Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  Miles stood there for a while, silent, trembling, and I almost wondered if he was going to spin around and hit me or something. But he just took a deep breath and collected himself. “The real Tilla would never say something so horrible,” he said firmly, reassuring himself more than talking to me. “You’ll remember who you are. You’ll see. We’ll fix this. We’ll fix it all.”

  He stalked out of the room, and his guardsmen followed, pulling the door shut. The latch slid loudly into place on the other side.

  I yelled and thrashed around, kicking my feet out and slamming my manacles onto the ground. It hurt. I didn’t care.

  “Tilla, it’s…it’s okay,” Lyriana tried. “You’ll be okay.”

  “No. I won’t,” I said. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and held it in my lungs for a count of ten. One…two…I let it out, too angry to keep going. “Shit! If I had just been a little more honest with him, if I had just told him how I really felt, then none of this would have happened!”

  “No,” Zell said. He stared at the door, a distant look on his face. He was armoring up, putting on that hardened exterior. I wished he wouldn’t, but how could I possibly tell him not to? “This isn’t your fault. Miles made his choices. He is who he is. Who he always was and will be.” He narrowed his gaze. “Lots of men have their hearts broken. Most of them don’t betray their friends as a result.”

  I wanted so badly to be in his arms again, to feel his lips and his warmth. How the hell could Miles take the best moment of my life and turn it into something so shameful and horrible? “What are we going to do?”

  “For starters, we’re going to escape,” Galen said, and we all turned to stare at him. “You. Stable hand. Feel around in the wall behind your right ear. There should be a tiny crack between two of the bricks.”

  “Uh…” Jax said, but he did as he was told. He craned his hand up and rooted around there for a while, and then his eyes went wide. He pulled his hand back, and lying in the center of his big palm was a thin metal pin. A lock pick. “Son of a…”

  “Here’s a tip if you’re ever taking a castle,” Galen said. “Don’t lock a Lord in his own tower. You know how to use that thing, stable hand?”

  Jax grinned at me. “Remember when I was twelve and wanted to be a master thief? Lock-picking is pretty much the only useful skill I got out of that.”

  “I seem to recall you being pretty good at pinching peaches off fruit stands.” I smiled back. Even now, Jax somehow had the power to make me feel better. “Didn’t you want us to call you the Silky Phantom?”

  Jax slid the pin into the keyhole on his manacle and began delicately twisting it around, his tongue poking out in concentration. “It was the Velvet Phantom. And you really didn’t have to share that with the group.”

  Lyriana giggled. I turned to Zell, but he was deep in concentration. “So Jax will free himself, and then us,” he thought out loud. “I’ve been listening to the footfalls outside the door, and my guess is there are two guards, maybe three. We can lure them in by claiming the Princess is ill, and then I can take them. Then what?”

  “Got it!” Jax exclaimed, jerking his hands up. His manacles fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. I figured he’d free Zell next, or Galen, but he ran over to Lyriana and gently took her hands in his. “I’ve got you, Your Majesty. Let’s get you out of those things.”

  Lyriana glanced down. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.” Jax slid the pin into her manacles. “Just gotta feel around until I find the mechanism….”

  “No!” Zell shot up sharply. “Get back now! I hear footsteps!”

  Ugh! It had to be Miles, probably coming back to make me even angrier. Jax jumped away in a hurry, leaving the hairpin still in Lyriana’s manacles, and scurried back to his part of the room. He slid against the wall and sat down, pulling his hands and his chain underneath him. It looked like an incredibly awkward way to sit, but you couldn’t see his free wrists or his opened manacles. I hoped that was good enough.

  The latch on the other side of the door rattled and slid aside.

  “Miles, I swear, if you’ve come back to talk to me…” I grumbled, and then the door swung open, and my words turned into a gasp.

  “Oh, I’m not Miles.” Razz stepped into the room and quietly shut the door behind him. “And I definitely haven’t come here to talk.” He turned to where Lyriana was lying, and he grinned, poking at his fangs with the tip of his tongue. “I came here to play.”

  I pressed my back against the wall. Lyriana shrieked and fell onto her side. Zell alone sprang forward, as if trying to break his manacles free from the wall. “Razz! Fight me, you coward! Let’s finish this now!”

