“What, like he protected you?” Xavier spoke up. He had been staying out of my argument with Gunther, but he still wasn’t won over on the general either.
“Like he protected all of us.” Gunther gestured, effectively conveying the fact that we were all still alive.
“It’s neither here nor there,” Xav waved his hand. “I don’t want to argue about this again, not when I finally have both of my brothers back.
“Neither of you has seen Addie in the circumstances that I have.”
If he was trying to keep me calm, bringing up the time he kidnapped her and she was assaulted was not the way to do it. He held up a hand as though he could sense the biting remark that was on the top of my tongue.
“She is strong and capable and resilient, and that was before she had trained with the necklace.” He leveled a look at me, his blue-green eyes sharp against his dark skin. “We all love her, and we are all worried, but you’re doing her a disservice assuming she can’t survive a few more days of whatever is going on.”
I let that sink in for a moment, almost allowing myself to be comforted when my eternal optimist of a brother spoke up.
“I respect her, too, Xav. But you don’t know what that man is capable of.”
And just like that, I was seeing her subtle wince, the flash of fear in her eyes when he moved toward her. Just like that, I was ready to go back out to the training ground and demolish the punching bag.
Then, the front door burst open revealing a frazzled-looking Levelian.
“The queen needs you. Soldiers are on the way.”
Apparently, Nell had been wrong when she said her uncle wouldn’t be stupid enough to send men in again so soon.
At least I don’t have to bother with the punching bag now. Let the king see what happens when he messes with my family.
The Idealist
Gunther could tell it bothered Xavier how attached Clark was getting to Addie. What he couldn’t tell was why. Jealousy? An unwillingness to let his only family branch out?
His brother never really did adjust to change that well. Their makeshift family had lost so much in their lifetimes that it was hard thinking about one of them moving on.
It wouldn’t do to ask Xav outright why he was so upset. That would just make him angrier. He knew his older brother would sort it out eventually. Until then, he resolved to keep an eye on him.
For Gunther’s part, he couldn’t deny a certain attachment to the girl as well. Where it had taken weeks to claim Xav and Clark as brothers, Addie felt like his sister already. Maybe it was because he’d already opened his heart to his brothers after the cruelty he’d experienced, so adding more family now wasn’t as difficult. Or maybe it was the kinship he felt over their biological fathers.
But he felt it was deeper than that. Addie was always misreading people, and her temper got the better of her just like his brother, but underneath her somewhat icy façade, there was a kindness and respect that he admired. Since the day she’d learned he was deaf, she never once seemed to pity or judge him.
She always made sure he understood what she was saying when he was in the room, even if the statement wasn’t directed to him. She had begun to work her way into Gunther’s heart from the first day he met her. While he had never had a sister, Addie was quickly filling that role for him.
So, when she went missing, he knew he would do whatever it took to get his family back together.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Adelaide
I lay in the cot Gunther had been in only days earlier, tucked away in the corner of BeLa’s chambers. I stared blankly at the wall.
My arm was on fire.
She had given me medication to dull the pain and something to help me heal faster, but treating the wound itself was impossible. We couldn’t risk the king’s suspicion or his wrath.
“The ‘ink’ he used is similar to our field technology for cauterizing wounds,” she explained. Then, in a quieter tone. “Only, it would seem yours lacks the usual numbing agent.”
Of course, it did.
“The way it sealed to your skin first will keep infection from getting in, but it will also prevent me from applying anything that would erase the scar or heal the wound faster until it dissipates. Even if my father would allow it.”
“You can do that?” I asked hopefully.
“I could have,” she replied gently. “The longer the time from the...incident, the less likelihood we have of removing the scar.”
I tried for a brave nod, but the unending pain had drained me. Besides, I had used up the last vestiges of strength I had when I had been forced to sleep in the king’s rooms last night.
Any hopes I had of the agony in my wrist knocking me out were shattered when I spent the entire night huddled on his couch, refusing to let any emotion show.
And then, there had been that horrid announcement this morning, the one I was sure Clark had seen.
I was done. Silent tears tracked down my cheeks.
Killian walked in and his eyes immediately flitted to my face.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, trying to stop the steady stream.
I knew this was no time to have a breakdown, right in the middle of this war we were fighting, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. The harder I tried to stop, the faster the water spilled down to my chin.
“No,” the general said firmly.
I thought he was ordering me to stop crying until he came closer and pulled me into his arms.
“You will not apologize for being human, not when you have gone far beyond what anyone could have expected of you. You’re exhausted, and you’re in pain.
“Feel whatever you need to feel. Cry, scream, rage. Rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
My choked-back tears turned into loud, racking sobs, as I clung to his shirt with my good hand. I cried because I missed Clark, and I wasn’t honestly even sure if he would want me now. I thought of the children and other innocents who had died, all because of one man’s thirst for power. The time that had been lost for BeLa and her family, for the general and his sons.
