A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  I swiped at my eyes. “I’m not going to apologize for it, Aketo.”

  “I haven’t asked you that, nor do I plan to,” he said. I could hear the frustration he was trying to hide.

  “I wanted to sort out my feelings alone. You and Baccha have ways to understand me that no one else does. I didn’t want to see my grief reflected back at me in your eyes.” Watching other people wait for me to break was painful enough, but seeing my pain through Aketo or Baccha? Wondering how much access they had to the intimate details of my heart? I couldn’t do that. “First it was just going to be until we left Asrodei. But then I couldn’t seem to feel any better for weeks. Every day I felt angrier and angrier. It was easier just to retreat from the world.”

  “When I was a child, I used to run from my mother whenever I was upset. I knew she would find a way to talk me out of whatever bothered me. My mother is very reasonable. It’s almost contagious.” He smiled slightly. “I’ll understand if you want to return to the Palace. I told the Hunter surprising you like this was a bad idea.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t walked Ternain’s streets in weeks. Even the Tiger’s Den, with its rows of low-slung apartments and dingy taverns, was precious to me. “I don’t want to go back yet. Have you and Baccha been spending much time together?”

  “Too much,” Aketo snorted. “I wouldn’t have come tonight, but the Hunter said he would seduce you in my stead if I didn’t join him. I thought such a tragedy should be avoided.”

  “Yes, um, well, I’m glad you did,” I said, cheeks burning. I wasn’t sure I could withstand whatever Baccha’s attempts at seduction entailed without bursting into flames—or laughing until I cried.

  A couple stumbled into the alley, arms wrapped around each other, giggling as they shared a flask. One girl golden-haired, the other dark-skinned, rosy-cheeked, wearing her cap of coils like a crown.

  The golden girl grinned, showing all her teeth. “Care for a nip?”

  “I think we’ve had enough,” I slurred, pressing against Aketo. “But you have our thanks.”

  We played the lovers they actually were—Aketo’s arm around my waist, my hands against his chest—and I tried not to savor his warmth. This was why I never got close to anyone in the Patch. It was dangerous longing for someone who might change his or her mind.

  His fingers slid through mine and he pulled us down the street until they were well away. He drew me close, leaning against a building of abandoned apartments.

  I was still thinking of the girls and their easy happiness when Aketo’s hands cupped my face.

  We stood so close I could feel him breathing.

  “Is this your attempt at seduction?” I asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the rapid cadence of my heartbeat.

  He stroked the warm skin on my neck. “Is it working?”

  “Eh,” I breathed, “I’ve seen better.”

  He leaned back, one hand pressed to the wall behind me. “Really? I thought I was doing quite well.”

  “You certainly show promise,” I said encouragingly. “With some instruction, you might excel.”

  “I ought to go find the Hunter, then,” Aketo said. “He must have some methods from four hundred years ago that we haven’t seen.”

  I looked up to find that smirk of his, only softer this time. His thumb moved over the back of my neck. It was dizzying. “We should go back soon. Just . . . stay with me for a moment.”

  I rested my head against his chest, and there was only the sound of us together and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat drumming against mine.

  Beneath the moonlight and warm in his arms, I felt safe. I wanted to hold on to it as long as I could.

  Nearby, a rat ran through a puddle. I jumped and everything came rushing back. Papa, Katro, Baccha—everything.

  “Let’s go,” he murmured into my hair.

  When he stepped away, I took his hand and held tight.

  CHAPTER 26

  WE DIDN’T RETURN to my rooms, even though dawn was warm on the horizon and Mirabel would be coming to wake me soon—or make her best attempt at it. Mirabel, who I’d also been avoiding, inasmuch as I could avoid someone who helped me dress every morning.

  Aketo lifted his hand to knock, but the door swung open. Baccha leaned against the doorway, giving us an appraising look. I scowled at him and he laughed. “Oh, I’ve missed you, Princess.” His eyes swung back and forth between Aketo and me. “It went well, then?”

