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Chapter Forty-Three
The two guards solemnly collected me from the floor of the throne room, hauling me upright between them with their fingers digging painfully into my forearms. I hissed out a sharp exhale when I tried to stand, the agony that flooded my body threatening dark oblivion, so I resentfully let the men bear my weight and that of the chains which still hung from my wrists and ankles in useless restraint. Because injured and hobbled like this, I wasn’t going anywhere.
Welzes gestured impatiently as if to shoo me from his sight, and my guards dutifully dragged me away to the side of the hall, leaving a gruesome smear of crimson across the tiles. Tiles that had seen their fair share of blood in their time, but there was something grotesque and faintly ridiculous about it beingmine,and that only minutes ago it had been inside me and was now drying on the floor.
I blinked back the dual images of Lord de la Vega as he was called forward by the herald, fighting the waves of dizziness that insistently encircled me. The nobleman gingerly picked his way up to the very edge of the pool of blood and with a quick, impassive glance at me, bowed to Welzes. The false king had reseated himself in his throne, his lip curling as he gazed down at his subject.
“Closer,” he ordered, and Lord de la Vega visibly swallowed before complying, moving to the standard distance one was expected to stand when presenting before their ruler. It put his shiny shoes directly in the centre of the sticky mass of my blood, and Welzes smiled as he saw he still had his people’s obedience no matter how distasteful the command.
“Kneel, my lord,” he drawled, smug as all fuck. “Kneel and swear your irrevocable loyalty to-”
The double doors at the far end of the throne room opened with such force and abruptness that we all flinched, each head in the hall swivelling to the source of the commotion. A guard stood there with his hands still outstretched from pushing the doors open, his eyes wide in awe.
“Your Majesty,” he breathed. “There’s…he’s…it’s…”
And then Valeri strode impatiently past and I forgot all about the nameless guard, my eyes locked on the man my brother was heaving ahead of him with fingers twisted cruelly in his hair. Ren was just as I’d Seen him in the vision all those weeks ago: hands bound, gaze angry, and glistening blood coating his lips and chin.
“Here’s your bastard prince.”
Val shoved Ren down to the floor just shy of de la Vega, my lover’s knees hitting the tiles as hard as mine had done minutes before. He swayed, unbalanced with his wrists tied behind his back, but my brother didn’t give him the chance to fall, keeping hold of his collar and tugging him back upright. He radiated anger as he stood tall over my prince, glaring at Welzes.
“Renato,” the false king said, blinking back his surprise. His expression lit up with elated satisfaction and he reached up to adjust his crown. “You’ve led us on a merry chase, dear boy.”
Ren,I mouthed, unable to find my voice. Becausefuck, fuck, fuck,what thefuck had happened?
Welzes’ face suddenly fell and he looked uncertainly at the gathered crowd, belatedly remembering the lies he’d been telling them even as recently as ten minutes ago about Ren having the Voice. If they’d been on edge before, it was nothing compared to the tension that strummed through them now as they watched their old prince be delivered to their new king as a bound, bloodied gift.
“And yet, considering what he cando,Prince Valeri, I find it disturbing that you’ve brought him here.”
Val glanced down scornfully. “You needn’t fear. The little snake cannot weave his manipulations while he’s missing his tongue.”
And then he forced open Ren’s mouth to show everyone he spoke true, and the horrible sight of his mutilated, severed tongue was a thousand times worse now that it washereand it wasrealand it was my Ren, noplease-
My beautiful prince, on his knees and hurting. The pain of it all struck me down to my very soul.
“Ren!” I cried, and everyone looked my way. Neither my brother nor my lover had seen me until that moment, hidden partly within the crowd as I was, but now their gazes flickered to mine – and the blood still pooling at my feet – and they winced.
In the next moment, Ren and I threw ourselves at each other, both knowing that if we could justtouch, everything would be alright.
Yet I was held firm by my guards and Valeri’s hands landed heavily on Ren’s shoulders, keeping us both in place. There were stillyardsbetween us, and it felt frustratingly endless.
Both princes’ expressions were identical in their wide-eyed, irate snarls, but while Ren could only choke out an incomprehensible noise, Valeri spat curses at Welzes.
“What the fuck did you do to my little brother?”
“Yourlittle brother,”Welzes shot back icily, “has been enabling the traitor at your feet to escape justice.”
“I don’t give a damn about your justice,” said Val. His lips curled back from his teeth and he lifted Ren to his feet by the back of his collar. My prince stumbled, grimacing, his boots slipping in my blood. “Only that you give him back to me and never lay a finger on him again or the Blessed Five help me, my mother and I will lay your country towaste.”
“So you’ve come to barter for Nathanael’s life?”
Valeri scoffed, full of that dismissive contempt he did so well. He threw Ren at the closest Quarehian guard, a short man with a shaggy beard and frizzy hair who I didn’t recognise, and yet seemed oddly familiar. The man wrapped a tanned hand firmly across the prince’s mouth as if he didn’t trust that losing his tongue had robbed him of his fabled magic.
“No bartering,” Val said loudly, striding forward to close the distance between him and the false king. All eyes followed him except mine. “Just one prince for another. And I find it exceptionally odd that upon hearing how you planned to execute a member of my family, I managed to find Aratorre in mere hours when you’ve hadweeks,but that’s a matter between you and your people.” They stirred at that, as he would have known they would, the restlessness that had infected the court earlier continuing to grow. “Give me Nat,now.”
My brother’s bullshit continued to flow over me, but all I could see was Ren. With Temar’s heir directing attention to himself and Welzes, no one else seemed to notice how he’d brought his hands out in front of him, seemingly no longer bound, or the way the Quarehian guard’s palm over his mouth pulsed with red and green sparks.
