Chapter 91: Chapter 91
The second day ended in a headlock after Lucien rejected Rafe’s proposal.
By the time the council was dismissed, the centre table had been split clean down the middle, and Sebastian’s nose was broken for calling Evadne ’nothing but a royal mare to be bred with and nothing special.’
We thought that was chaos enough for one summit.
Before dawn, Lilith found the weapons dealer who’d sold her the ashen blade. His home, a catacomb of twisting tunnels beneath the old market with crates of smuggled steel lined the walls, the proof we needed to connect the dealer with whoever was supplying the smuggled weapons to Silvermoor.
Except the man was already dead. His throat carved open from ear to ear.
And the ledgers naming every buyer and smuggler led only to more corpses.
Decapitated. Poisoned. Silenced, along with the identity of whoever it was in Ebonheart aiding their cause in this war.
Still, we hoped that was the end of it.
Until I woke on the third day on the cold marble floors of my bedchamber, my chemise soaked through, my hands and arms slick with blood.
For one heartbeat, I could only stare.
Then panic took me by the throat.
The sheets were tangled, the floor smeared with footprints, *my* footprints, bare and dirty against the marble. My pulse thundered. I tried to remember, where I’d gone, what I’d done, whose blood this was-- but my head was full of fog.
A strangled sob tore out of me. I scrubbed my palms against the sheets, against my thighs, against the floor, but the blood clung. Sticky, metallic, cold.
My doorknob twisted, but the door didn’t budge.
"Valka?" Lucien’s voice came through the wood, urgent, tinged with worry. I didn’t remember locking the door.
Another wheeze slips from my chest and Lucien must hear it because the door splinters in the next second.
He burst through, hair unbound, shirt half-fastened, eyes hooded with sleep. They grow alert, however, the moment they find me. For a moment, he only stared. His gaze fell to my hands. The blood. My clothes. His pupils contracted to slits and he raised his head to sniff the air. "What... in the seven hells..."
Then the bells began to toll.
A long, low peal that rolled through the castle halls like a scream. And over it, the real screams, raw, human, sorrowful, echo from somewhere far below.
Lucien’s head tilted sharply, ears perking like he heard what I couldn’t.
He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed me by the waist, and hauled me into the adjoining bath with breakneck speed. "Fuck," he muttered, voice tight. "Fuck," he swore again.
"Fuck," he breathed against my neck, setting me down in the bath tub, twisted the handle, and warm water flooded over my skin, washing the red away in ribbons. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel{f}ire.net
I shivered. My teeth chattered, though the water was hot enough to sting.
Lucien knelt by the tub and held my face in his hands, forcing my eyes to focus on his as they pierced mine. "The next few hours will be difficult. I need you to hold yourself together. Do you understand me?"
I shook my head helplessly. "I--I don’t remember leaving my room." My gaze fixed on the swirling pink water. "I think... I think I killed someone."
"Valka." His tone is hard and I flinch at the undercurrent of violence that seems to be wafting off him as he forces my gaze back to his. "You did nothing. Do you hear me?"
I nodded, throat burning with bile.
By the time the guards came for us, there was no evidence of the blood, my chemise taken by Lucien and burned to cinders, the ashes choked down the drain.
It scared me. That he asked me nothing. That he didn’t look at me any differently. That Lucien grabbing the soap bar and washing the blood off my hands felt like déjà vu. That he’d so easily gotten rid off any proof that I’d not been in our adjoining chambers throughout the night.
But it didn’t make any difference.
Because the guards knew, somehow, dressed in armour, the silver swords drawn and ashen-tipped arrows nocked as they escorted us to where we’d been summoned to the Great Hall by our hosts. Escorted like offenders, though, they gave Lucien a wide berth for the most part.
And it isn’t until the doors ushered us in and I saw Cyrus seated atop his father’s throne, dressed in mournful black garb with his sisters glaring at us with murder in their eyes that I understood Lucien’s disposition.
King Oberon of Voss was murdered in his sleep last night. And in his cold, stiff hand, he clutched the necklace Lucien had given me.
It is every Lycan’s nightmare.
Swords, pitchforks, stares of condemnation, repulsion and hatred. A demand and call for blood in kind. My nails cut into my palm as I look over at Cyrus.
