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Elden’s voice slithers into my mind, “—cannot let that child be born. I will be quick about it, brother. She will not suffer.”
My world spins suddenly.
Daein chucks me out of his arms and I land in the ready arms of a guard. I hear the songs of swords being drawn. In my hazy sight, lashes low over my eyes, I see swords glittering all over. Elden, Daein, the guards, the iilra. They are all ready to fight.
I almost grasp why before my lashes betray me and flutter.
I’m spun around before I can see the first sword strike. The guard rushes me through the courtyard to the palace. And I fall to the dark again, the blood now pooling out of me.
Still, I can hear the murmurs around me, the slamming of a door rattling a stone wall. I’m inside, I realise distantly. And I hear the patter of sandals and boots rushing closer to me.
“Prince Daein wishes to save her,” someone says as I’m slowly lowered to the ground—no, not the ground, something soft and plush, but I can’t see what. I can only moan weakly. “The healer must be summoned.”
“Fetch her.” That crisp, elegant voice is followed by a click of the fingers. “Fast, girl!”
A hand presses on my wet forehead. “No blood shall be shed here.” I don’t know if the woman is talking to me or someone else until— “Stop them. They will not fight here.”
I feel weak, so weak, paler than candlewax, frailer than brittle branches under a boot. The blood spilling out of me is the only warmth I feel when the hand leaves my forehead.
Faintly, the sound of the doors bursting open invades my mind. Bootsteps storm towards the small gathering around me. Already, I can feel my legs being spread, my dress being lifted over my waist. A healer, maybe.
Murmurs whisper all around me, but I can’t make sense of any of it.
“You should not be here for this, son,” that woman’s voice comes again, and I hear it because it’s as clear as polished glass. “It is not proper—”
“I will not leave her.”
Daein.
In answer to his familiar voice, I moan. I try to speak his name, but it comes out all guttural and whispery.
I sense him coming nearer—I smell him.
He comes to my side, resting a hand on the crown of my head, taking one of my hands in his. “I’m here, evate.”
That’s all I needed to hear.
Should I die, he will take care of our son. He will raise it and fight for it, just as he fought for me in the courtyard against his own brother. He will protect what is his—the legacy I leave behind.
I feel better at peace.
And as I start to slip away, the murmurs start to make more sense to me. The woman is surprised of my pregnancy—his mother, I think—and Elden is shouting that the child must die as should I. He might get his wish. The healer demands silence in the meekest way possible, probing me with cold things, sharp things, things that would have me crying out if I had any life left in me—
But the life is dwindling.
I hear a horrible sound. Flesh being cut.
Mine?
I feel nothing.
“You must decide, Daein.” The mother. The woman. The queen. “The throne or the kinta.”
“Behind ten siblings, I was never going to get the throne, mother.”
Then I hear a faint cry. A … baby’s cry.
A newborn.
