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Elma paused, bending to pick up one of her gifts, a gold and tourmaline necklace, before sweeping out of the box, head held high.
Cora, Elma’s maid, met her in the arena’s inner corridor.
“Leaving early again?” Cora said, hurrying to keep up with the princess’s long strides. “What happened this time?”
“Here,” said Elma, holding out the necklace and deftly sidestepping the question. “My father will keep the rest as part of my dowry, or I’d let you have every last cursed trinket.”
Cora took the necklace with a pinched smile, shoving it deep into her bodice. “One day he’ll notice you’re stealing your own birthday gifts.”
“He won’t.” Elma stopped short as a thought occurred to her. This caused a slight pile-up in the dimly lit corridor, as she was being followed diligently by not only Cora, but four citadel guards. Her father never let her go anywhere alone, and his paranoia had only worsened as he aged. Where once he had been satisfied to let Elma roam the citadel with only one guard at her heels, with each passing year, his fears had increased, and thus, so had the guard detail.
“Sorry,” said Luca, the youngest yet most competent of her guards, who had nearly stumbled into her. The others were grumbling to one another about trod-upon toes, but Elma hardly heard them.
“I left the slaves,” said Elma.
Cora and the guards all shared a look.
“You… changed your mind?” Cora ventured, not sounding confident in this guess.
But Elma had already turned and was striding back toward the arena, where the roar of bloodlust and wine-addled laughter grew louder by the moment. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing or why she cared so much. Those slaves were her enemies. Many of her father’s men had been slaughtered by Slödavan weapons.
In the first year of her life in Rothen, just before her fifteenth birthday, her father had brought Elma the severed head of her favorite guard. His skull had been sliced from top to bottom at an angle, so that only an eye remained, and part of a nose, and a bloody mush that was his brain. As she stared at the remains of his face and the insides of his skull, Elma remembered laughing with the guard over games of dice, sipping wine from his flask. He had been the only thing she had that was even close to a friend in Rothen.
“This is the brutality of Slödava,” King Rafe had said, as blood and brain dripped on the floor, splattering Elma’s silk slippers. “This is what I protect you from. What I must crush into dust.”
The bed slaves might have been sent as spies, for all Elma knew. They might have Lord Jarlen under their thumbs. It would be an elegant assassination — the princess, murdered in the throes of pleasure, strangled while the killer’s cock was still inside her. She imagined it all with a sort of thrill, thekind of horrific pleasure that could only come from a life so cold that anything, even death, seemed exciting.
For some elusive reason she couldn’t name, Elma did not like the thought of those two men alone with Jarlen, with her father, with the Court of Frost. They were defenseless and nearly naked, bound to one another, and now… useless. Rejected. Would they be killed?
I don’t care either way, Elma thought, as the sound of the arena grew louder, the chill air constricting her chest.I just don’t want them to die on my birthday.
As Elma emerged once more into the stands, her guards and Cora close behind, she could sense immediately that something was wrong. The sounds of revelry were too loud, too piercing. Odd shouts pierced the air. And… was someone wailing? But it was so crowded, courtiers and servants alike were everywhere, and no one seemed to notice that Elma had returned. She shoved her way through men and women, treading on booted feet and fur-draped skirts.
“Your Highness!” her guards called, following after her.
She ignored them. There was no sound of battle from below; for some reason, the fighting had stopped. As she made her way through the throng, Elma realized belatedly that everyone’s attention was focused on where she had been sitting with her father. Pausing to stand on tiptoe, she saw… nothing. Two empty chairs.
Her heart constricted.
Two empty thrones.
“Father,” she said, a whisper in the chaos.
It felt like years before Elma reached him. She stopped at the edge of the crowd, caught in indecision. Her father lay at the foot of his chair. She couldn’t see his face — someone was in the way. All she saw were his feet, the toes of his boots pointed toward the sky.
“Your Highness,” someone said breathily. “Come away.”
Elma did not come away. She shoved away the hands that tried to protect her, stumbling forward to see. At last, the figure who had been crouching at her father’s side — an arena physician, she now realized — turned and stood to face her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said the physician, her features pinched and raw. “You shouldn’t see this.”
“I’m the princess,” Elma said, as if that meant anything. “Let me speak to my father.” It was a ridiculous thing to say about someone who was clearly dead.
The physician, nearly as tall as Elma, set her shoulders. “You should be prepared to—”
Elma pushed past her. She had seen death. She’d cheered it here, in the great arena. She had watched, her father grinning beside her, as heads rolled on red-stained snow. She had seen him execute Slödavan invaders with his own broadsword, teeth bared as he severed their spines. And Elma was no stranger to loss. But nothing, somehow, had prepared her for the sight of her father, the king, in death. His face was purple and blotchy, his eyes open too wide. Spittle crusted the corners of his mouth.
“Who did this?” Elma said, the words coming by rote. It was the thing you always asked when someone died in Rothen. Before grief came revenge.
