“Lucan.” The name scarcely escaped Gil’s throat, a tangled pair of syllables that betrayed the gnarl of emotions behind his pinched eyes.
Had she not seen him before, his face burned into her memory by the hatred he’d inspired, Thea wouldn’t have believed it.
The supposedly-dead king ignored them. Instead, he strode down the steps toward his scout and barked a laugh of delight. “They’ve done it? They’ve actually succeeded?”
“Word has come with those who now flee Kentoria to avoid its collapse,” the scout said. “The false king Gaius was slain before the usurped throne. Your kingdom awaits you.”
“Long live King Lucan,” one of the armored guards shouted.
“Long live King Lucan!” repeated every other person in the room, aside from Thea, Rilion, and Gil. Their silence earned them a long, suspicious glare from the steward.
It didn’t matter.
Gil was already moving.
“Wait.” Thea tried to catch his arm, but he slipped from her grasp and stormed toward the throne—toward his brother—with his eyes ablaze and one hand jammed into his bag.
Rilion spat an oath.
“A false king,” he snarled as he tore the preserved head from his bag and held it aloft by its hair. “Here is your false king!”
A wave of shrieks rose from the peasants before the throne as he flung the head at Lucan’s feet. The man recoiled at the same time his guards sprang forward.
A guard banged in through the doors behind them and Rilion was on him in an instant, blade flashing as he landed a swift series of blows and tore the halberd from the guard’s hands. He rammed its pole through the handles on the doors, barring the way.
Someone sprang for Thea and she jerked her dagger from its sheath before she saw who it was. The steward. He was unarmed and his eyes grew wide as her blade swiped across the front of his uniform.
“Who are you?” Lucan spat at last. His arms curled to his chest, half in repulsion, half in fear. “What have you done?”
“What have I done?” Gil pressed a hand to his breastbone, then whirled to meet the two guards that rushed him. He should have been at a disadvantage, bearing knives against their polearms. Instead, he flung two of his smallest knives. Both thudded into the joint at the shoulder of the guards’ armor, cutting deep, disabling their arms. Both men shouted as their weapons dropped.
Gil strode forward. “I saw you. I mourned you. I wept for you. And all this time…” His voice cracked.
This was not how this was supposed to go.
Thea drove the steward back with a series of jabs. The man relented and fell to the ground, sheltering his head with his arms.
The peasants still screamed. All of them ran, though there was nowhere to go. How was there nowhere to go? Thea scanned the room in disbelief. The fortress’s throne room had been constructed with only one entrance? She glanced back, to where Rilion stood with his back against the doors and a foot on his downed guard’s shoulder to keep him face-down on the floor.
Lucan looked from the injured guards to Gil, his lip peeled back in a snarl, even as he shuffled backwards. “Who are you?”
Gil tore the cloak from his shoulders and cast it to the floor. The illusion masking him slid away like shimmering grains of sand.
Lucan’s eyes widened.
Thea’s did, too. That shouldn’t have happened. She’d layered magic into every piece of his clothing, just to be sure—her eyes slid down. By the Light, where was the clothing she’d made? He wore something different, something Ranorsh.
Understanding struck her like a slap and she spun to glare at Rilion.
The prince blinked at her, as if unsure what she wanted. He wore Gil’s clothing. The illusion had no effect on his appearance; it hadn’t been tailored for him. Light! When had they traded clothes? She hadn’t noticed at all!
“You,” Lucan snarled at last. “I should have known. I should have known that was too easy.”
Gil stepped past the false king’s head. He pointed at it as he passed. “You did this. You turned him against me. You tried to kill me.”
“Yes,” his brother sneered.
“Why?”
“You’ve not come to me to pose as a fool,” Lucan snapped. His shoulders hunched and he inched backwards. “You know why. You’ve always known. Or at least suspected.”
Gil’s brow furrowed.
Lucan’s mouth twisted, first with surprise, then with disgust. “Or perhaps I’ve given you too much credit.” He halted his retreat.
The doors shuddered. Angry cries rose outside them. “Now’s a good time to hurry!” Rilion shouted.
Thea looked between Gil and Rilion, torn between helping brace the doors and offering Gil support.
