Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(80)

I shrieked and lost my footing when I saw his face, narrowly catching myself by snagging a bloodleaf vine before I could go over the edge and onto the rocks below.

King Domhnall was dead.

The spirit watched me climb back up with a snarl curled permanently into his lips, his throat hanging open below it, blood spilled all down the front of his golden doublet. I treaded carefully toward him; his was an ugly soul in life, warped by rage and greed. Dying did not seem to leave him much improved.

I reached toward him, tentative and slow, but he didn’t wait for me to gain the courage to touch him; he snatched my wrist in his fleshy paw, wrapping his cold and clammy fingers tight around my bones. I tumbled, headfirst, into the last moments of his mortality.

“The plan is still good,” the king was saying. He was standing beneath the gate bearing the visage of his ancestors. “I’ve fulfilled my side of the bargain. No reason to deviate now.”

“Still good?” Toris’s lip twitched. “Our executioner is dead. The prince has broken the betrothal and resigned himself to exile. I don’t know how things could possibly be worse. You’ve failed me, Domh-nall. You almost had everything you wanted: forgiveness of your debts, freedom from your barons, and unquestioned rule over two kingdoms for the rest of your life.” He shrugged. “Too bad your brother Victor isn’t still alive. At least then I’d have another option.”

“Another day, maybe two, is all I need. I heard a rumor about a kid in the Canina District. Pretty sure it’s mine. I remember the mother—?”

“We don’t have two days to wait for you,” Toris said. “The black moon is upon us. The deadline fast approaches.”

“You don’t have to kill me, Toris!”

Toris took him by his collar and said, “Ah, but I do. Because, you see, my mistress commands it.” He drew his knife.

“I’ll call my guards,” the king blubbered. “They won’t let you hurt me.”

“Your guards?” Toris scoffed. “You pay them a few measly coppers and throw them a few scraps and think you can call them yours? If it weren’t for my plentiful gold, they’d have long defected and you’d have had none. They are mine, and they have been for a very long time. They obey you only because I ordered them to. No one is here to help you, Domhnall. And quite frankly, you’ve worn on my patience long enough.”

Domhnall tried to escape, but despite his size advantage, his fear made him clumsy. Toris had him quickly cornered. “Nihil nunc salvet te,” he said as he drew his knife—?Dedrick’s luneocite knife—?and deftly sliced Domhnall’s fleshy neck from one ear to the other. Then he shoved Domhnall over the edge of the wall and the king fell down, down, down through the mist, trailing blood, until he landed, splayed flat, against the water. It held him there on the surface, his eyes empty and staring, as the blood poured out around him in thin tendrils that grew and grew, lashing out across the water, turning it a milky, jewel-toned red, visible even in the dark.

With a cry, I tore my hands from Domhnall’s grasp and ran to the beachside edge. The inky, midnight-blue fjord was gone. Instead, scarlet waves were lapping the rocky shore.

The first seal of King’s Gate was broken. The king was dead, and where once was water, there was now only blood.





Part Three


The Wall

and

the Tower





?31




The tree I used to first communicate with Conrad was now little more than a mess of naked, thorny branches; it was still dark, so the black ribbon from my dress parcel hardly stood out against the dreary grays of the garden’s squalid remains. I cast a sideways prayer to the Empyrea that my brother would see it anyway.

When I first heard the rustle nearby, I whirled around, expecting to find Aren. But it wasn’t the Harbinger. It was Lisette.

“I thought it was you,” she said. She was holding a pair of lace gloves in her hands, wringing them nervously.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to leave Conrad alone. Stop taunting him. Scaring him with your messages. He is a little boy, Aurelia. Just a little boy who doesn’t deserve to be dragged into your conspiracies, your treachery—?”

“My treachery?”

“I know you killed Kellan,” she said, eyes shining. “I know everything. And it won’t be long, mark my words, before you pay for what you’ve done. Father says we’re very close to uncovering the entire thing and then this nightmare can finally be over.”

She was scared; I could see that. She was scared of me, and she had come here to confront me because . . . she was trying to protect my brother.

“You have no idea,” I muttered. “All this time . . . and you have no idea.”

“No idea about what?”

“What has really been happening here. I didn’t kill Kellan. He was my truest friend.” I didn’t dare give voice to the idea that he might still be alive; I’d been keeping that possibility safely tucked away in my mind. “Your father threatened that if I didn’t give him the invitations to cross the wall, he’d kill him. I did what he asked,” I said through my teeth, “and he killed him anyway.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”