AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes,” his brother sneered.
“Why?”
“You've not come to me to pose as a fool,” Lucan snapped. His shoulders hunched and he inched backwards. “You know why. You've always known. Or at least suspected.”
Gil's brow furrowed.
Lucan's mouth twisted, first with surprise, then with disgust. “Or perhaps I've given you too much credit.” He halted his retreat.
The doors shuddered. Angry cries rose outside them. “Now's a good time to hurry!” Rilion shouted.
Thea looked between Gil and Rilion, torn between helping brace the doors and offering Gil support.
The injured guards took up their weapons. Gil had already passed them; they were to his back. She gritted her teeth and ran.
She intercepted the first guard as he lunged. Her dagger was barely enough to throw the attack off course, but the spearhead of the halberd surged past Gil's side instead of through him.
He seized the pole as it sailed past and shoved hard, spilling the guard to the floor and wrenching the halberd from his hands.
Lucan gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “You see? Yousee?This is why, Gaius. This is exactly why! Because you were taught this. You were given this gift. You knew that oversight, that slight, and you were pleased. You all were pleased.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
Lucan scoffed. “Don't pretend you never noticed. Don't pretend you didn't see what our father left behind. An heir, a spare, a blade to bear. What was left forme?”
“You're as mad as you were before you died,” Gil snarled.
Dark fury lit in Lucan's eyes.
At the doors, the guard under Rilion's foot grabbed him by the leg and pulled him off balance. He went down hard.
Thea spun to help him but the guard was already on his feet, tearing the halberd's pole from the doors. The doors burst open and a wave of guards poured in.
Smug satisfaction replaced Lucan's fury and he paced backwards to put more distance between himself and his brother. “It was them or me,” he said. “Father made his choice, and I made mine.”
“I was sworn to protect you!” Gil protested.
“Then you failed.” Lucan gestured toward him. “Seize him! Kill him! Finish what others could not!”
Rilion clawed his way up the doors. He couldn't hold them back against the guards alone, nor could he risk letting the surge of enemies pin him against the wall. He retreated to join Thea at Gil's back.
The first time a guard swung at her, Thea reevaluated her understanding of combat. All of them carried spears or halberds. They held an advantage when she was a short distance away, but their reach was long and their swings left them vulnerable. She gained the upper hand when she darted in beneath the poles to stab at the breaks between pieces of armor or, as more of the newcomers sported, gaps where they wore no armor at all.
Flaws in their defenses. An awkward force, hastily assembled, without proper equipment. As long as they kept her at the end of their polearms, their lack of armor was no trouble. The moment she made it past the sharp end, it was their undoing. She was no fighter, but even she bested several guards before Rilion made it to her side.
“Don't let them get to Gil!” she cried.
“Really? I thought he might want to invite them to tea,” Rilion growled behind clenched teeth. He was faster, better trained and better prepared than she. Before long, he downed two guards—disabling, wounding, never killing—and seized one's halberd. He twirled it before transferring it to his off hand. “What I wouldn't give for a sword right now.”
“Maybe you should have packed one.” She chanced a look over her shoulder.
Gil climbed the dais. Lucan still inched backwards.
The wave of guards had slowed. Thea looked to the doors and almost laughed. The common folk who had been in the throne room choked the doorway, struggling to pass the guards who tried to push their way in, clogging the path so neither group could get by.
“Brace yourself,” Rilion warned her.
She tried, but her eyes drifted back to the scene behind them. She wanted to be there. Be by Gil's side, be his support.