I remembered the sick feeling of promising my life to someone I despised. The terror that we wouldn’t succeed and I would be chained to a monster for the rest of my life. The excruciating agony and violation of being branded.
And I let myself grieve for all of it.
Killian sat silently through it all, saying nothing when my tears soaked his shirt or my grip turned vice-like on his arm. When I was finally somewhere close to being drained of my tears, a wave of exhaustion hit me. I didn’t consciously register falling asleep, but the next thing I knew, I was being awakened by the chiming of the intercom.
BeLa went to answer it. The general, true to his word, was in a chair next to my bedside.
“Is Ms. — Is the queen here?” the guard asked.
“Yes.” BeLa’s tone was carefully neutral.
“The king requests her presence,” the man said.
Requests, indeed.
“She’ll be right out.” BeLa shut the door without waiting for an answer, and I could have hugged her for her tacit support.
I took a moment to clean my face up, and BeLa helped fix my hair. I started to walk toward the door, but the general held up a hand for me to wait.
He pulled the crown I had been given from the table behind him and held it out to me.
“Remember that sometimes you have to bend in small ways. Do what you need to do to survive the next couple of days, Adelaide.” He placed the crown on my head.
“Thank you,” I said to them both before going to meet the guard.
I wasn’t surprised to see we were taking the path to the council room. When I got to the king, he once again took the opportunity to yank on my tender arm. Had it not been for BeLa’s medication, I suspected the sudden onslaught of pain would have knocked me off my feet.
I’d die before I would show weakness in his stupid war room, anyway.
I was still blinking ba
ck stars when I realized his face was perilously close to mine. The council was behind him, so they could see my expression, but not his threatening one.
He leaned down, his hand still hovering near my marred skin.
Bend in small ways. Was this what Killian had been referring to? Did he know this would happen?
I chased the revulsion from my face, willing myself not to react when he pressed his lips against mine. It was powerful and forceful, and like everything he did, held little regard for anyone but himself.
That was the moment I realized my mistake. I had thought he wanted to use me for my power, for my name. I hadn’t seen how badly he wanted to own me.
He didn’t release me, even when he was finally finished with his very one-sided kiss. He turned me toward the room, who was looking on with various degrees of awkwardness in their expressions. Their discomfort was probably half the reason he had insisted on that kiss at all.
“You asked how this alliance benefits us.” He slipped a hand inside his coat as he addressed them, pulling out the amulet. “My queen can now transport the soldiers directly from here, rather than them having to travel to grounds nearby, and she will soon be able to take them all at once.”
I will? We had practiced teleportation, but not at this scale.
Besides, like hell would I take the soldiers to a village knowing what they had done last time. The men around the table looked intrigued, though.
And the king looked like he always did around me, somewhere between predatory and victorious. Like he both wanted me to fail his tests and didn’t. Like he’d already won.
I thought again about not only Killian’s words, but the things he had done to protect the people he loved. I also knew it had nearly destroyed him.
I could find small ways to bend if I thought hard enough about it. The question wasn’t how I would survive, but how I would live with myself after.
The Idealist
The eternal optimist. That’s what his brothers always called him.
Perhaps that was why even as Gunther walked across the deck to where his father held a knife, he believed the man had a plan. A way out.
There was no way the man who’d saved him all those years ago would go through with this. There was no way he was really the one capable of the heinous crimes he’d been accused of. That was something his real father would do, not the father Gunther had chosen when he was a broken child.
Hope was something he’d lost entirely until the general had adopted him. And a small part of him wondered if it was foolish to keep his optimism now.
No.
Gunther still had hope. He believed in his adopted father. He believed there had to be another way.
He believed until the knife plunged deep into his flesh, and that belief died.
He stared up at his killer’s face and noticed how, for the second time in his life, it was slipping back and forth between the general’s and the president’s. He began to imagine seeing the same hybrid monster that had haunted his feverish mind all those years ago. Both men had been his father in one way or another. But they were alike in this. They both had chosen to betray him.
The cruelest part was that he’d expect his murderer to be the man who beat him as a child, not the man who’d raised him and shown him how to trust again.
Gunther’s eyes began to close. His skin felt too hot, and he was losing blood too quickly. He knew this was where it would end for him. And his brothers and Addie were being forced to watch.
He had told them it would be okay. He had believed that it would be.
And he’d never been more wrong.
The last thing Gunther remembered was the anguished expressions on his brothers’ faces. Then, he slumped down to the deck with the full knowledge that he would never wake up again.
Chapter Thirty
Clark
“I’d like to know what the hell Addie is playing at, wearing my mother’s crown and bringing soldiers down on innocent villagers.” Nell had finally taken a break to rid herself of the dirt, sweat, and blood that had coated her for the hours we spent fighting.
