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Something was wrong. The way the king didn’t react, just stood there, made my stomach clench. Why wasn’t he moving?
I reached out a hand and shook his shoulder. Then I screamed.
My touch has dislodged him, and his body turned and crashed to the ground. His eyes were wide and his mouth gaping in a silent scream. Blood had run from his eye sockets and nostrils and was dried to his skin in rivulets of sticky paint. Everywhere the thorns had reached, his flesh was torn and cut.
I fell to my knees, and with trembling fingers, felt for a pulse. There was blood everywhere, and it got on my hands and my clothes. I didn’t care. He must have died in agony, stuck against the inch-long spines of the plant. How long had he waited for someone to save him?
Frantically, I looked around for help. Then I scrambled to my feet. I didn’t want to be left alone with the king’s corpse. My body began to shake as it sank in.
My grandfather was dead. Even though I had barely known him, the loss hit me hard. He was my only family. The only one who’d welcomed me.
And now my uncle’s path to the throne was clear, except for me in his way. He would try everything to get rid of me. In the depth of my soul, I knew that whatever precarious protection I’d gained since the king had claimed me as his long-lost granddaughter had just been annihilated. Maybe it was better if I ran and hid in the safety of the winding alleys of Emlyn?
But before I could move, footsteps crunched rapidly on the gravel. I looked in the direction of the noise, knowing I’d missed my chance to get away. If I ran now, they’d see and recognize me.
The first person around the corner was the prince. He stopped dead, his gaze falling on his father’s body. His face contorted with grief, but it took him just a split second too long to plaster on that expression.
I knew his father’s demise was no surprise to him.
He waited, pinning me with his cruel eyes, giving the men behind him time to catch up. Three guards moved around the corner, stopping when they saw the tableau in front of them.
I stared wide-eyed at the prince and then at each of the guards. All of them gaped at the stickiness on my hands and the stains on my pants where I’d kneeled next to the dead king.
Somebody else stepped around the corner, joining his comrades and the prince. Bleddyn’s gaze met mine, but instead of sympathy, he gave me an expressionless look. His face was immobile and his eyes so dead, I might as well have been looking at a statue.
Then his fingers moved, and he drew the beginnings of a travel rune. I didn’t know what that meant. Did he want me to flee?
The prince had followed my gaze, and with this raptor eyes, there was no way he couldn’t have noticed Bleddyn’s signal.
For a moment, his mask of the aggrieved son slipped, and his lips twitched up in a triumphant smirk. Then he got himself back under control and stuck out his hand dramatically, pointing at me.
“Arrest her. She killed the king.”
***