  “Don’t meddle, Hunter,” Aketo said behind me. “It’s beneath you.”

  “I doubt that.” I shouldered past Baccha. “Very little is below our Hunter.”

  “Our.” He grinned. “How sweet.”

  “I don’t know why I put up with you,” I said. “Is he here?”

  He tilted his head back, pointing farther into the room.

  The room opened into an octagonal shape. Katro sat on a stool in one corner with glowing cords of magick wrapped around his limbs. His brown skin had paled to a dull gray and his wavy green hair was rumpled. His bottom lip was swollen and caked with dried blood. He looked like he’d been pulled right from bed—violently.

  At least Baccha was always helpful.

  “Lovely to see you, Princess Evalina,” Katro said silkily, the effect only somewhat ruined by the tremor in his voice. “Everyone is under the impression that your grief has left you too fragile to attend Court. Good to know you aren’t that weak, though I suppose it hardly matters, what with your impending death.”

  I clenched my fists to keep from cuffing him across the mouth. “You will tell us what you know about the Dracolans or”—I pointed at Baccha—“he will hurt you. Again.”

  Seeing the smug look on Katro’s face, I knew I would absolutely hurt him too.

  “Stupid girl, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Katro laughed and licked at some of the blood coating his bottom lip, and I stepped forward, reaching for the knife in my belt.

  Baccha caught my shoulder. “Your Prince can make him talk with his magick. We won’t have to hurt him.”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Aketo glaring at Baccha, who shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t have invited him along if we were going to do this the usual way. Bit cruel to keep someone who can sense emotions around when you’re going to torture a man.”

  I bit my lip, almost breaking the skin. “I’m not sure—”

  “I don’t know what this is about,” Katro said, voice still shaking, “but I won’t tell you anything. You’re a fool if you believe I know anything about the King’s death.”

  “You are the fool—you were seen. Did you think a Dracolan would forget the sight of a fey with green hair? Or were you so confident that no one would ever figure it out? Your Princess will love to hear that she chose someone so incompetent for this task.”

  “My—my Princess?” He choked out a laugh. “Oh, Your Highness, you don’t understand at all.”

  Relief coursed through me. At least Isadore hadn’t been involved.

  Aketo stepped past me and knelt near Katro. He hesitated a moment, one hand hovering over Katro’s knee. Right, Aketo had said his magick worked best with touch. “Eva . . .”

  “You don’t have to do this, Aketo,” I said.

  He nodded grimly. “I know, but the King meant a lot to my family. I want to know the truth about his death.”

  “Is he khimaer?” Katro sputtered. That edge of fear in his voice had turned to disgust.

  “How will you do it?” I asked, ignoring Katro.

  Aketo didn’t even blink. “I haven’t done this before . . . but I should be able to increase his fear to soften his resistance. And, Hunter, this is torture. If this were for anyone but the King . . .”

  Aketo dropped his hand on Katro’s leg and sort of smiled, showing his fangs. Katro stiffened, testing the bonds on his wrists. They didn’t seem to cause him
any pain, but he couldn’t move even an inch. “Your Highness,” he panted, “unauthorized interrogation is—you can’t—” His voice cut off as his eyes went wide. His head swung from me to Aketo. “You’re going to die anyway. Even if Princess Isadore can’t kill you, someone else will. We can’t let a mutt—”

  Aketo’s hand flexed on Katro’s knee and he jerked in his bonds, hissing like a wet cat, a cat that wanted to kill me. His body quivered, tremors that seemed to tire him, but he didn’t stop straining, trying to get away. I felt too stunned to speak—it was torture. I couldn’t have imagined Aketo’s magick could do this.

  And the look on Aketo’s face. He swayed, hand still clutching Katro’s knee. “Now, Hunter.”

  “What was your involvement in King Lei’s death?” Baccha asked.

  “I just found them,” he gasped. “The ones that wanted a way back into Dracol since the border closed. That’s what she told me to tell them. A way out of Myre and away from magick.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother,” he growled. “End this. I’ll swear myself to you—tell you whatever you want. Please.”

