Page 173 of Settle Down, Princess

“I am your death,” Magnus announced.

“Make it quick,” Father said. “Make it clean. We’ll be back at Fallspire manor within the hour, and then the feast celebrating your ascension can take place.”

My father always made the mistake of thinking he could reason with Magnus, unable to believe that a son of his blood was incapable of rational thought, not yet aware that there was no blood tie between him and this ‘prince.’ He kept his voice firm but not insistent, not wanting Magnus to fly into a rage at such an important moment.

“You have recited every single tale of the king’s hunt to me since I was a child,” Magnus replied and somehow that hurt. Part of me wanted to believe that only I had received that honour, but I was the bastard, the spare in case something terrible happened to Magnus. “Each one of the kings before me did things differently.”

Magnus’ focus shifted to the stag who was frantically trying to rake the air with his rack of antlers as an attack, but the movements were so feeble, the beast’s muscles twitching, his roars reflecting his confusion, his dismay when his body failed to obey him.

“And this is how I will bring my stag down.”

That vicious grin, it was the embodiment of his knife blade as he raised it up in an almost ceremonial gesture, right before he slashed out.

The scream of a stag was not a sound I’d easily forget. As I rode now after Magnus, I felt like I heard it again. Cutting through me as Magnus left a shallow wound in that golden pelt. The hair was quickly matted with blood, the light animating the beast starting to fade before Magnus’ hand rose again.

“No…”

I didn’t shout then or yell, the belief that anyone would come running to save me well and truly extinguished the moment I came to live in the palace. Instead, my lips moved, forming the words, though putting no air behind them to be expressed.

“Come away, lad,” Jakey said, looking at me in concern, but I shook his hand off when he went to squeeze my shoulder.

“This is an ugly business.” Micken shook his head and then jerked back, as if my brother’s cuts were being stabbed into him, not the stag. “What the hell is he…?”

They thought me young and untried, but in this I had experience over them. I had battle scars on my body that I’d earned trying to survive my brother and no act of cruelty he did shocked me anymore.

But it did hurt me.

I couldn’t look away, the screams of the stag rousing something in me. I saw the servant boy Magnus whipped until his back was bloodied for bringing him coffee that wasn’t to his liking. I saw the maids that shrank back every time he passed by, some wearing mysterious bruises. I saw the weapons tutor he had beaten by his personal guard for the impertinence of besting him in battle. Hurt after hurt after hurt, they layered on top of each other, until I saw the moment my father’s brows drew down. He had gone pale, whatever tolerance he had for my brother’s behaviour quickly fading, and perhaps that’s why I acted.

“Magnus, for the sake of the gods, end this!” he snapped.

“No!” My brother whirled around with all the fury he directed at those weaker than him, because for the first time, that’s how he saw my father. Blood covered his hands, splattered against his face. “I will be king after you! I will rule! Khean will be mine to do what I see fit with…”

I didn’t mean to jerk Jakey’s bow off his shoulder. I certainly didn’t mean to snatch an arrow and notch it. Right now, the stag and all of Magnus’ victims were the one thing. It was a child he was cutting into, a woman, a man.

It was me.

My focus narrowed down to just the end of the arrow, my mind seeing where it needed to go before I loosed it, and sure enough, the bolt flew true, burying itself in the side of the stag. His bellow was almost one of gratitude I liked to imagine, right before he collapsed to the ground.

A sharp whine rang in my ears as my hands went slack, the bow falling to the ground. Everyone seemed to start talking at once, but I only heard one voice. My father dropped from his saddle, the Duke of Fallspire at his back, other lords following suit soon after.

“My son has killed the golden stag,” Father said to a deafening silence, right before he swiped his fingers through the stag’s blood and then dragged them down my cheeks. It felt hot, too hot against my skin. “A heir has been chosen.”

“You have killed the stag?” The queen sounded jubilant, the ladies arriving belatedly and Ariel found my eyes across the crowd. “Oh well done, my darling.”

Because she didn’t know.

“Crown Prince Arik,” my father said, holding up my arm, “he will be king after me.”

When I saw the stag on the road now, it felt like I was staring into the dead eyes of the beast I killed then, not this one. A new one, born from somewhere in the depths of the forest, fated to be killed by kings to validate their position. Magnus leapt from his saddle, struggling to wrench his sword free of its sheath, but that was his mistake. There was no cloudiness about this stag’s eyes. It had not been drugged, subdued by the Duke’s hunters. He had his chance to bring down an already beaten foe, and now he would face the personification of the entire country at its full strength. The stag now dropped his head down, staring at my brother.

The king thought he was about to meet his enemy on the battlefield, but the stag made clear his thoughts on the matter. He snorted, then turned tail and ran off down the road.

“I will end you,” Magnus growled. “You will not escape me, not this time. Not this time!”

“Only the gods know that,” my father said, right as Magnus nudged his horse forward.

Chapter 99

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