Page 132 of Bloodguard

“Don’thurt her,” Vitor says.

Soro squares his shoulders, the tip pushing into my throat even as he replies in an eerily calm voice. “Then tell her,Vitor,” he says.

Vitor doesn’t move. And even in this heat, he fails to take a breath. Pain wells in his eyes along with tears. Pua shoves him forward. It’s then I see the shackles binding Vitor’s arms.

The ropes dig into my breasts when I startle.Vitoris Soro’s prisoner…just like me?

Soro nicks my chin, making me jerk. I startle again when another drop of fluid falls from the ceiling and dribbles along my ear. “Tell her,” he says. “If you really see her as a daughter…”

It takes a strange amount of effort for Vitor to speak. “You were right, Maeve. All these years, you were right to believe in Andres’s innocence. Even when his own lover lamented over his sentence, you kept the faith.”

Soro slowly releases his hold on my hair. “Then who killed my grandmother?” I ask.

Anguish destroys what remains of Vitor’s resolve. “You did,” he says.

chapter 47

Maeve

Soro takes point beside me. I sway in place, or at least that’s how it feels.

“No,” I say. “That isn’t true.”

Ugeen and the ogres lose their collective minds.

Ugeen rushes to Vitor and screams in his face. It’s easy now that Vitor is shackled. “Andres was unjustly punished?” he demands. He regards me with disgust. “What kind of pathetic weakling stands idly by while her father pays for her sins?”

I try to deny it, but words fail me. Everything fails me.

Pua smacks his bardiche against the palm of his hands as he snarls. “The princess must die. We can’t let her live if she killed the queen.”

“And share the power with the other houses?” Soro snaps. “Are you truly this stupid?”

Tut fiddles with the hilt of his axe. He’s grown out his tusks, and they’re making it hard for him to speak. I understand enough. “You must pardon our Prince Andres,” he says.

“Andshewill be sentenced to death,” Ugeen growls. “And executed immediately.”

Soro shoves Ugeen away when he tries to approach me. “Executing her won’t make me king. I need the fucking title, and you shits need me to have it.”

It feels as though I’m awake in a nightmare I can’t escape. I don’t speak. I whimper. “W-why?”

Vitor’s shoulders slump, and his eyes focus on a point far away, his voice barely above a whisper. “We brought you down here that night. I didn’t want to, but Avianna insisted that Andres was ready and that you needed to be, too.” He shakes his head. “She believed an attack on Arrow was imminent, long before such chatter began. In the event Avianna or I were killed, two more needed to take our places. Andres, though, fought his duties, and you did, too.”

My lungs burn with each intake of the hot air. A memory stirs within me—one I had convinced myself was no more than a recurring nightmare in response to my trauma all those years ago. I recall it differently now. My head aches, and my heart throbs. I envision myself in this very spot three years ago. I close my eyes and concentrate.

I hear my grandmother before I see her. “Take it,” she says.

There, by the stalagmite that tells the story of the sun and moon, she stands in a silver gown. Vitor stands loyally at her side in a similar-colored robe. She offers the large dagger in her open palms to Papa.

“Andres,” she says. “This must be done, my son.”

Papa turns in the direction of the large gold gate, where I hover over a crying human girl from Amdar. In my black shirt and breeches, I’m almost invisible. She, in a gown of white, glows with ethereal light. Or maybe that’s just my memory playing tricks. The tattoos on her cheeks are protection symbols her people have used for centuries. But nothing can protect her now.

I remember the symbols and thus remember her. She used to wash the windows in the castle solarium, buffing them to an impeccable shine. Lexanne. That was her name. She didn’t have a family. She was an easy pick. No one would miss her.

That didn’t make this right.

“Papa, no,” I say. I twist from side to side, torn between keeping my sights on my grandmother, my father, and the poor girl wailing for mercy at my feet. In few words, I beg them not to hurt her.

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