Page 204 of Settle Down, Princess

“Well, then come and end this, ‘brother’,” I said, raising my sword. “For whoever survives this will need to mobilise this army and direct it at the borders. Our enemies will have to be shown once again what a mistake it would be to attack Khean and that starts now.”

I awarded him an honour Magnus didn’t deserve, holding my sword up in salute before flicking it away.

“Kill him!” someone shouted. “Bring down the bastard, Arik!”

Magnus stiffened at being called the bastard after using it as my name for most of my life. That had me grinning as I stepped forward.

I could’ve ended this within the first five minutes. Magnus tried to parry my first blow but my sword licked across his knuckles as he moved too slowly. Every shift of the claymore was wearing on muscles he’d never bothered to develop.

“First blood?” I blinked to see a tall warrior woman standing beside me, her arms crossed as she watched the proceedings. “Well done, but you’ll need more than that before this is done.”

“You…?”

I was staring at her, dimly aware from the shouts that Magnus was rallying.

“Princess Ingrid,” she informed me. “You don’t remember me? You will now, all of us. You should’ve done this a long time ago, but right now you must focus on the job at hand.”

Magnus’ roar echoed throughout the throne room, declaring to everyone what he was doing, so I sidestepped his wild thrust, the crowds scattering as Magnus lurched instead towards the wall. A sizeable chunk of plaster was dislodged as Magnus jerked his sword free.

“This is the man you were too afraid to face?” a slender woman asked, her brows drawing down as she regarded the proceedings. “This is the man you allowed to be king?” I just stared. “Princess Francesca.”

As she performed a neat curtsey, the king pierced her ghost through as he rushed towards me. I parried his attack, then thrust my foot out, sending the idiot flying forward. The air was driven out of his lungs, his sword sliding across the floor, but he scrambled to recover it as I stalked closer. I raised my own, but before I could strike, she appeared in front of me.

“Why did you allow him to sit on the throne?” Princess Annaliese said. Her name, her icy demeanour that she maintained the whole journey, coming back to me. “Why did you submit to this fool?” She surveyed the court with a sharp gaze. “Any of you?”

I was forced to step through her, trying to keep my eye on my enemy, not the ghosts of the past.

“Because everyone accepted that what he did was fine and who the hell was I to say otherwise?” My sword flicked out, slicing along Magnus’ biceps. His strike was aborted as he shrank back with a shriek. “Everyone just stood by while he did monstrous things. I thought I was the only one who had a problem with it. That’s certainly the way it seemed.”

“That’s not why you allowed him to live.”

Evangeline, the first princess I was forced to bring here after Ariel’s death, stood before me and just like when I met her years ago, I blinked. She didn’t have Ariel’s blue eyes, but that long dark hair, that imperial demeanour was a mirror of my first love’s. Later, I assumed she was chosen simply for the way she resembled Ariel.

“No one else did anything,” I snapped, advancing on Magnus. “Everyone just stood by. When he brutalised other children. When he whipped his horse too hard. When he hurt…”

My hands moved without thinking, catching his blow on my blade then spinning my wrists to deflect Magnus and make my own strike. That thin red line of blood that I left in my wake, it should’ve satisfied something in me, but it didn’t. I’d seen too much blood. On the battlefield, on the practise ground, but most of all in the jail cell that was our playroom. My blood coating the toy that Magnus had used to bludgeon my face with. My mother’s back bleeding so much from the beating she got for stepping in that she couldn’t lie down on it for weeks. I’d traced the silvery scars repetitively they healed, swearing one day, one day…

The blood of the stag.

That’s what I saw, coughed out and flecking his nose as my arrow drove home. It splattered the road too bright, too red against the earth. Right then I saw the stag’s eyes rolling towards me, peering into my soul, all the shades of gold and copper contained within it.

“I just accepted that this was the way of things, like everyone else.”

The room felt like it came back with a snap, the faces of everyone witnessing this fight replacing the princesses. Blood, that’s what they wanted, the humans’ eyes shining just as bright as the wolf shifters. The death of the stag was a ritual bloodletting, an acknowledgement of the turning of the wheel of power. One king must die so the next can live and that’s what I decided to do now. My sins were many, my feet were coated with clay, dragging across the floor, but still, I could do this. This one thing and that was to put down the rabid dog that I had called brother.

I moved swiftly now, my sword flashing in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the windows. Magnus’ eyes went wide as he realised he had met an equal and opposite force. No, more than his equal. I slashed until his shirt was dyed red with his blood, until his screams filled this room, just like so many women’s had, right as the general stepped in.

“Time to end this, soldier. The troops are needed at the border and they can’t go without your leave. Give the order, my king.”

Magnus rushed towards me, arms upraised, not even attempting to protect himself now. He just wanted to kill me. Well, like the day of the hunt, wanting and getting weren’t the same thing. I spun my blade around, elbows in tight, and then drove my sword into the fucking bastard’s heart.

It was a mercy killing after all, just as it had been the stag. He jerked, then shook before sliding off my sword in a messy pile. Blood spread around him, blooming like a flower, as he twitched and then jerked on the floor.

“Mother…?” He stared blindly at the ceiling, seeing something that I couldn’t, but I was willing to bet he didn’t notice the seven women now standing around his body. “Mother? I am to be king! Mother, I am to be king…” The ghost of each princess formed a silent vigil, a vacuum of silence I had to fill.

“It should’ve been me,” I said. “I was always the one he wanted to kill, so it should’ve been me. If I died, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe it was the fact I killed his stag that drove him mad. Maybe if I hadn’t intervened…”

The women all stared at me, their gaze pitiless, but I didn’t deserve anything less. I dropped down onto one knee, my sword more a means to keep me upright than a weapon. Witnesses would’ve thought this a moment between two men raised as brothers, despite the bonds of blood, but I owed Magnus nothing. I hadn’t allowed Creed to tear him to pieces where he stood, that was the only mercy I could give him. But the women? I stared into each woman’s gaze, begging for forgiveness, even though I knew I didn’t deserve it, hoping that this was enough. Magnus coughed his lifeblood out onto the marble floor, just as the stag had.

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