  Razz let out an exaggerated sigh. “You had your chance to finish this with honor. And you blew it at the tain rhel lok. Now you get to sit there and watch me have my fun.” On the ground, Lyriana had crawled back as far as her chain would let her, but Razz walked toward her, slowly, deliberately, obviously enjoying how scared she was. That sick son of a bitch! I tugged against my manacles, begging them to break, but they held firm. “Back in Zhal Korso, Father promised me I’d get to kill a castle-rat Princess. And you idiots took that away from me.”

  “She’s Lord Kent’s most valuable hostage, and he needs her alive!” I tried desperately. “If you kill her, you’re ordering your own execution.”

  “Don’t you worry, bastard. I’m not going to kill her.” Razz had walked all the way up to Lyriana’s gasping, trembling form. He hunkered down in a squat next to her and grabbed her chin in one gloved hand, turning her face around so she was staring right at him. “I won’t even leave a mark.”

  With a roar, Jax lunged up from the ground and charged across the room, his manacles flying away behind him. Razz spun around and for one tiny moment was too surprised to react. That moment was all Jax needed. He barreled into Razz with his shoulder and slammed him into the hard stone wall. Razz let out a choked wheeze as the impact knocked the breath out of him. Lyriana scrambled away, pulling herself as far in the other direction as she could go.

  “Get him, Jax!” I shouted as Jax started punching Razz once, twice, right in the face. On the third punch, though, Razz snapped to his senses and jerked his head aside. Jax’s fist swung right into the wall. He hissed in pain and stumbled back, clutching his hand, crimson trickling out between his fingers. Moving fast, way too fast, Razz spun one of his curved daggers out of his sheath and plunged it straight at Jax’s heart.

  I fought back a scream.

  But Jax caught Razz’s wrist with one hand, stopping the point of the dagger barely an inch from his chest. Razz growled and shoved harder, pushing the dagger with both hands, but Jax held firm, and the two men stood there, locked, sweating and gritting their teeth. They turned around, still shoving, and now Jax’s back was to me and I could barely see what was going on. My heart was thundering. Blood roared in my ears. Razz was a brutal warrior who’d spent his life training for moments just like this.

  But Jax was strong as a damn ox.

  With a roar of his own, Jax pulled back his head and then smashed it forward, hitting Razz right in the face with a devastating head-butt. Razz’s nose shattered with a loud crack. The Zitochi staggered back, blood trickling down his lips, and Jax spun around and hit him with the single hardest uppercut I’d ever seen in my life. Razz was lifted clear off his feet and flew across the room, and the back of his head hit the wall with a wet thump. He crumpled to the ground and lay there, knocked clean out.

  Lyriana cried out in relief. I let out a whoop of my own, grinning from ear to ear.

  Then Jax turned around slowly, with a stumble, and my joy turned to horror. The front of his tunic was soaked red. Jutting out of his chest, just below his heart, was a dagger’s hilt. Razz’s second blade. The one he must have drawn when Jax went for the head-butt.

  “Shit,” Jax whispered, and collapsed to the floor.

  “No!” I screamed, and pulled forward, tearing my wrists against the manacle
s. I looked to Zell for help, but his grim expression said everything I didn’t want to hear. “No!”

  Lyriana frantically twisted the hairpin around and, with a flick of her wrists, threw off her manacles. She slid forward to where Jax was lying and pulled his head up, resting it in her lap. “Jax,” she begged. “Jax, no. Stay with me. Please, please stay with me.”

  All the color had drained from Jax’s face. His eyes were distant, unable to focus. He was going fast. “I…I…” he tried weakly, his lips barely moving. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die here. Please. I don’t want to die.” And the fear in his voice was like a fist crushing my heart because he couldn’t die, not my big brother. He couldn’t die scared and begging and broken on the floor. It couldn’t end like this.

  “I don’t want to die,” Jax whispered, already growing faint.

