Crush the King

by Jennifer Estep

Instead, she stared at Serilda a second longer, then turned around and ran away.

  For a moment, I stood there, stunned. My friends and I had been plotting this for days, and everything had been going according to plan. But now, instead of talking to Serilda like she was supposed to, the girl was heading deeper into the crowd and getting farther away with each passing second.

  Desperation propelled me forward, and I charged out of the alley.

  “Evie!” Paloma hissed. “Evie, wait for me!”

  But I couldn’t wait, not without losing sight of the girl, so I chased after her.

  * * *

  The girl must have had some practice picking her way through crowds, because she slipped through the throngs of people as easily as one of the Black Swan acrobats could tumble across the arena floor.

  Several times I lost sight of her, only to push past someone and see her gray hat bobbing along in the distance. I felt like a fisherman trying to reel in a particularly difficult catch. Every time I almost got close enough to latch on to her shoulder, the girl sped up and put three more people between us. She never looked back, but I wasn’t exactly being subtle with all my pushing and shoving, and she must have realized that someone was following her, given the annoyed shouts that sprang up in my wake.

  “Evie!” Paloma hissed again from somewhere behind me. “Slow down! You’re going to get your fool self killed!”

  She was probably right, but I couldn’t slow down. Not until I knew whether this girl was a Blair. The burning need to know—and the rising hope that I wasn’t the only one left—drove me onward.

  The girl broke free of the plaza and darted onto one of the side streets. I glanced back over my shoulder. Paloma was still pushing through the crowd behind me, but Serilda, Cho, and Sullivan were nowhere in sight. Not surprising, given how much farther across the plaza they’d been. Well, my friends would just have to catch up.

  I quickly followed the girl, racing around the people ambling along and window-shopping. My boots clattered on the cobblestones, my hood slipped off my head, and my cloak streamed out behind me like a dark blue ribbon, but I hurried on.

  I reached the end of the street. Just when I thought I’d lost her completely, I spotted the girl’s gray hat disappearing into an alley. I hurried to the entrance and stopped, peering into the dark corridor.

  The alley ran for about fifty feet before opening into another, much smaller plaza, but no carts and merchants were set up here, and no pretty stone fountain bubbled in the center. Instead, cracked wooden boards, broken bottles, busted bricks, and other trash littered this area.

  Buildings flanked the plaza, with another alley leading out the far side, and debris was piled in heaps along the walls, as though the people living and working in the rooms above opened their windows and tossed their garbage outside, not caring where it landed below. The stench of sour milk, rotten meat, and other spoiled food almost knocked me down, and I had to pinch the bridge of my nose to hold back a sneeze.

  In just a few streets, I had gone from one of the most affluent parts of Svalin to the beginning of the slums. Sadness filled me, the way it always did at the thought that people—my people—lived like this, but I shoved the emotion aside.

  I held my position at the alley entrance, looking and listening, but I didn’t see the girl running out the far side, which was clogged with trash, and I didn’t hear any footsteps. She must still be in the plaza somewhere. Maybe she thought I was a threat. Maybe she was hiding until I left. Or maybe this was her home.

  I peered at the piles of debris lining the walls, but there was no pattern to them, and I didn’t see any makeshift shacks made of scraps of wood, metal, or stone. Still, as nimbly as the girl had slipped through the crowd, she could easily slither behind a stack of boards or hunker down behind one of the overflowing trash bins.

  I glanced back over my shoulder, but I didn’t see Paloma. Despite her dire warning that I was going to get myself killed, I wasn’t a complete reckless idiot, and I realized that this would be the perfect place for assassins to ambush me. But I also couldn’t afford to lose the girl, so I drew my sword and cautiously crept down the alley, peering into the shadows. I also tasted the air again, trying to pick up the scent of the girl’s magic, although all the rotting garbage made it difficult—

  Something rustled behind a trash bin. I froze.

  A large, fat black rat sauntered out from behind the bin. It paused in the middle of the alley, staring at me with its bright black eyes before scurrying away and disappearing into a pile of trash on the opposite side.