  “Lady Shirea? Why would she want to kill Papa?” Was this a plot to crown a fey King? Lady Shirea was actually one of the few levelheaded people at Court. She was military minded; in fact, she and Papa had worked on a number of campaigns together. And if Lady Shirea did want a fey King, her best means of achieving that would be to pressure Mother and Isadore into a marriage bond with one of her sons.

  He laughed. It was a ragged sound, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. “I cannot tell you.”

  I pulled a knife from my belt and placed it right against his neck. Until I could see his pulse tapping against the silver edge. Up close, I could almost smell the fear rolling off him. A tremor shook him so hard that the edge of the knife bit into his skin, a few drops of blood rolling down his neck. “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” he spat, straining against the bonds and the knife even further, forcing me to remove the blade from his neck. There would be no killing tonight. None until I had to kill my sister and then that would be the end of it.

  I held my knife over his shoulder. “Why did she have my father killed? Is she behind the attacks on me?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” He laughed again. He was half wild animal, panicked eyes rolling and showing the whites, and half his scornful self. “My mother only told me to find the Dracolans. You’ll have to ask her if you want to know more.”

  “Is he lying? Can you tell?” I looked at Aketo and Baccha.

  Baccha shook his head, unsure. A thin sheen of sweat coated Aketo’s face. “I can’t be certain. Not while I enhance his fear,” Aketo said.

  “Stop manipulating his fear, then,” I said. Aketo let go of Katro and stood, looking dazed. He looked like he would be ill, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

  Katro sagged, sucking in gasping, rattling breaths. “Thank you, Your Highness. I was wondering how long you’d let that savagery go on.”

  I raised the knife to his neck again, though not pressing it to his skin in case he lunged toward me again. “Tell me. Who told your mother to find Dracolans?”

  “I won’t.”

  So he did know.

  “Just tell me,” I said, voice thick with sudden tears. I pressed the knife closer, heedless of my previous worries for him. Why should I hold his life so sacred, when he had a hand in killing my father? “Please just tell me why, Katro.”

  “I can’t. She—” He stopped with a painful choking sound. Then his eyes flickered behind me, to either Aketo or Baccha, I guessed, and then they went strangely blank.

  My blood ran cold. His eyes were vacant like Dagon’s eyes had been, emptied of any internal will. For a moment, I stared at him in horror. Then the magicked cords wrapped around his body melted away and he jerked forward, burying my knife in his throat.

  CHAPTER 27

  I CHOKED ON the smell of blood. My eyes were shut tight, my hand cramping around the handle of the knife, and wet. Wet.

  I was back in Asrodei, my knees squelching in a pool of blood, my fingers brushing Papa’s peaceful face as I heard a sound—the rustle of curtains. My mind went crystal, everything drawn into sharp focus as I killed the woman. My hands wrapped around the hilt of Papa’s broadsword and I ran, swinging it in an arc that made my muscles burn in protest. Her body fell slowly, hot blood gushing from her wound, splashing me across the face.

  I heard someone’s voice, drawing me back to the present. “Eva, Eva, Eva.” Aketo’s voice, I could tell this time. He’d wrapped his arms around me and was still rubbing circles on my back, his mouth against my ear. “It’s all right. You’re fine.”

  “Is the body—is he gone?” I whispered into his collar. Katro was dead; no one could survive severing their neck so brutally. He’d jerked his neck onto my knife again and again until I let go and it stayed lodged in his throat. His eyes were still wide and blank as blood washed down his neck.

  Then I—well, I didn’t know. My mind had gone blank with panic and I found myself in Aketo’s arms as he tried to pull me back from wherever I had gone.

  “We left the room. I brought you to the other room in Baccha’s suite.”

  And yet I could still smell the blood. I could still feel death hovering all around me. Aketo kept it at bay, but I still felt it. Death and pain and all the things that just wouldn’t leave me.

