“Any last words?” the executioner asked, his breath reeking of garlic.
I glanced down at the gore in the basket, then over to the bodies piled on top of a massive wooden cart.
“Would you mind using a fresh basket for my head?” I nodded toward the empty one next to him. “I don’t want to have to go searching for the damned thing later.”
He laughed, then sobered. “Yer serious?” he choked, incredulous.
“As serious as that blade in your hand. And,” I said, kneeling to take my place on the chopping block, “you might clean that disgusting thing before you use it on me.”
The people at the front of the dais exchanged confused expressions.I found my brother’s serious blue gaze set in a black-haired man’s face. When I winked at him, he rolled his eyes.
The clean basket made a scraping sound when it slid beneath the block. The executioner lifted a pristine axe over my head.
And let it drop.
20
Every time I swallowed,it felt like someone had shoved a red-hot fire poker down my gullet. Peering through heavy lashes, I saw a bed with a thick green canopy looming against the far wall.
Rían had brought me back to the castle.
A pair of gleaming black boots stopped next to my head as I waited for the feeling in my extremities to return.
With a flick of his wrist, a tub appeared. A moment later, he filled it with steaming water. The stench wafting from my clothes made my eyes burn. Thankfully, he hadn’t left me on the bed. No sense in making more of a mess than necessary.
Rían nudged me with his toe. “You need to wash yourself. You smell like a dead carcass.”
My hands and arms came back first. I managed to push myself upright against the foot of the bed. “How many this week?” I asked.
Rían knelt, helping me out of my shirt and throwing it into the fire.
He flicked his wrist. A stack of three black ledgers appeared in his hand. The first ledger landed on the floor with athump. “Forty-three.”Thump. The second ledger fell on top of it. “I filled this one last month.”Thump. Then the third. “And this one the month before.”
“I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.”
His eyes flashed. “You didn’t care.”
I hadn’t cared. I had been distracted for so long that I’d forgotten that I still had a title. That I still had a voice when so many had lost theirs.
“I do now.” After seeing the way Keelynn had gone after those guards, powerless as she was, how could I not do something? If someone so hateful and prejudiced could change her mind, put herself at risk to fight for one of us, what excuse did I have to remain silent?
It was high time we did something about this before our people were wiped out.
“Vellana are shipping over more soldiers left, right, and center. There’s something big coming.” Rían’s lips pressed together as he glanced toward the sunny window. “As much as I hate the Queen ruling the Forest, she’s our best defense. The humans won’t go near the border.”
“And the sea?”
“Muireann says her folk haven’t seen hide nor hair of a Vellanian ship on the west coast. On the east coast, however . . .”
Were there any options that didn’t lead to unnecessary bloodshed? I didn’t want to kill humans, I just wanted them to stop killingus. “What can we do?”
Rían sank onto the edge of my bed, massaging his right hand. I could almost hear the gears turning in his mind. He always had a plan. Always. “We have no army and cannot fight,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “Outside these borders, the laws keep us powerless. Beyond a mass exodus—which no one will agree to as long as the Queen refuses humans entry—there’s only one option.” His expression darkened. “We renegotiate with the King.”
We hadn’t tried speaking to Vellana’s King Marcellus since he took the throne. The ones before him had all said the same thing: we’d made our beds and were expected to lie in them.
Still, it couldn’t hurt.
“Renegotiate for what, exactly?”