The injured guards took up their weapons. Gil had already passed them; they were to his back. She gritted her teeth and ran.
She intercepted the first guard as he lunged. Her dagger was barely enough to throw the attack off course, but the spearhead of the halberd surged past Gil’s side instead of through him.
He seized the pole as it sailed past and shoved hard, spilling the guard to the floor and wrenching the halberd from his hands.
Lucan gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “You see? You see? This is why, Gaius. This is exactly why! Because you were taught this. You were given this gift. You knew that oversight, that slight, and you were pleased. You all were pleased.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lucan scoffed. “Don’t pretend you never noticed. Don’t pretend you didn’t see what our father left behind. An heir, a spare, a blade to bear. What was left for me?”
“You’re as mad as you were before you died,” Gil snarled.
Dark fury lit in Lucan’s eyes.
At the doors, the guard under Rilion’s foot grabbed him by the leg and pulled him off balance. He went down hard.
Thea spun to help him but the guard was already on his feet, tearing the halberd’s pole from the doors. The doors burst open and a wave of guards poured in.
Smug satisfaction replaced Lucan’s fury and he paced backwards to put more distance between himself and his brother. “It was them or me,” he said. “Father made his choice, and I made mine.”
“I was sworn to protect you!” Gil protested.
“Then you failed.” Lucan gestured toward him. “Seize him! Kill him! Finish what others could not!”
Rilion clawed his way up the doors. He couldn’t hold them back against the guards alone, nor could he risk letting the surge of enemies pin him against the wall. He retreated to join Thea at Gil’s back.
The first time a guard swung at her, Thea reevaluated her understanding of combat. All of them carried spears or halberds. They held an advantage when she was a short distance away, but their reach was long and their swings left them vulnerable. She gained the upper hand when she darted in beneath the poles to stab at the breaks between pieces of armor or, as more of the newcomers sported, gaps where they wore no armor at all.
Flaws in their defenses. An awkward force, hastily assembled, without proper equipment. As long as they kept her at the end of their polearms, their lack of armor was no trouble. The moment she made it past the sharp end, it was their undoing. She was no fighter, but even she bested several guards before Rilion made it to her side.
“Don’t let them get to Gil!” she cried.
“Really? I thought he might want to invite them to tea,” Rilion growled behind clenched teeth. He was faster, better trained and better prepared than she. Before long, he downed two guards—disabling, wounding, never killing—and seized one’s halberd. He twirled it before transferring it to his off hand. “What I wouldn’t give for a sword right now.”
“Maybe you should have packed one.” She chanced a look over her shoulder.
Gil climbed the dais. Lucan still inched backwards.
The wave of guards had slowed. Thea looked to the doors and almost laughed. The common folk who had been in the throne room choked the doorway, struggling to pass the guards who tried to push their way in, clogging the path so neither group could get by.
“Brace yourself,” Rilion warned her.
She tried, but her eyes drifted back to the scene behind them. She wanted to be there. Be by Gil’s side, be his support.
The prince followed her gaze and groaned, though he shifted to stand before her and held his knife and stolen polearm ready. “Fine. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
Gratitude washed over her. “I’ll be back.” Then she turned and ran, taking the dais steps two at a time.
“I would have gladly lived every day in your shadow.” Gil raised his voice; Lucan had retreated farther and now cowered behind one of the grand pillars.
“Only until you knew!” The king clawed at the pillar as if he wished to climb it, or perhaps burrow into the stone.
Gil stopped. Uncertainty and dismay warred on his face. Neither emerged victorious; instead, the familiar mask of steel resolve slipped into place, cold and hard.
Thea’s heart sank.
No one had slipped past their defenses.
No one had escaped without a trace.
The betrayal had come from within.
Slowly, Gil’s hands went to his daggers. “I would have followed you to the ends of the earth.”
Fear stole the color from Lucan’s face. “And so you have.” One hand dipped beneath his robes.
“Thea!” Rilion shouted.
She spun just in time to dodge the spear aimed for her head. She darted close and struck.