  As my panic abated, my awareness of my body and its connection to Aketo’s only grew. He was so warm, and with my arms wrapped around him, I could feel all the hard corded muscles in his back. The scales on his neck were soft, almost silky, and I could smell the oil he must have used on his hair, earthy and spicy.

  It was disconcerting how comfortable I felt in his arms. We pulled apart and I realized Baccha was standing just a few feet away. I expected an inappropriate remark, but he just looked blank, skin gone white, eyes pinched with worry and exhaustion. Though once he noticed me looking at him, he shook it off. Smiling gently at me, he reached out a hand.

  I took it and stood. “Why couldn’t you stop him? Why did your magick just . . . melt away?”

  “There was a compulsion spell, just like the one on the man who tried to kill you before we left Ternain. It was made to neutralize any magick it met. I couldn’t feel it on him. Takes some complex work to cloak that sort of thing; it usually leaves a residue, smells like burning sugar and rot. To use that kind of power, when there was no way to know that we’d even find him . . .

  “The compulsion must have been triggered because you were getting close. He was going to reveal something crucial, Eva. Something whoever set the spell needs to keep hidden.”

  And then he’d died for it, because I’d been so reckless in interrogating him.

  “I doubt my description of a compulsion spell will be evidence enough for my mother. I wanted some irrefutable proof.” I flinched when my next thought occurred to me. “Perhaps since Katro is dead, we can search his rooms for a connection to the Dracolans.”

  I glanced up, wondering if they would find such a thing—ransacking a dead man’s rooms—in poor taste. Baccha and Aketo were exchanging a look.

  “Eva, I don’t think that’s wise,” Baccha said, “considering we’ll want to avoid any association with his death.”

  Something about his tone made me feel panicked. “So now Katro is dead and I have nothing.”

  I left the room without looking back. Baccha followed me; I could feel him, a worrying knot in the back of my mind, so focused on me and so frustrated. It wasn’t a problem, though; for weeks I’d trained myself to ignore him.

  This would be more of the same.

  * * *

  I tried to tune out Mirabel’s yelling. Baccha had retreated to a corner when we arrived in my bedchamber. After hearing what happened, Anali had gone to deal with Katro’s body. Th
e look of disappointment she gave me right before leaving still cut through me.

  I’d never felt more like a child. Unlike a scraped knee that needed healing or a broken toy, the source of my guilt was a body, a life I’d destroyed.

  Somewhere there was a Sorceryn guilty of two deaths. And I was guilty of three. Katro was dead. Even if I hated him for his involvement in Papa’s death, even if he deserved it—he was dead without a trial. I had this memory worrying at the back of my mind of Katro chasing Isa and me through the eastern gardens, his hair cut just above his finely pointed ears. Falun was there too, his hair almost down to his elbows, helping me up into a tree to escape Katro.

  At birth my sister and I had been tasked with later having to try to kill each other. Was that what made me such an arbiter of death—or was there some deeper flaw inside me? This violence must have been what the Auguries had seen when I was born. Of course they’d seen fit to lock my magick away.

  Mirabel’s voice broke into my thoughts. “How, Eva? How could you think this was a good idea?”

  “Someone had to investigate Papa’s death,” I said. On this point, I refused to be chastened. No one else had done anything. When I first returned to Ternain, I spent a week trying to convince Mirabel to act, to just do something. I even went to the Auguries to ask about the omens, thinking maybe they were connected, but Sarou turned me away. I explained it to Mirabel over and over again: that whoever orchestrated Papa’s death, it wasn’t only the King of Dracol. But Mirabel had never changed her stance—saying our focus was my nameday, and that Papa wouldn’t have had it any other way. But I knew what it was really about; Mirabel thought I was too weak and that focusing on finding out who had ordered the killing would only worsen my grief. But what did that matter?

  “I was investigating Lei’s death, fool girl!” Mira snapped. “I connected Lady Shirea and her sons to the Dracolans days ago. The Captain and I have been watching them—waiting, and planning on what to do with that information after your nameday.”