Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(76)
The assassin hesitated, then grabbed another dagger from the folds of their cloak and came at me again. This strike was a little more deliberate and skilled, but the assassin didn’t have my gladiator training, and I easily avoided the attack.
The assassin lurched past me, and I stuck my foot out, tripping the figure, and sending them crashing to their knees. The assassin hit the ground hard, and both daggers skittered out of their hands and tumbled end over end along the ground.
I hurried forward, grabbed the assassin’s shoulder, and yanked them to their feet. Then I churned my legs, forcing the figure across the chambers until their back slammed up against the center support pole. I started to shove my sword into the assassin’s throat, but the figure jerked to the side, and their hood slid down, revealing their features. Black hair, amethyst eyes, young frightened face.
Leonidas.
I cursed and managed to stop my swing, my sword hovering an inch away from the boy’s neck. “What are you doing here? Why are you trying to kill me?”
“I-I-I—” he stuttered.
I moved forward so that the point of my sword rested in the hollow of his throat. “Spit it out, or I will pin you to this pole like you’re a butterfly in a collection.”
“I-I-I didn’t want to!” he said, his voice a low, panicked whisper. “I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to hurt you. Not after you saved Lyra.”
“But you came here anyway,” I snarled. “Why? To kill me so you could take back your strix?”
Leonidas’s eyes widened. “No! Of course not! You won her fair and square. Besides, she’ll be much safer with you than she would ever be with me.”
Lyra let out a loud squawk, clearly disagreeing. I eyed the strix, wondering if she might burst out of her cage to defend Leonidas. I was surprised she hadn’t done that already, but the strix remained behind the bars, so I turned back to the boy.
“If you didn’t come for Lyra, then why are you here?”
Leonidas wet his lips. “Uncle Maximus made me come. He was furious that he lost Lyra in the kronekling tournament, and he knows that I’m the only one she’ll listen to. He told me to come here, kill you, and bring Lyra to him.”
I could hear the underlying threat in his words. “Or else?”
He wet his lips again. “Or else he would hurt my mother. And me too.”
Maximus had once hit Maeven because she’d failed to kill me, and I had seen the dark, ugly impression his ring had left behind on her face. I had also seen how he snapped his fingers at Mercer and Nox and ordered them around like they were his servants instead of his son and nephew. And of course I knew how disposable the members of the Bastard Brigade were to him. But I hadn’t thought the Mortan king would be so heartless as to order a teenage boy to kill me, even if that boy was another one of his bastard relatives. Just when I thought Maximus couldn’t surprise me anymore, he sank to an even lower level of depravity.
I couldn’t keep myself from asking the obvious question. “Hurt you how?”
A shudder rippled through his body, and the scent of ashy heartbreak surged off him, along with strong notes of pain, anger, and misery. The emotions were even sharper than my sword at his throat.
“You don’t want to know,” he whispered.
No, I didn’t want to know. Given what Maximus had done to that strix earlier, I could well imagine the horrible tortures he would coldly inflict on whoever displeased him.
“So your uncle sent you here to kill me,” I murmured. “Well, you did a poor job of it, since my sword is at your throat.”
Leonidas lifted his chin and straightened a bit, despite the blade at his neck. “I don’t care what you do to me. But please, please don’t hurt Lyra. She didn’t know I was coming, and she has nothing to do with any of this. So don’t hurt her. Please?”
Well, at least he was polite, even if he had tried to kill me. But the boy was right. The strix had nothing to do with Maximus.
“I’m not going to hurt Lyra. I would never do anything like that. But what about your mother? Does Maeven know about this?”
Leonidas shook his head a tiny bit. “I don’t think so. Uncle Maximus summoned me to his tent and gave me the daggers and the mission himself. Mercer was there, but my mother wasn’t, and I didn’t see her before the guards escorted me out of camp and across the bridge to Fortuna.”
Of course she hadn’t been there. Maximus wouldn’t have wanted Maeven to try to stop him from sending her son off to die.
I had already killed several members of the Bastard Brigade, strong, seasoned adults who had a lot more training and magic than Leonidas did. Maximus had to know that I would most likely best the boy, but he had sent his nephew here anyway. Why? Did he want Leonidas dead for some reason? But if that was Maximus’s goal, then why not just cut the boy’s throat like he had the strix’s earlier?
Or maybe Maximus simply wanted me to live with the guilt of killing the boy. Although as soon as I had that thought I dismissed it as ridiculous. Maximus didn’t feel guilt, and he wouldn’t expect others to indulge in the emotion, especially not a queen like me.
The Mortan king could have had any number of reasons for sending the boy here to die, but Leonidas’s familiar features and amethyst eyes made me think about Maeven.
Maybe Maximus wanted to punish Maeven for failing to kill me so many times before. Maybe he was even hoping that my killing Leonidas would enrage Maeven enough that she would finally figure out a way to successfully murder me.