Metal rang behind the pillars. “You refused me!” Lucan snarled as he met Gil’s daggers with a blade of his own. “Turned against me in my hour of need. I gave you an honor, having you execute the traitors in our midst, but you turned against me and joined their uprising. I tested you and you failed!”
“There was no uprising,” Gil snapped. Their blades clashed again. “There were no traitors. Only innocents you sent to the axe.”
Innocents.
Thea’s heart skipped a beat. Her second stab went wide and glanced off the guard’s armor. The dagger bounced back hard and she lost her grip.
The guard lunged forward and seized her arms.
Memories—nightmares—swirled through her head. Her brother’s face. The headsman’s axe.
Execute the traitors.
“Rilion!” Gil’s shout snapped her back.
She twisted in the guard’s grasp and tried to stomp his foot, but he wore sturdy boots and her heel made poor contact. Her eyes darted toward Rilion, fearful for what she might see, but he was running toward her. He was not the one who needed help.
“Take her,” Gil ordered. Lucan was down before him, gasping for breath, hands up, pleading.
Thea’s throat tightened. “No—”
“I do not wish for you to see.” He didn’t so much as look her way.
Again, thoughts of her brother surged. Don’t look, Thea.
Tears flooded her eyes.
Don’t look.
Rilion seized her arm and ran for the door as the tangle of bodies there cleared and a new rush of guards began. She tried to resist, to linger and help Gil’s fight, but Rilion’s grip was too determined. They reached the door and the prince shoved her behind him as he spun his stolen halberd. He’d changed hands again; he fought with the polearm and struck with the dagger when he knocked weapons aside and lunged close.
Her hand went to her dagger’s sheath out of reflex before she remembered the blade was gone. She needed a weapon. A blade. Anything.
Her breath caught as she remembered, and she tore her bag from her shoulder. She’d brought so little, the burden so light she’d all but forgotten.
She pulled out her scissors and launched herself forward.
A halberd swung for her side. She dropped to the ground and kicked off the floor to launch herself upward and drive the end of her scissors into the guard’s stomach. The tip of the closed blades couldn’t pierce his gambeson, but she hit hard and he doubled over as the air left his lungs.
Another guard came at her over his back and she slammed her scissors against the halberd’s blade. The polearm shattered against Kentoria’s finest steel. The guard stumbled, but another was fast to take his place. Thea snapped her scissors open as an axe descended on her, catching the pole and wrenching it sideways. Rilion went in under it, his quick stabs sending the guard to the ground.
They pushed through the swarm in the antechamber of the King’s Hall. Suddenly, the way before them parted, the guards flowing to either side, rushing to aid their king.
Rilion planted a hand against her back. “Go, go!”
They sprinted forward together to burst into the daylight, already short of breath. Warning bells clanged across the fortress. The ranks of soldiers had already grown thin, and the courtyard teemed with panicked bystanders.
Rilion threw down his polearm and jammed his dagger into its sheath. They’d escape faster if they blended in.
Thea didn’t know what to do with her scissors. She glanced at their blades before she rammed them into the dagger’s sheath.
The main gate was open. People spilled from the fortress to the valley like a cascade of water, hundreds more people than she’d fathomed.
“There.” Rilion pointed. On the slope, their horses trotted back and forth, avoiding the surge of unfamiliar faces.
Thea cut that way without guidance. Her legs burned and a stabbing pain shot through her side. She clamped a hand to it and pushed onward. As they grew near, Rilion gave a sharp, staccato whistle. A tone the horses knew, for they perked their ears and turned toward them. She no longer needed help mounting, so she ran to Molasses and dragged herself into the saddle. Her arms shook so they almost gave out.
“Where are those boys?” Rilion growled as he climbed onto Nib. “They’re supposed to be watching you, blast them.”
“Be grateful they aren’t.” Thea reined her horse toward the slope they’d climbed that morning, then paused.
The third horse tried to follow them. Rilion turned him around and gave his rump a slap to set him in the direction of the fortress gate. Then he urged Nib downhill. “It’s the best we can do,” he said between breaths.
She looked back toward the gate as Gil’s horse trotted toward the flow of strangers. She watched—hoped—for something more.
Don’t look.
Ashvin’s last words whispered in her thoughts.
She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.