  Lyriana cradled him in her lap, stroking his hair, and then she leaned down and kissed him. This wasn’t a gentle kiss between friends. This was a kiss of passion, loving, tender, lingering, the kiss she’d saved her whole life, the kind of kiss you never forget. She held him there and she kissed him so deeply, and when she pulled away, his face wasn’t scared or pained, but at peace. He looked up into Lyriana’s eyes and his mouth gave the slightest hint of a smile, and this was the Jax I knew, the Jax I’d grown up with, the Jax who couldn’t imagine a better way to go out than kissing a Princess.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Love,” he murmured. He went still, his eyes fixed, staring up at Lyriana. He looked at peace.

  And he died.

  I clutched my hand over my mouth and made a horrible sound, part scream and part gasp and part retch. I couldn’t see because my eyes were burning. The world trembled and shook. My stomach roiled. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. My brother. My rock. My best friend.

  You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die? Well, mine flashed before my eyes right then. Not the life I’d lived. But the life I wouldn’t get to live. The life where Jax and I made it to Lightspire together. The life where we got to settle down and explore the city and joke around, like we always had. The life where he went to my wedding, and I went to his, and our kids played together while we sat back with a glass of wine. The life I’d always taken for granted. It was gone now, just like that, washed away like a chalk drawing in the rain.

  Lyriana gave a choked sob. “Tilla, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You will be,” Razz replied.

  He was conscious, somehow, back on his feet at the far end of the room. The lower half of his face was a bloody mess, and his nose was bent right in the middle. His right hand held a curved dagger, its razor-sharp tip glinting in the light. All of his sadistic swagger was gone. What was left was murderous rage. “You have no idea how badly you’ve screwed up. I wasn’t going to kill any of you. Just make you beg. But now? Now this is an escape attempt. Now I’d be in the right to do whatever I w—”

  He was interrupted by Lyriana, who spun toward him with a howl of utter fury, a howl that turned into a guttural, unearthly roar. The walls buckled. The air crackled electric. The smell of copper and wet earth flooded my nose. Lyriana’s hands were free now, and she jerked them up and Razz jerked up with them, Lifting clean off his feet and up into the air. He hung there, legs twitching, arms locked in place, like some kind of ghastly marionette.

  “You killed him,” Lyriana growled. Her eyes were burning a pure gold, the pupils gone entirely. Rivulets of molten light streaked through her hair. The air around her wavered and twisted, like hot stone on a summer day. “You killed him!”

  “How are you doing this, witch?” Razz rasped out. His eyes were wide, his lip trembling. He was actually scared. “We took your Rings!”

  “My Rings?” Lyriana laughed, a cruel, hard laugh that shook the walls and sent dust billowing into the air. “Rings are conduits. They channel magic, focus it, turn willpower into action. Common mages need Rings to do anything. But true-blood mages like me? We just wear them so people underestimate the power we hold in our hands.” Lyriana twisted both hands in a circle, the gesture I knew meant Grow. “This power.”

  “Witch!” Razz managed to get out, and there was a strange and horrible crackling sound, and his head jerked backward. Thin black tendrils twisted under his skin, snaking up from his fangs and toward his eyes.

  Nightglass was a living metal, after all. That meant it could grow.

  And Lyriana was Growing it right into his skull.

  “My name is not ‘Witch.’” Lyriana twisted her hands again, and the tendrils shot up farther, burrowing into Razz’s head. A few sharp thorns broke the skin, pricking out through his cheeks like saplings through dirt. “I am Lyriana Ellaria Volaris! Princess of Noveris and Heir to the Throne! The blood of Titans runs in my veins!” She twisted again, and now I could see the tendrils burrowing up through the whites of Razz’s eyes as he gurgled and twitched. “My Rings aren’t magic.”

  She clenched both hands into fists and a massive nightglass tusk burst out the back of Razz’s skull.

  “I’m magic.”

  Lyriana dropped her hands. The burning golden glow faded from her eyes. The air came back into the room with a rush, and Razz’s broken corpse fell to the ground, hitting the stone with a metallic clang.

  We all sat in stunned silence, even Zell.

  “You broke your vow,” I whispered at last.

  “To hell with my vow.” Lyriana turned around and walked toward us. She wasn’t the terrifying glowing being of Heartmagic that had killed Razz, but she wasn’t herself, either, the sweet girl who wouldn’t even hurt a skarrling. She never would be again.

