Page 149 of Burn

Summer transferred his thunderstruck expression from me to the princess. Briar merely waited with a poker face. No gloating. No sympathy. Only her steely gaze expecting him to comply, to acknowledge her as a Royal before this nation.

His throat bobbed. Malice tinted his skin.

And yet. With every witness crowding in, the king clenched his teeth and sank to his knees. Knowing what should come next, he bit out, “Your Highness.”

“And to him,” Briar commanded, edging nearer to my side.

A low, rabid noise grated from his lungs. “Court Jester.”

Good boy.

Neither of us told him to rise. After a prolonged moment, Giselle commanded her husband to seek mercy for his crimes. When the ignoramus did nothing of the sort, the queen sighed. “Stake him to the pyre.”

After one cautionary look from the woman, the hesitant guards hopped to it. They swarmed Rhys, who spewed and thrashed as they lugged him to the mound of logs where Briar had been shackled.

Alas. My top three fantasies aside, this monarch wasn’t about to go up in flames. As Briar had said, death would be the simple solution. Never mind that in the long-term, Rhys’s execution could provoke his diehard followers in Summer. This man hadn’t earned a quick end. Instead, karma became his fate.

The king flopped like a netted fish. At one point, he shoved two of the knights and momentarily freed himself.

Just before he could take a flying leap, a tumbling shape pierced the air. The weapon somersaulted, hooked onto the king’s mantle sleeve, and flung him backward. Rhys slammed into the upright post, pinned there like a slab of meat.

People yelped, whirling about to spot the source. Briar seized my arm, recognizing the small axe tacking the king in place. Our gazes dashed across the square and landed on a hooded figure idling at the threshold of an alley. The little female adjusted the mantle, faintly exposing the grainy texture of her skin and a pair of hazel irises.

“Somebody,” Briar whispered.

My lips tilted. “Wicked hell.”

The child who’d worked for the Masters. We had believed she’d disappeared.

I thought back to the night market, just before Briar and I had attended the roundtable. The princess had thought she’d seen Somebody ghosting through the maple pasture, near where we’d been talking. Apparently, it hadn’t been her imagination.

Across the distance, Somebody noticed us staring. When I tossed her a silentThank you, her mouth slanted into a feisty smile.

Aire’s head whipped toward the girl. His blue eyes narrowed in recognition, his gaze locking with hers. As if his attention had thrust a squall of wind in her direction, the child shuffled back. Though not before darting a glower the knight’s way and sticking out her tongue, which made his affronted frown deepen.

Twisting back around, we beheld Summer’s reckoning. Ousted by his wife, shackled by his own troops, denied allegiance by his Royal peers, and scarred by a certain jester and princess, the man flailed against the bonds.

Eventually, Giselle approached us. “I was with your Mother,” she said to Briar. “And your son,” she added to me. “And a small creature.”

Tumble. She meant Tumble.

“We crossed paths in the maple pasture, where the queen was protecting the child,” Giselle continued, taking over her husband’s squawks. “That’s why I arrived nearly too late to stop Rhys. And so, I’ll say to you what I said to Avalea: I beg your forgiveness.” She ducked her head. “I should have acted long ago.”

After a moment, the queen glanced toward her writhing spouse. “Rhys will live. But his spirit will die.”

A broken king. Indeed, humiliation and exclusion were harsher fates than a blade through the heart.

Sympathy for Her Majesty drew Briar’s eyebrows together. Giselle had a right to remove her husband’s skull from his neck, but that would risk the same civil unrest in their own nation. At least from Rhys’s fanatic supporters. Best to live with a shunned spouse than a headless one.

Wordlessly, Briar curtsied, and I inclined my head. We watched the queen step toward Spring and Winter, doubtless to extend more apologies.

After that, we hastened to find Nicu and Avalea. Because they’d been hiding in the pasture with Tumble, guarded by a den of foxes and a contingent of Autumn troops, Nicu sprinted across the grass the moment we appeared. I lost count of how long we plastered him and Briar’s mother to us, with Tumble wedged between our huddle.

Once we tucked Nicu and his familiar in a public stable, where they slept soundly amongst a bevy of other children, the queen joined me and the princess in the square.

Along with the people, our clan snuffed out the flames, worked around the battered and brittle king, corralled the dead for a mass burial, and cleared up the rubble. No one responded to Rhys’s growls, which eventually became whines. No one glanced his way, having dealt enough with his shit. Throughout the night, we disregarded him in a manner he’d have to get used to. As if he didn’t fucking exist.

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