AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And what he-”
“Told Navar and Welzes? What Lord de la Vega relayed to you in Máros?True,” gasped Dima, and then as if a string had been cut, he shuddered and began to beg and plead, his voice rising to such pitch and cadence that Starling, after a cautious glance my way, leaned over to brush his sweaty forehead and send the man back to unconsciousness once more. He slumped into Velichkov’s arms.
I felt numb. After everything...everythingthat we’d given and fought through to get here, and we’d succeeded only to fail?
Was this really where it ended?
*
Chapter Forty-One
Welzes was angry now, getting even more so each time I forced him to repeat himself. I watched his fingers curl into claws as he steadily lost his patience.
“I will have you bow to me, Nathanael Velichkov. Let Temar recognise my claim to this throne.”
The court was grim. Indistinct whispers swept through it as the people watched on with a keen yet wary interest.
“Last chance, you irritating child,” the false king snapped. “Bow.”
I didn’t move.
Welzes let out an extended, resigned breath. For one long, incredible moment, I thought he was going to give up.
And then he spoke, but not to me. To one of my guards, and I didn’t even know if it was the man on my right or my left who obeyed, but one of the fuckers pulled out his knife and strode towards me where I stood alone, facing off against a king with all I had left to me.
Pure, bloody-minded obstinacy.
“Hobble him,” Welzes had said, but the words didn’t register until after the pain did, a slicing hot,agonisingline across the tendons in my calves. I dropped like a stone, my cry echoing through the hall as my knees slammed down hard onto the tiles and my vision swerved through blackness.
And it was then that the crowd moved, surging forward like a living thing, and although they got themselves in check before it could be viewed as aggression, the buzzing and muttering grew louder. Dark looks were shot in Welzes’ direction, anger and fear and disgust, and to me they gave…sympathy? Compassion? Commiseration?
Softer, tenderer expressions.
Lord Hierro had his hand held over his mouth while Alondra’s were pressed to her heart, both of their eyes wide in horror. Lord de la Vega’s fingers twitched as if he’d thought to stop the knife that was half a room away from him. Quintín Lago looked ready to murder Welzes where he stood.
“Stop it! Hasn’t there been enough bloodshed already?” Isobella cried, tearing herself from Alondra’s side to stand protectively between me and the dais, arms folded. But the false king barely looked at her.
“Arrest her,” he ordered, in a tone as unconcerned as his expression. He was watching me on the floor, lips curling in something close to gratification. I grimaced and snarled at the floor beneath my face, biting back a scream.
Isobella’s father choked and threw out his hands as a pair of guards turned her way. “Please, Your Majesty! She was just…”
“Arrest themboth,” Welzes corrected.
“My dear,” Alondra interjected hurriedly. “Your people are understandably distressed at the sight of such violence, that is all. We shouldn’t act rashly.”
“Rashly? When they object to me delivering justice in my own palace?”
“Prince Nathanael is well-liked here inla Cortina,” saidhis wife in a soothing voice. “Such…justice can be a difficult thing to witness.”
I’d thought it just placating bullshit until I saw the nods of those around her. I wasliked? It was news to me.
But when I looked past the fear and the worry and the panic that infected their faces, I saw the people I’d gotten to know over my months here at the palace. The younger Lord Lago, who I’d held until Starling arrived to take the arrow out of his leg. The servant whom I’d convinced Ren to exonerate from his sentenced flogging for an ill-timed joke about his masters. The kitchen boy I’d gone to my knees for all those weeks ago.
I stopped looking, then, because it was making me feel awkward imagining all these people feeling indebted to me. I hadn’t done it for that, although it was admittedly nice that noteveryonearound me wanted me dead or hurt, for once.
The false king scoffed, his gaze sweeping across the room of riled nobles and servants as mine had a moment before. There were some who bristled in unity with him, but the atmosphere of the throne room had turned sour the instant he’d cut me down. Just like how the commoners had risen up against the platoon with the slightest of provocation, this crowd had also been primed for revolt.
But this time it had been Welzes who lit the match.
