Page 139 of A War of Crowns

There now. We can all die together.

It was that cheerful thought that harried his limping steps through the mostly empty corridors of the palace on that fine morning. His left thigh burned with each step. His torso ached. His cheek smarted.

Keeping his left arm wrapped about his midsection to ensure his innards remained innards, Aldric gritted his teeth and did his best to follow their Elmorian escort.

Most of the court still lay sleeping. The hour was early—so early, dawn’s light had not yet broken through the windows they passed along the way.

Aldric and his Sons marched in silence through the deserted hallways, all the way into the throne room, where they found the queen seated on her dais with three of her advisors already in attendance. Her Lord Chancellor and his wife sat on stools at the queen’s right while the elderly Shepherd of Goldreach stood behind the throne.

The moment they entered, the great double doors slammed shut behind them with a resounding finality that prickled the hairs on the back of Aldric’s neck.

At his side, Calix let loose a low, “I don’t like this.” Those Sons closest to his second-in-command hummed their agreement.

Aldric agreed as well, though he wasn’t going to waste his breath by saying so aloud. They could all plainly see his fiancée had quadrupled her Queensguard since the events of last night.

They were far outnumbered at this point.

As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, the queen suddenly called out across that vast distance, “No blood will be shed so long as you cooperate, Your Highness.”

Her voice sounded thin; it struggled to fill the cavernous space.

He shot her a baleful look, his one good eye narrowing. She looked a good deal paler than usual, as if all the color that had drained from her face last night when she'd swooned into his arms had never quite managed to return.

Unbidden, the memory of her whispering that soft,“Thank you,”up to him as he had pillowed her head against his chest flickered through his mind. She had been warm. And soft.

He swiftly snuffed the memory out.

While last night, his kirei might have been grateful for him interceding on her behalf with the assassin, it was beyond clear that gratitude had finally worn off.

“Is this how you treat those who bleed for you, Your Majesty?” Aldric called back, unable to stop himself from prodding the queen’s soft underbelly. “If so, I’d hate to see how you treat your enemies.”

He was rewarded by the sight of the queen recoiling from the reminder thathehad been the one to save her life the night before.

But a fresh verbal volley was ready on her lips. She bit back, “By your own tongue, Crow, you are my enemy,” as their armed Elmorian escort led them all the way to stand just in front of the dais.

As the queen’s Spymaster moved to take up a place behind the throne alongside the Shepherd, the queen called out another command in the way of, “Tell your men to relinquish their weapons.”

“My men are unarmed,” Aldric immediately bluffed—a claim that saw Her Majesty narrowing her eyes.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked him.

He clenched his teeth against a sudden urge to sayyes.

“Your men will disarm themselves of any hidden blades they have on their persons or they will be removed from my presence, in irons, if need be.”

“I’d like to see them try,” his Son Tayn snarled under his breath, awash in all the brash confidence of youth.

Aldric envied the young man.

He remembered a time when he, too, would have thrown caution to the wind and called for the Sons to kill any Queensguard within reach simply to teach his fiancée a lesson she would not soon forget.

But that time was long past now.

“Do as she says,” Aldric commanded, and though a few of his Sons initially hesitated—Calix included—eventually they all pulled free at least one dagger from wherever they had them stashed and tossed them to the floor in an ear-ringing clatter of steel striking stone.

When it was finally his turn, Aldric kept his arm braced against his midsection while he bent forward and fished a dagger out of his right boot. His torso screamed in complaint with that simple movement alone.

Already exhausted, he tossed the blade into the pile as well and straightened, flashing that his fingers were empty.

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