  She knelt down and opened my manacles, then Zell’s, then Galen’s. Even though my legs didn’t want to move, even though I wanted so badly to pretend it wasn’t there, I forced myself to walk to Jax’s body. There was no pain on his face, just that tiny smile he’d had when he’d gone. I knelt down next to him and pressed my hand to his cheek, which was already going cold, and I ran my palm along his face and closed his eyes. I wanted to hear his laugh. I wanted to see him grin. I wanted him to make a stupid joke or play some dumb game or grab me up in one of those big hugs that always made me feel so safe.

  How could he be dead? How could the world go on without Jax in it?

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was collapsing. My breath was ragged. My hands dug into the ground, nails bleeding. The pain I was feeling was worse than anything I’d ever felt, worse than anything I’d thought I could feel. I didn’t even want to escape. I didn’t want to live.

  A firm hand took my shoulder. Zell. He knelt down by my side and wrapped his arms around me and held me firmly, strongly. I turned and buried my face into his shoulder, and he held me as I cried harder than I’d ever cried.

  Maybe a second passed. Maybe an hour. Zell leaned in close, his lips against my ear, and whispered, “We have to go now. We have to move. We have to live.” I felt a droplet hit my shoulder, and when I looked up, Zell had tears in his eyes, too. “For Jax.”

  “For Jax.” I took a deep breath and wiped the tears from my eyes. It took every ounce of willpower I had, but I took that pain and I shoved it down, deep down, so deep I couldn’t feel it. This pain could wait. It had to wait.

  I took Zell’s arm and forced myself to my feet. Galen and Lyriana were on the other side of the room. Galen’s face was unreadable, in part because it was so mangled, and Lyriana’s was all rage. I guess that was what she did with her pain.

  “We’re at the top of the Eastern Keep,” Galen said. “Once we’re out, I can get us through the Servants’ Quarters to a stockroom that leads to the stables. We can take a back trail and tear down the mountain, and if we’re lucky, we’ll cut the mages off before they get to the Pass.”

  I looked down at Jax. I looked at his calm face, at his limp hands, at the slick hole in his chest. And I felt a sudden, powerful, all-encompassing certainty. I felt willstruck.


  “No,” I said to Galen, and everyone turned to stare at me. “You can run if you want. But if we all go, we’re leaving those thirty Sisters of Kaia to be tortured to death. And that’s not something I can live with. I’m staying, and I’m fighting.”

  “Me too,” Lyriana said, and I got the feeling she was relieved I’d spoken first. “They’re my Sisters. I’m not going to leave them to die.”

  Zell just nodded and took my hand. That was enough.

  Galen’s mouth opened and shut wordlessly for a moment. “I understand you’ve been through a lot,” he said at last. “But what you’re describing is madness. Suicide. I was just down there in the Great Hall. There’s at least a dozen mercenaries there, armed to the teeth.”

  “We can take them,” Zell said. “We’ve got a mage on our side.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “Then we die doing the right thing.” I glanced down at Jax. “There’s worse fates than that.”

  Galen rubbed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “It’s not that simple. This isn’t just about you or those Sisters. Right now we have the element of surprise. If we can warn the mages in time, we can spring a counterambush, take out your father’s men, and—”

  “I don’t care,” I said, and I felt my hand clench into a fist. Galen and my father were exactly the same, obsessed with this game, with winning, unable to see past their crusades to the damage they were doing. I thought of that statue Jax and I had found in the creek, that forever-screaming victim of the last war. Jax had wondered if we were on the right side, but what I was just starting to get was that there was no right side. There were just the people in the castles barking orders, and people on the ground getting killed.

  “You can’t not care,” Galen insisted.

  “Well, I don’t. I’m sick of ambushes and counterambushes and schemes and plots and all of your bullshit. I don’t care who wins the war, because at the rate we’re going, there’ll be another one tomorrow, and another one after that. Here’s what I care about. Lyriana. Zell. The thirty innocent women chained up in the Great Hall, waiting to be slaughtered. I’ll fight for them. And that’s it.”