‘This has nothing to do with youpeople.’
Meilyr put himself between the two of them. ‘Why are you doing this?’
But they had miscalculated. Beneath the plain cloak lay the gleaming whites of a member of the crownsworn. The attacker – sworn to Khaim and its laws – grabbed Meilyr, and everything happened appallingly quickly.
The air thudded out of his chest as he fell hard across the cobbles, losing his hat. Celyn’s shout, raw. A blurred struggle.
Through splitting stars of pain, above a rumble of thunder, Meilyr looked.
A flash. The glint of metal. The knife scored Celyn’s shoulder as he blocked it, and there was another heart-rending struggle.
Meilyr shoved himself to his feet. ‘Celyn!’
A lurch, andthatslick, awful sound. Everything went very still.
Meilyr’s insides blanched cold as the taste of iron bloomed on his tongue.
Celyn stepped back, hands covered in blood.
No—
Meilyr grabbed him, pulse pitched to a gale, already reaching with his senses. Searching for the wound, the terrible splutter ofwrongness. Finding nothing.
The crownsworn stumbled, their own knife embedded in their chest, seeping red.
The growling of thunder was not from the sky. A column of white-clad riders descended upon the street.
The crownsworn slumped and went down, curled inwards like a wilting flower.
Horses clattered to a halt, forms dismounted.
The empty echo as the life left the crownsworn’s body winded Meilyr again, throwing him back to a place of burning houses, suffocating smoke and blood.
One of the soldiers stood over the dead man. ‘That’s…’ They knelt, confirming. ‘That’s Bede.Gods.’ They rose, a hollow, metallic rush as they drew their sword and faced Celyn. ‘You’ve killed a crownsworn.’
The sound of more steel. Someone grabbed Celyn, another Meilyr, pulling them apart.
‘No! It was an accident,’ Celyn tried.
‘Silence!’
‘Hold.’
The lead rider did not raise his voice. He had no need to.
He might have been beautiful, the way a wolf might be beautiful even as it hunts you. But in his radiant presence there was only terror. Recognition. He was golden hair and flowing white cloth, death made brilliant flesh, carved from legend atop his white horse.
Meilyr’s heart crumpled. The panic of a cornered rabbit – a cornered child, the woods snaring around him.
No, please. Anyone buthim.
The soon-to-be-crowned Prince of Cyngalon steadied his horse, voice ringing through the stillness. ‘What happened here?’
‘That’s Bede.’ One of the crownsworn gestured. ‘Works with my cousin. Worked.’ They looked at Celyn, emanating hostility. ‘And that’s a ’sworn knife sticking out of his chest.’
Meilyr needed to stop this, needed to speak. But he was a little boy again, alone in the forest. Khaim was coming. Coming to kill him as well.
‘It was an accident,’ Celyn bit. ‘That sod hit my brother, drew his steel, so I defended.’