Page 49 of Seven Ways to Kill a King
The sorcerer wiped a cloth over a long, narrow blade. “I prefer the girl’s. Hers will be enough. We’re well stocked, to tell the truth.” He set the blade beside the others, absently straightening each as if running through the procedure in his mind, to be certain everything was prepared.
“What will you do with—” Cass coughed and realized it was not merely a dry throat. Something of a fume hung in the air. A bitter sharpness was on his tongue and through his nose.
The sorcerer waved a hand and said, tone unconcerned, “You’ll both be burned, by order of the king.” He held a glass vial to the light. “Fortunately, he has no interest in interrupting his celebration with a public display, so he’ll never know this one was bled first.” He chuckled, glancing sidelong at Cass. “I’ve a feeling Peter would not approve of the assassin’s blood being used to procure his demands.”
Cass worked his throat and slid his tongue over his teeth. The king did not want Miri’s blood stolen. It was why they were in the tower alone—no witnesses and no reason for concern that a bound girl could escape, not when dark magic was so close at hand.
The sorcerer crossed to the window before opening its shutters wide. Cass glanced down again at the stone ring that surrounded his feet and circled the rack he was tied to. They would be burned upon those racks, sorcerer’s fire tearing over them the moment Miri was drained.
The sorcerer crossed to the next window. His features were sharp, and his skin was pale. His short hair was nearly black, his frame tall and lean. Cass did not remember the man from his youth, and the man clearly did not remember Cass.
Cass pressed his booted feet to the floor but was unable to gain purchase. His gaze darted to the open windows, the spiral stair, and the single closed door. “Take me first,” Cass demanded. “By the laws of mercy, burn me now.”
The sorcerer did not so much as turn.
“Take me first, or I will fight and scream to the very end.”
The man gave Cass a flat look. Any number of potions would silence Cass, but he was betting on the sorcerer not wanting to waste stock when his captives would be burned within minutes, regardless. Cass did not let his gaze waver. It was a vow to make the task as unpleasant as possible and drive the meticulous man to vexation by the only means he had. The man gave Cass a measured look, likely deciding whether it was worth the trouble to knock him out or stuff his mouth with a rag, but the sorcerer only sighed and positioned the sharp tool on the table in its neat row.
Cass’s chest squeezed, hope thrashing beneath his bonds. When the Storm Queen had taken rule, she’d set a protection to prevent the sorcerers from coming back into power. It was a bond that had helped keep the throne secure. Cass was no mere queensguard. He was bloodsworn.
Inky smoke crawled across the stone floor, spreading from the sorcerer’s feet. His thin, scarred hands curled into claws as he reached out. His eyes had gone milky white, and his mouth was hard. The power did not come easily, but it had become their nature to reach for it when other means might be just as quick. The darkness wanted sacrifice, paid in blood. Those who practiced continued to use it, because once they started, they couldn’t stop. Magic demanded a price.
The smoke swelled over Cass’s body, rising with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. The sorcerer flicked his wrists, releasing the dark energy to do its work with a snap of angry heat, and turned back to his tools.
He had no notion the magic was useless on Cass, less a threat than the tiny blade he held. As the sorcerer’s flame erupted, searing and unnatural on the dais, it burned instantly through Cass’s clothes and the ropes.
Cass felt the pull of his grim smile. Dark magic was a thing of unmatched power but one that could never reach those bound to the queen by blood. Fire raged over him, but he rose, bare and unsteady. Cassius of Stormskeep could not be burned.
* * *
Cass burstfrom the dais the moment his ropes burned free, launching himself at the sorcerer while flames still licked at the shreds of material that had been his clothes. He was bare but for the pants that had been spattered with blood from a shallow wound over his abdomen. The sorcerer turned just as Cass slammed into him, eyes wide at the realization that Cass had not been burned and that the boy he’d tied to a rack was no mere peasant.
It was too late for the knowledge to be of help. The table crashed to the floor beside them, thin metal tools clattering over stone. The narrow blade he’d held glanced off of Cass’s bare shoulder, but Cass snapped the man’s neck before he managed another blow. The tool rolled to the floor among the others. Cass’s blood dripped from a cut he hadn’t felt. He glanced down at himself and the shards of metal beneath his bare feet then cursed, leaving the mess to go to Miri.
He lifted her head gently and slowly, flinching at the sight of her face. She must have fought the kingsmen who’d carried her to the tower, because the coal black she’d painted below her brow was smeared over her features. Her eyes were wide and distant, lost to the call of the dark magic the sorcerers held. Cass didn’t need to check the body behind him. The man was dead—which meant the other sorcerer was close, near enough to put Miri into a state of trance.
He carefully unbound her ropes, his fingers slick with sweat. “Miri,” he whispered, laying her on the floor beside her would-be pyre. She did not react. Cass checked her for wounds, but she still wore her gown. Her skin was covered aside from her hands and face. He scanned the work table’s contents and found a pitcher that seemed to contain only water beside a folded rag. He splashed it over his blood on the floor, cleaned his feet, then, with a steadying breath, stole the dead man’s shoes. He grabbed the black cloak from the rack, found his discarded scabbard and sword, and shoved two knives from the table beneath a stolen belt.
Cass knelt before Miri, taking her face in his hand so that she might see him. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I will get us free.”
One way or the other, Cass would keep her from another sorcerer’s hands. He hoped it would be safely. By the gods, he hoped he could do it. He lifted her body into his arms and ran for the stairs.
Chapter 28
Miri was trapped within her body, unable to even scream. A familiar fear threatened to drown her, a feeling she could not separate from the very real danger they were in. She’d felt it before, as a child, when she’d been drenched in her mother’s blood.
Cass apologized each time he shifted her and each time he stumbled. Her throat was thick, her chest was heavy, and she had the taste of ash in her mouth. When they’d been caught, the kingsmen had knocked out Cass and thrown him over a shoulder to toss his body into a lift to reach the tower. Miri had tried for her dagger then, but she had lost her faculties and was suddenly being dragged between two men. They’d thought she had fainted. They had laughed. The panic that had seized her had only grown as they’d climbed the tower. Miri was unable to move at all by the time she reached the sorcerer’s room. She had wondered if she would soon lose the capacity to breathe, but it had not come to that, even when the man had touched her.
She could still feel the pinch of his icy fingers as they jerked her into place and bound her to the rack. Her mask had fallen off somewhere along the way, but Miri could feel the oily colors that smeared her face. It was maybe all that had saved her. The man no more than glanced at her as she was shoved face down over a basin.
“Leave her,” the sorcerer had said, and the kingsmen had done so without argument.
Miri counted the steps, the way she had done on the kingsman’s ascent, willing the ability to move into her limbs. But she could not. She was frozen and could do nothing, even as Cass shifted her over his shoulder and ran. She heard the clink of metal, the shouts, and the sound of running boots. Cass spun beneath her, sword in hand, and lunged at two men. One fell where she could see him. The other she only heard. Cass set her down on a step to drag the bodies into an alcove then issued another apology before he lifted her again.
Sorry for what?she wanted to scream. She didn’t know whether he was sorry for saving her, for doing the one thing she could never do, or if he was sorry that she was trapped in a hell, helpless to break free. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that they got away from there, even if the only answer was jumping from the side of the tower and plunging to their deaths.
Miri would not let them have her blood. It would be the only thing worse than letting them live, the only thing worse than breaking her vow.
