He had no idea if he could do this, but he had to try. ‘Do not move,’ he whispered. ‘Trust me, Blythe. Please.’
Her fear shattered as she cried out in soundless pain, as Meilyr buckled her bones back inside her flesh and willed her body to remember where it belonged. Willed it to remember that it wanted to be healed.
It was a sickeningly simple, natural thing, and the excruciating effort left him shaking, sweat at his temples. It was all he could do like this.
As though she understood, she gestured with her chin towards the Throne Room, grimacing, her eyes watering. ‘Help him,’ she managed.
Meilyr swayed to his feet, dizzy. One of the other bodies had propped one of the doors ajar where it fell. There were voices beyond.
In a fog of determined panic, he moved closer.
‘You cannot… you cannot do this…’ An unfamiliar voice, male and deep. Rasping, struggling for breath.
‘Oh, darling. I think you will find Iamdoing this.’
The earth opened beneath Meilyr’s feet, swallowed him and spat him out left of centre.
Demelza.
‘You deserve it,My King. You have been judged and found ruinously wanting.’ Her voice was steady and patient, that calm assuredness that was hers alone. ‘How exquisite it is to watch you see this all end. Don’t you dare look away, Oswald – I want you to watch your children die. Such a shame you had to miss the youngest, but it was worth it to get you here.’
The king’s children.Osian.
Meilyr stepped inside the Throne Room and took in the horror.
The king, tall and pale and dripping regalia, sat pinioned to the throne with the bones of his own shoulders. Hawthorn jutted from him, thorns deep in his wrists and arms and skull, woven into a barbaric crown, forcing him to look at the scene before him.
Aldreda lay at the foot of the steps of the dais, barbs of fox’s tears rising through her bent shoulders. They grew as she strained in agony towards Demelza.
Demelza, who stood beside the dais, resplendent in creams and golds save for a stain of vivid red that ran from shoulder to wrist.
Osian lay to one side, his fingers tight around his bloodied sword. Oak reached through his exposed scapulae, affixing him to the floor.
Meilyr ran to him and dropped hard to his knees beside him, hands and blood already reaching. ‘Osian – Osian, can you hear me?’
The fury in the prince’s eyes shot to panic. He had to grind the words loose. ‘Meilyr – no, you cannot be here—’
‘Meilyr Cadogan.’ There was relief in Demelza’s voice. She looked genuinely pleased to see him, as she always did. ‘Thank the gods, I thought you were long gone.’
Meilyr clutched at Osian. His blood grasped at all the edges that did not fit, that had been torn and were even now twisting out of form. He gathered,gripped.
No.He pushed the feeling into everything he had:Not him. You cannot have him.
Whether it was the strength of his will or a slip in Demelza’s, Osian’s bones steadied and the oak eased, until it stopped.
‘My,’ Demelza admired, ‘you do have potential.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Meilyr’s voice cracked in focus and confusion. ‘Demelza,why?’
‘Because they deserve it.’ She laughed as if it were obvious. ‘Meilyr, dear, they are Khaimlic, and Khaimlic royalty at that. They are murderers. Monsters. All they have done to Cyngalon, all they have done to us. They deserve it tenfold.’
‘What… does that make you, then?’ Aldreda hissed, thick with pain.
Demelza put her hand to her heart. ‘Darling, you would have butchered half the castle to find me. Sometimes, in order to kill a monster, you have to become one. My hands are irrevocably bloodied, but your lineage is responsible for genocide – as, regrettably, is half of mine.’ She looked at Meilyr. ‘Yes, I am only half Cyngaleg, but that is the thing that has kept me alive all these years. All these years of smiling andsmiling, pretending to be grateful to the brute that bedded me even as he put the torch to my people. To my mother’s people, our people, Meilyr… Come now, do not look at me like that – how old were you when they murdered your parents? Were you forced to watch, as I was forced to watch her die? It is unforgiveable, what they are. Even when…’
She looked between Osian and Aldreda, her heart breaking in her eyes. ‘Even when they make you love them. Even when they are small, and your nature tells you they should be protected, because how innocent they must be, these children. These children you love…’
Tears lit her cheeks. Meilyr could only stare, utterly dumbfounded.