Page 125 of An Oath and a Promise

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Chapter Forty-Six

I was under no illusions as to which one of us would walk away from this fight. Zidhan Welzes may not have been a warrior but he was broad of chest and shoulder, twice my weight, and had undoubtedly gone through the two years of conscription forced on all Lukian men. The way he held Velichkov’s heavy sword casually at his side told me that he knew his way around it easily enough.

Me? Not so much. I’d killed before but never inbattle. I’d barely even been in a duel: there had been one time a handful of years ago when I’d insisted on facing Jiron in the training ring despite knowing he was duty bound to let me win, and the amount of pretending to trip over his own feet he’d had to do to make that happen had been unspeakably embarrassing for the both of us.

I took a breath.

Let it out.

Took another.

But really, I had always known it would come to this. Since the day I’d finally let myself admit what Nathanael Velichkov meant to me – much, much more than anyone ever had before, in a way that was etched onto my very soul – I’d accepted that my life would be his. A price well worth paying, even literally, and my only regret was that I didn’t have more lives to give because the reckless bastard would inevitably get in more trouble sooner rather than later, and then where would he be?

Far away from this mess, at least.

Parvan had been sent through the tunnels with Dima and was waiting a short distance from the palace, should he be needed to escort his charge away from here. Velichkov and I had entered the throne room with the hope of having all three of us princes walk back out of it whole and free, but also knowing that Mat came first, and we’d both do whatever it took to keep him breathing.

Although he was barely even doing that.

My heart shattered as I took in his paler than usual skin, the uneven fluttering of his chest, the way his face was twisted up in a pained grimace as he slumped in the arms of the men holding him. And all the fucking blood.

Welzes had hurt him somehow, and if there was ever a reason to wish someone carved to Blessed ribbons while they were still conscious to feel the agony of it, it was that.

I picked up the sword.

“Wait!” Mathias cried, desperation and pain lancing his voice.

I didn’t look back at him. I couldn’t. I’d just collapse with the weight of it all, and then I’d die before I’d eventriedto fight for us.

“This is a kings’ duel,” Mat added, now full of that haughty dismissal of his that demanded attention. “When neither of you are kings. It means nothing!”

It wasn’t just me who paused at that.

He raised his chin defiantly as everyone looked at him in confused expectation, his grim satisfaction catching us off guard.

“Only one of them needs to hold the throne,” Lord Hierro tried to explain, “while the other challenges-”

“We’ve been through this,” interrupted Welzes. “With Renato admitting himself illegitimate,” – a strained interpretation of what I’d said, but I couldn’t fault him for twisting it to his advantage when I’d have done the same – “I am next in the Aratorre line.”

“No,” Mat argued. I marvelled at the endlessfightin him: the man could take on the world and still have determination to spare. “You’re not.”

I realised he wasn’t even looking at Welzes, but was staring past us to someone in the crowd. That person blinked, comprehending his meaning a moment before the rest of us.

“I am,” Alondra whispered. Then she cleared her throat. “Iam the eldest living child of the deceased King Iván Aratorre, and in the absence of any full blood brothers, the Quarehian throne belongs to me, to be held by either regency or husbandship.”

“Which means I’m king after all,” Welzes said dryly. “Glad we could get that cleared up.”

He turned back to me, dismissing her.

I saw my sister’s eyes flash with anger. Lifting her chin, her next words cut clearly through the low buzz of the crowd.

“And I renounce all claim to it.”

There was a shocked silence and then the room erupted into gasps and shouts, eclipsed only by Welzes’ snarl as he lifted a finger and pointed it at his wife. “You can’t do that!”

He took a menacing step towards her but Lords González and de Leon closed ranks between the two of them, united for the first fucking time inever.

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