His spine is erect against his father’s throne, shoulders squared, his face twisted with agony and fury as he regards all of us one. Worse yet, the one standing so close to him is Rafael, like a devil perched on his shoulder.
Cyrus lifts a hand. A guard steps forward and throws the necklace at my feet. The pendant clinks, the chain around it crusted with dried blood.
"Explain this," Cyrus says.
My throat closes. My lips part but no sound comes out.
What if I did? What if I killed Cyrus’s father?
"It was stolen last night at the revel," Lucien cuts in easily, his lips slanting into a scowl. Anyone who knew him better would have seen his grimace, lying akin to bleeding for him, but to most, Lucien is unreadable. "Is there a reason we are being hounded like animals? This is no way to treat your guests."
"Guests, you ceased to be, when you spilled Voss blood on Vossian soil." Cyrus’s fingers curl around the arm of the throne, knuckles whitening. Pain sits heavy in my heart as he leans forward regarding me with nothing warm or familiar in his eyes. "Where were you last night?"
The numbness spreads from my chest to my limbs, turning every breath into ice. I can’t answer. My hands still feel thick with blood. It makes me want to puke.
"In my bed," Lucien said easily, though his jaw was tight. "Where else would she be? If you’d like the finer details of how her night went, I can spare you a few, though I’d rather not in front of an audience."
Murmurs of displeasure rise in the hall. Someone spits on the floor.
"Convenient, isn’t it?" Rafael says, voice smooth as silk, like he’s been waiting long for this moment as he casts a dark look over our company. "That her only alibi happens to be her mate, who is bound to stand by her, lie for her, kill for her."
He steps forward, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze sweeping the hall like a preacher.
"Killing the King is a declaration of war. The perpetrator must be brought to heel and beheaded in front of the people as a warning," Rafe coaxes, more to Cyrus and the audience than the rest of us, his words aimed to get into the head of the grieving prince. "It is your duty to your father and Voss. Your first duty as King of Voss. You must avenge he who was loved and cherished by denizens. A king who sought nothing but to bring piece to our lands, cut up like cattle."
The room erupts, Rafael’s words inciting rage and sorrow. The air is thick with tension, the still held together by nothing but a thin string, already fraying.
Someone hurls something--a half-eaten peach--and it smashes against the pillar beside me. I flinch, raising my hand to shield my face, but Leander is already there, juice and pulp splattering his sleeve.
"Shit’s about to go to hell," Evadne says behind me, her voice little more than a whisper over the roaring crowd.
Trenton steps forward, his voice rising over the din. "Ebonheart and Voss have been at peace for many generations. If we did not attack in the years when the humans haunted us down and killed our own, then we have no cause for war now, and certainly no reason to kill a king who sought truce--"
"So this is an act of vengeance, then?" Rafe twists the knife in deeper. "Generations worth of rage, taken out on innocents--"
"My King was present at the naming of Oberon when he was only a suckling babe." Trenton’s dark gaze turns to Cyrus. "As he was at yours. He bought you your very first dagger. You know us better than this. I wrote to you because I believed you were just. Someone is playing us all for fools, sowing blood between kingdoms that have stood united for a hundred years, and you are dancing to their tune."
My gaze flies to Lucien, then. The realization that he had been friends with Oberon hitting harder. And I’d gone and killed him.
Yet, here he was, here all of them are, blindly defending me, even if they do not know me. Even I do not know myself.
Rafael looks over at Cyrus. "What shall it be, then?"
In that moment of brief silence as the weight of the decision that could make or break kingdoms lays heavy in the air, I stare around our small group, at our guards positioned behind us. At how none of the humans look to us in awe anymore. Just fear. Disgust. Hate.
And I learn a very important lesson.
It didn’t matter how many generations passed. How many terms of truce were honoured in the last centuries. People will always fear what they do not understand, despise what they cannot attain. And that fear often rules them.
Still, I completely understand when Cyrus jaw clenches with conviction and he says, "Seize the murderess. Bring her to me. On her knees."
Every soldier in the hall tightens their grip on their weapons. Wolves and humans alike. There are too many of them.
Lucien shoves me behind him without so much as looking. "Do not think I will overlook this slight, princeling. We are god-kin. We kneel to none."
Cyrus’s face twists and the words that set off the war leaves his lips. "Then, I shall have both your heads."