  I let out a tense breath and crept forward again. I stopped in the open space in the center of the plaza and slowly turned around in a circle, studying the piles of debris.

  The sun had finally set, and the murky gray twilight was quickly being swallowed by the oncoming night. A few lights burned in the surrounding buildings, but they did little to drive back the encroaching darkness. If the girl was hiding here, I couldn’t see her, so I drew in breath after breath, tasting all the scents in the air again. It took me a few seconds to push past the garbage, but I finally got a whiff of hot, caustic magic.

  For a moment, I thought it was the girl’s magic, and my heart lifted with fresh hope. Then the scent washed over me again. This magic had much more of an electric sizzle than the girl’s fire power—and it was far too strong to belong to just one person.

  As soon as the realization filled my mind, the shadows around me started moving, shifting, and rising, as people slithered out of the piles of trash and climbed to their feet.

  One second, I was alone. The next, I was surrounded by ten magiers. Paloma had been right.

  It was a trap.

  Chapter Three

  I tightened my grip on my sword, held my position, and waited for my enemies to advance.

  The magiers crept a little closer, then spread out, forming a loose semicircle around me. They were a mix of men and women, old and young, and all shapes and sizes. No crests or symbols adorned their black cloaks and tunics, so I couldn’t immediately tell who had sent them. Some of the magiers were clutching swords, but they all reeked of magic, their power burning like colorful torches in their eyes.

  One of the magiers stepped forward. His dark brown hair was slicked back from his tan forehead, and a trim goatee clung to his chin, while his eyes were a light, bright topaz. He was my height, although his muscles bulged and strained against his tunic with every breath, making him seem as puffed up as a child’s balloon full of hot air. I wondered if he would let out an audible pop! if I stuck him with my sword. I rubbed my thumb over the hilt of my weapon. I wanted to find out.

  Since the man didn’t immediately attack, I focused on the girl standing next to him, the one I’d been chasing. Now that I was closer, I could see that she didn’t look like any of my cousins, and her eyes were dark brown, instead of gray-blue like mine. Even though I’d known that she wasn’t a Blair the second the magiers had sprung their trap, disappointment still flooded my stomach. The cold, sick sensation quickly drowned all my warm, sweet honey hope, and the scent of my own ashy heartbreak punched me in the nose.

  I forced myself to ignore the feeling and study the rest of the magiers. None of them had blond hair and purplish eyes like Maeven and so many of her relatives did, but the magiers could still be members of the Bastard Brigade. No one wanted me dead as badly as they did.

  “Well, well, well,” the man drawled, breaking the silence. “I was hoping to capture a few guards, maybe even a royal advisor. I didn’t expect to hook Queen Everleigh herself. It truly is an honor, Your Majesty.”

  He gave me a low, formal bow, and several of the other magiers snickered at his blatant mockery.

  The girl huffed. “Oh, quit preening, Ricardo. I was the one who lured her here. All you had to do was wait for me to show up—”

  Ricardo stepped forward and backhanded the girl, cutting off her complaint. The solid, heavy thwack of his hand cracking against her face boomed lik
e thunder through the plaza. I grimaced at the sound.

  Ricardo must have had a bit of mutt strength, because the girl plummeted to the ground like a brick dropped from a window. For a moment, she lay still and stunned, but then she slowly pushed herself back up to sitting. She blinked a few times, shaking off the hard blow, then gingerly touched her hand to her cheek, now a screaming scarlet underneath the dirt on her skin.

  Ricardo loomed over her and flexed his fingers, as though he wanted to hit her again. “Don’t ever take that tone with me, Lena, especially in front of our guest.”

  Guest? What was he talking about?

  The other magiers shifted on their feet, but none of them spoke, and none of them came to the girl’s defense.

  Lena bristled and dropped her hand from her cheek. A few red-hot sparks flashed on her fingertips, as though she were thinking about blasting Ricardo with her fire power, but he crossed his arms over his muscled chest and stared her down. Lena wilted under his glare, and the sparks vanished.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “I just wanted some credit for doing my part.”