“Ms. Kensington is in an impossible situation.” Locke spoke up before I could.
Nell opened her mouth to argue, but Gunther cut her off.
“And there are things you aren’t considering.”
We hadn’t managed to convince him to stay away from the fight, despite our best efforts. At this point, I was lucky to get Biscuit to stay behind.
“Did you notice how far the soldiers appeared from the village? How she only brought in a few at a time? She knows we have the Court, the warriors, and my brothers. Even then, you had to see she looked terrified.”
“People died today, Gunther. My people.” Her eyes were red.
She wasn’t wrong. Though I had been trained to aim to wound, I knew at some point in the last week I had crossed a line. People had died. By my hand. Perhaps they were technically enemies, but they were also just soldiers following the orders of their king.
“But not as many as in the last skirmish,” SuEllen murmured thoughtfully.
There were nods around the room, but I wondered if any of them actually felt comforted by that.
“So, is this what we do now? Make decisions that kill slightly fewer people and pat ourselves on the back for it?” Nell shook her head, bitterness plain on her elegant features.
“Isn’t that what you told me being a leader was about? Making the tough calls?” My words were pointed, but I tried to make my tone neutral.
She just shook her head mutely.
I knew she wasn’t so much attacking Addie as she was exhausted and grieving for those she had been trying to protect. A nagging part of my brain told me I was inadvertently defending my father’s actions along with Addie’s.
Wasn’t that what he had been doing for years?
We managed to travel toward the palace without another incident, but tensions were high. The Court had been maintaining their distance, and I honestly had no idea what my father was telling them.
Even Jayce had stayed far away from my brothers and me. He may have been playing it safe because he knew Xav or I might actually murder him here, but that didn’t seem like him.
No. They were planning something. I just had to hope the general was ahead of them this time, and that he wasn’t waiting in the wings to double-cross us.
Again.
SuEllen’s bracelet chimed.
“The first group is ready,” she said quietly.
It was easy to forget the captain was a seasoned soldier sometimes. Though she was tall, she was all lithe muscles and exquisite features, bronze skin that didn’t begin to reveal her age. She looked more like Nell’s sister than someone old enough to be her mother.
But at that moment, SuEllen looked every inch a warrior.
One way or another, it would all be over by this time tomorrow.
The Idealist
A sharp stabbing pain struck Gunther’s arm, and it hurt more than death should. Hadn’t he always heard that death was a release? He shouldn’t be feeling any more pain. Not after what he’d just been through.
But as a cool liquid filled his veins, stealing both his pain and his tiny semblance of consciousness, he realized it must’ve been a mistake. Death could still be sweet if she kept numbing him this way. So, he allowed her to claim him once more.
The next sensation he registered was of someone gently touching his face, running slim, deft fingers over his eyelids and through his hair in a soothing pattern. Was he finally going to see his mother again? Gunther felt his lips pull up into a smile. He had missed her.
But something was wrong. His brain kept pulling him toward something terrible. This wasn’t her. The smells were all wrong. His mother always smelled like fresh linen and citrus. What he was smelling was metal and grease. He recognized those easily. But there was also something else, something light and floral. It was similar to jasmine or gardenias, but with spiced undertones.
Wh
atever it was, it lulled him back under almost as effectively as whatever was flowing into his arm.
Chapter Thirty-One
Adelaide
BeLa had managed to find footage of the village where I had taken the soldiers. I watched with shaking hands and a tenuous stomach as nearly everyone I cared about came out to combat them.
I had hoped, by fumbling and bringing them in small increments, I would make it nearly impossible for them to do any real damage, but anyone can get a lucky shot in.
What have I done?
Clark fought with a rage I had never before witnessed. Any time he came into view, my eyes were glued to his fluid, furious movements.
Then it would pan away and I would get a glimpse of Nell firing out glowing arrows like some kind of avenging angel, or Locke taking on several men at once without breaking a sweat. Even Gunther was there, paler and thinner than he used to be, but throwing knives and stars with deadly accuracy.
Xav and Clark were never more than a foot from their little brother, something that made me both grateful and unreasonably sad.
BeLa sat near me, her breath hitching any time an arrow came too close to Gunther.
Only when the last of the men had been caught or disposed of could I take a deep breath. Of course, that’s when the king came for me.
He showed me the same footage, and I was eternally grateful I had seen it before, that I could stop myself from reacting outwardly.
“Had you agreed to fight for me, these men would still be alive. Every one of their blood is on your hands, and every widow my captain is forced to visit today will be because of you.” For a second, he almost seemed like he cared. Then, his frown morphed into a snarl. “Think about that the next time you think to defy me.”
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