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It was a massacre.
We got through the doors, only to find the antechamber deserted. Eerily quiet, in contrast to the screams echoing around us. Our sensitive fae hearing only made it worse. I could hear the sounds of blades sliding in and out of flesh. The groans of the dying were worse.
I glanced to Arran, but he was completely unfazed. He’d lived his life on a battlefield. While this was my first true test.
I would not fail.
The next doors were harder to open. Gwen, Gawayn, and Lyrena stood, holding the line. Blocking me in.
They caught one glimpse of Arran and stepped out of the way. Just long enough to let him through before closing ranks again. Over their shoulders, I watched him shift, then disappear down the corridor, his beast leaping over the hallway already filled with bloodied bodies.
I strained to see the wounded, to identify them, but Gwen was already pressing the doors closed.
“Let me out!” I demanded.
“Your Majesty,” Lyrena appeared at Gwen’s shoulder. “You must stay inside—”
I drew my daggers, spinning the left one in my hand once. I cut them both a look, summoning every drop of regal command in my Pendragon blood.
“Let me pass or I will cut you down where you stand,” I said steadily.
Gawayn was there, the Captain of my Goldstones, my most faithful protector. And his face was truly, actually, pained. Not from a physical wound, but from what I asked. But I didn’t back down.
“We have vowed to protect you,” he said, entreaty in every word.
I’d anticipated them. I jerked my head to the side. “Then fight at my side. Guard my flank. Make them pay for every life taken.”
He looked at my knives.
I didn’t know if I could beat him.
Lyrena, yes. Gwen… yes, but it would take too long. But Gawayn had never stepped into the sparring ring with me, and maybe this was why. Because he’d feared this test of skill, and what knowing its outcome would do to the two of us.
But he held my gaze, and then bowed his head.
I lifted my knives and tilted my head down the hall. “Let’s make them bleed.”
* * *
Who were we making bleed?
We’d fought our way across two courtyards, and I hardly knew. Elementals and terrestrials both were being cut down. But the enemy was made of elementals and terrestrials as well. Most often, the only differentiating factor was who was still in their bedclothes.
My Goldstones recognized more of the faces than I did.
With each swipe of my blade, I realized how greatly I’d failed my kingdom. When Lyrena had to shout to me which of the pair of dueling fae spinning tendrils of water at each other was a member of my court, I knew. I’d thought of my courtiers as conniving, vapid, and shallow.
They were all of those things.
But they were my subjects first. And I ought to have known their faces at least well enough to protect them. To not waste precious seconds glancing to my Goldstones for confirmation as I interceded in duel after duel.
Magic swirled around me, used as often as blades. For every blast of fire, there was an answering wind shoving it away. An Ancestors-damned lightning strike came down in one of the courtyards and struck three dead. I didn’t wait to see who’d summoned it before continuing the fight.
If my Goldstones noted my lack of magic, my complete reliance on my blades, they said nothing. There was no time, anyway. We were alone only for the brief seconds when we ran between courtyards, where most of the fighting was happening.
I hadn’t seen Arran since he left my side. At some point, Gwen shifted into her dark lioness. Lyrena’s fire burned at my back, lighting the night. Gawayn’s wind pulled the air from his victim’s lungs and knocked them from their feet.
And still, we fought on.