  “And you’ll get it,” Ricardo said. “And gold and more—after we deliver her.”

  Deliver me? More confusion filled me, although it was quickly replaced by growing dread. The magiers were going to kill me . . . weren’t they?

  Lena frowned, as if she shared my confusion. “But I thought we were going to torture whomever we captured for information about the Regalia, then leave their body in one of the plazas as a message. That’s what he told us—”

  Ricardo smashed his boot into Lena’s ribs, making her yelp with pain and topple over onto her side. He towered over the girl, anger pinching his face. “You take your orders from me,” he snarled. “And I don’t answer to him. None of us do. Don’t make me remind you of that again.”

  Lena blanched and ducked her head, like she was a tortoise trying to hide in the shell of her grubby clothes, and the coppery stench of her fear gusted through the plaza, even stronger than the smell of the magiers’ collective power.

  I wondered who they were planning to turn me over to. Maeven? The Mortan king? Someone else? All sorts of horrible images and scenarios flashed through my mind, most of which involved Maeven slowly torturing me to death with her lightning.

  My heart dropped, my stomach clenched, and my breath froze in my throat, but I shoved my fear and dread away and studied the magiers again, trying to figure out who was the most vulnerable. All I had to do was kill one or two to break through the line of them. Then I could run out of the alley before the others caught up with me.

  A ball of fire flared to life in Ricardo’s hand, and he gave me a flat stare, as if he had guessed my plan to cut my way through the other magiers. Beside him, Lena scrambled back up onto her feet. Her cheek was still red from his slap, but she reached for her magic, and a ball of fire filled her palm as well. A few more of the magiers summoned up their fire and lightning, while the rest raised their swords.

  “You’re coming with us, Your Majesty,” Ricardo purred. “Whether you do it with your face intact is entirely up to you.”

  He waggled his fingers, and the fire in his palm burned a little brighter, as though it were a hungry monster that was eager to melt the skin from my bones. The hot, crackling stench of it filled the air, even more pungent than the rotten filth that polluted the plaza. Ricardo was clearly the strongest magier, although Lena was a close second, and the fire in her palm sparked almost as much as his did.

  I was still holding my sword in my right hand, and I curled my left hand into a fist, then coated it with the invisible force of my own cold, hard power. Ricardo might be strong in his magic—but he wasn’t stronger than me.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snarled.

  He laughed, and Lena and the other magiers joined in with his chuckles. “If you want to get burned, Your Majesty, that’s fine with me,” he purred again. “It’s always so much more fun when our guests resist.”

  He summoned up even more fire, but I didn’t flinch at the searing flames, so he sneered at me. “Do you really think your tearstone sword is going to stop me from scalding you? I’d heard you were arrogant, but I didn’t realize you were delusional as well.”

  Like most people, Ricardo assumed that my sword was the source of my power, that the silvery tearstone blade and the blue shards in the hilt were what protected me. He was wrong.

  “I don’t need my sword to destroy your magic. I can do it all by myself.” I twirled the weapon around in my hand, then lowered it to my side.

  “You might be a queen, but you’re a fool,” Ricardo hissed. “Perhaps you’ll be a bit more humble after I’ve burned off the first few layers of your flesh.”

  He reared back his hand and tossed his magic at me. Not enough to kill me outright, but more than enough to severely burn me. The fire streaked through the air, the flames growing hotter and stronger as they chewed up the distance between us.

  At the last moment, right before his magic would have slammed into my chest, I snapped up my left hand and flexed my fingers as though I were flicking water off them. In a way, that’s exactly what I was doing. Only instead of water, I was throwing my magic at his.

  The cold, hard, invisible force of my immunity slammed into his fire, shattering it like glass. The red-orange flames exploded in a roar of black smoke that boiled up and quickly wisped away in the winter breeze.

