Screams of pain rattled the lower decks.

“Is there anything about our little chat that makes you think I’d ever grant you mercy?” I rubbed the stubble on my chin as though considering the excuse. “You see, Filib, mercy is something I was never taught.”

I maneuvered one of the legs of the chair until it pierced the top of Filib’s shoulder, then leveled my weight over it. The crunch of bones and flesh echoed in the chamber.

Long ago, I realized violence did not impact me the same as it did others. It was a familiar pain to which I’d grown so accustomed. Without a little bloodshed, without a few snapping bones, the world felt off-balance.

If I did not sate the lust for pain I kept hidden deep in my bones, the cool, practiced control I kept would snap and I’d become an enemy of the only family I had left. My cousin thought himself a monster. He had no idea how the true beast slept in the chamber down the hall.

In this moment, I was already teetering too close to a line from which I could not return. I wanted it too much, more blood, more screams, more agony.

Time to end it.

From a sheath on my belt, I removed a bronze dagger. In the next breath, I slammed the point through the center of Filib’s brow. Not the fleshy throat. I wanted the shock of cracking through his skull, wanted his last expression to be one of horrified disbelief.

There were a few harsh swallows from the men beside me. Even with all the battle and gore we saw as crewmen on the Ever Ship, some did not stomach slaughter well.

The hilt of my blade hovered over a bubble of blood spouting from the new hole in Filib’s head.

I peeled off the stool and stretched my arms over my chest until the tension eased. Blood and dull flesh were all that remained of the sea singer. The flash of a memory burned in my mind. Deadened eyes and a severed head. A furious princess taking her revenge, healing battle scars through her own rage.

Filib’s death was deserved. Gods, the lengths he’d gone to hunt down the woman he’d been denied were treasonous. He could’ve slipped in with travelers who always followed royal ships at any port along the earth realm borders. Perhaps he’d followed Mira since the vows in the alver kingdom.

It didn’t matter.

From the first time he tried to take her heart, Filib was marked by me to die eventually. I couldn’t explain it, but there was a bit of delight beneath my irritation that he’d attempted his song again. It offered the perfect reasoning to exact the pain he’d deserved for months.

In truth, this gore was more than I’d planned but, three hells, after witnessing the terror in her eyes, this murder became bleeding personal. The sea singer’s snare had frightened the princess as fiercely as a beheaded dark fae from the Great War. I saw the fear she tried to hide back then, and I saw the same today.