Page 113 of A Crown of Lies

She blinked rapidly, weeping a single bloody tear before she reached up to swipe it away. The queen stared at the blood on her finger.

Michal rose with an irritated sigh. “I’m afraid you’re out of time. I can’t say I’m disappointed. Honestly, Trinta is better off without you.”

He adjusted his jacket and strode toward the door, his work done. They were past the point when the antidote would be effective. All three were dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

With a growl, the queen yanked the sword of one of her dying guards from the floor and charged at him.

Behind you! Michal’s mother’s voice rasped in his ear. Watch out!

He drew his sword and spun, slicing through the air on instinct. Harima-jaan froze as a bloody line traced across her throat. Her hand went to her neck, but even that wasn’t enough to stem the tide. Michal had severed both jugulars and carotids, as he had been training to do.

She looked at him, weeping bloody tears, and fell to her knees, gripping his pants with weak fingers. He shook free of her grasp and turned his back, shaking out a handkerchief.

As he cleaned the blood from his blade, the castle bells began to ring. He frowned and sheathed his sword. There was only one reason they would be ringing the bells now. Finally, the day he had long awaited was here.

Michal spun and pointed to two of his four guards. “You, take care of this mess. You and you, with me.”

He pushed open the double doors, leaving the dead behind. More armored guards fell into step behind him as he marched through the corridors, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. No one spoke or asked for directions. They all knew their purpose, had been training for it for years.

The prince and his armed entourage did not meet resistance until they came to the queen’s wing of the palace. She had posted two guards, and both of them stepped up to block his way.

“The queen is not to be disturbed,” one of them said. The guard’s eyes dropped to the bloody handprint on his leg. “What have you done?”

Michal stared him down, hands folded behind his back. “I know you are sworn to the queen, but I want you to think very carefully before you answer my next question. Think of your wives, your children. Is she worth dying for?”

The two guards exchanged a glance. The one of the left lowered his eyes and stepped aside.

“Coward!” shouted the one on the right, drawing his sword.

He was dead before he ever got the chance to use it. One of Michal’s men stepped forward and took off his head. Warm blood sprayed across Michal’s cheek, but he paid it no mind, strolling unharmed into the queen’s rooms.

There were additional guards at the door, but they stepped aside without a challenge.

His stepmother’s chambers were buzzing with activity. Healers in their white garb moved back and forth from her birthing bed with bloody towels and buckets of water. They refused to meet his eyes as he walked among them, a black and bloody avatar of death skulking where he didn’t belong.

Queen Olga lay in her birthing bed, her pale cheeks and forehead coated in sweat. Her normally regal brown hair hung in ratty clumps at her shoulders and back. Blood coated the lower half of her white gown, and the sheets.

His father sat in his wheelchair beside her bed, holding a squirming bundle in his lap with his one good arm. Even he didn’t look up as Michal entered the room. He sat next to a wide-open window, letting in the evening air. Lace curtains danced in the slight breeze.

He stopped the first healer that passed him, gripping her shoulder. “Will the queen live?”

The young woman lifted her eyes briefly to meet his before shaking his head. “It was not an easy birth, my prince. We had to cut it out.”

“And the child?” he demanded.

The healer hesitated before glancing over her shoulder at the king and queen. “A healthy boy, my prince.”

The worst possible outcome. A girl, or a sickly child he might have been able to deal with, but a healthy boy… That was a problem.

He let the healer go and stepped up to his stepmother’s birthing bed. Or her death bed, depending on how one chose to look at it. “Clear the room.” Michal demanded.

The healers all bowed and fled as quickly as possible. Michal’s guards left as well, closing the doors behind them.

He looked at his father, shriveled and misshapen man that he was, and fought the urge to be sick. “Give him to me.”

The king lifted his eyes from his dying queen and foolishly gripped the child tighter to his chest, saying nothing.

Michal walked around the end of the bed to stand in front of his father. How easy it would be to take the child. He didn’t even need to ask. His father had only one good arm, and nearly no strength in it.

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