  I casually brushed a stray ember off my right shoulder, snuffing it out just like I had the rest of the fire.

  Ricardo’s topaz eyes widened, and he jerked back in surprise. “How did you do that? I thought you were just a mutt who could smell things.”

  To most people, even my own Bellonans, I was just a mutt, a common, if condescending, term for folks with simple, straightforward powers like extra strength or speed. Even among mutts, my enhanced sense of smell was considered a weak, laughable ability, and most people thought I had only a faint spark of magic, and no real, significant power.

  Those people were right—and wrong. I was a mutt, in every sense of the word, but I was also a master, someone who could control and wield a specific object or element.

  And my element was magic.

  I had always known that I was immune to magic and that I could destroy other people’s fire, lightning, and ice just by pitting my power, my strength, my will, against theirs. But I’d recently discovered that I could do other things with my immunity, like control where other people’s magic went or how much of it was used. I was still learning new tricks, and one day I hoped to be able to wield my immunity as easily as I did the sword in my hand.

  I could have told Ricardo all that, but he didn’t deserve any explanation. No, all he deserved was to die screaming. Him and everyone else who’d been stupid enough to threaten me, trick me, and especially make me feel all that damn hope. Icy rage surged through me, freezing out everything else. Forget running away to safety. I was going to end Ricardo here and now.

  So I crooked my index finger at him. “Why don’t you come over here and find out how I did that? If you’re not too much of a coward. Using a girl to trap someone is easy enough, but actually battling a Bellonan queen yourself is a bit more challenging.”

  Anger filled Ricardo’s eyes, a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, and more fire erupted on his fingertips, even stronger than what he’d just thrown at me. But I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t back down.

  “You think your little trick is going to save you from me? From all of us?” He gestured at Lena and the other magiers. “You shouldn’t have come here alone, Winter queen. You’re going to suffer for your arrogance.”

  I smiled, baring my teeth at him. “Who said I came here alone?”

  Lena and the other magiers were so busy watching Ricardo threaten me that they weren’t paying any attention to what was happening around them—like the shadow that was creeping along one of the alley walls and heading in this direction.

  Paloma let out a lo
ud roar, charged into the plaza, and swung her mace at the closest magier. The other woman never even saw her coming. The magier’s head caved in like a soufflé taken out of the oven too early, and she dropped to the ground without making a sound.

  Paloma roared again and charged at the next-closest magier, who whipped around to face her, along with several others.

  Ricardo snarled with anger, reared back, and threw another fistful of fire at me. This time, I used my immunity, along with the blade of my tearstone sword, to swat away his magic like it was an annoying fly.

  The fireball exploded against one of the building walls, igniting the rotten wood, spoiled food, and other filth piled there. Smoke, sparks, and red-hot embers boiled up into the air, hanging over the plaza like a thick, foul fog, but I sprinted through the stench toward Ricardo.

  He snarled again, yanked two long knives out of his black cloak, and stepped up to meet me. He brought both knives down at once, attempting to cut through my defenses, but I whipped up my sword and blocked his attack.

  Clang!

  The loud crash of our blades banging together rang through the plaza, momentarily drowning out all the other grunts, yells, and screams. That one single note of sound turned a key deep inside me, and phantom music started playing in my mind. Xenia might be teaching me the Tanzen Falter, but Serilda was the one who’d trained me to treat each battle like it was a dance to the death. I let the quick, pulsing beat of that phantom music sweep me away, and my body moved to the rhythm, even as I pushed Ricardo back and twisted to the side.

  He growled and slashed out with his knives over and over again, trying to drive the blades into my heart. He wasn’t trying to capture me anymore. Now he wanted to kill me as badly as I did him.

  I danced away from his blows and launched my own brutal counterstrikes in return.

  We kept hacking and slashing at each other, even as we waded through the broken glass, chipped bits of stone, and other debris that littered the ground. The crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch of our boots added another layer of sound to that phantom music playing in my mind, and I hummed along to the beat, even though no one could hear it but me.