Nim turned to Warrick, the blood draining from her face. He looked down at her, his expression grave. “You knew,” she said. He’d known Calum would be free, that what she had done to Rhen had broken the law and forfeited her hold over him. The king likely knew as well. It was probably why Warrick had been summoned, why he finally discovered she was meant to be hanged. Nim’s knees went weak, but the magic held her firmly in place.
“They could not have retrieved him from his cell,” Warrick said.
Not until Nim had escaped and ran to the Trust instead of following his plan to keep her safe from the king, and not until Warrick had followed after her into the undercity. He’d broken his terms because of her.
And Nim had put Inara in peril to save him.
The head of the Trust made a disgusted sound. “Enough of this. Calum will go free. Nimona Weston’s crime against the Trust requires recompense.” Her tone was a warning. “Choose.”
Warrick straightened to face her. “I will not.”
An angry huff of air escaped the queen, quite like an answer of “fine.” Then she flicked her wrist. “So be it.”
Time seemed to slow, hanging stupidly like Nim’s own mouth as she stared into the space before her. Distantly, she felt her hand raise to her stomach, felt the warm, wet spread of blood escaping between the fingers she’d pressed to what she realized was an open wound.
Nimona Weston’s crime had been answered. Nimona Weston had just been stabbed.
Time returned with violent clarity, and she slammed to the cold stone floor beneath her.
Warrick screamed. It was more of a roar, to be precise, but the magic that came with it tore through Nim as sharply as sound. The queen had stabbed her—not with an actual, physical blade, but she had rendered in Nim’s own flesh the wound Nim had given Rhen. Her body was afire with pain, her palm pinned tightly against her stomach as Warrick pressed his hand over hers. He was touching her, and that was something, but she was fairly certain it would not be for long, not when her limbs were already going cold enough that they’d begun to shake with tremors.
She could not quite get her lips to form words, or she might have spoken as he stared down at her with horror in his face as he repeated her name. He had not believed his mother would do it, not when Nim still had a part to play. It was his fault, he seemed to think. He had done this to her. His intimations ran together, his emotions too fast to track. Secrets he’d been bound not to tell her rushed past her attentions, slipping just out of grasp as one thought replayed in his mind, over and over.
Nim was bleeding out on the Trust floor. She was going to die because of him.
Kneeling over her, hand still pressed to her wound, Warrick turned to face the queen. “Bind us.”
A cold, slithering sensation ran over her skin. From Rhen, she felt something of surprise. From somewhere else, dread, though to be fair, the last one might have just been hers.
“How dare you?” the head of the Trust said, her tone deadly.
With her chest heaving with a wracking cough that made her mouth taste of blood, Nim could say nothing at all.
Something horrible rose from Warrick, emotion tangling darkly with power, and with it, another roar. “Bind us now.” He was close, shielding her, grasping for any chance, willing the moment to hang on just a little longer. The queen looked back at him with disgust. Warrick’s voice went the coldest Nim had ever heard it. “If you do not let me save her, I will crush all that you hold dear. That is my vow to you. Upon my blood. Upon my magic.” Every single thing. Destroyed. Gone from your grasp forever. And I do not care what it will cost.
An image of the queen alone in the darkness fluttered through Nim before the room began to feel fuzzy. She missed part of the conversation but snapped back when the queen’s voice went hard. “Calum,” she demanded.
“I gave you my word,” Warrick growled.
“Calum first.” The queen’s voice seemed to tremble, though Nim was not sure that wasn’t merely her own shaking. Her body seemed so far away.
Warrick snapped instructions at Rhen, and then his presence was gone. “You’ve made your deal,” Warrick told the queen. “Now bind us. For if she dies, I will break every covenant you have ever laid upon me.” His tone seemed to imply that killing a queen was on the list, but the idea got very little thought before Nim’s body erupted into flames. It was not a true flame, she realized, because while it burned like fire, it did not stop. It carried on long after she would have been ash, long after there would have been nothing left. It carried on so long that she felt as if she might rather the flame had been real. It felt as though the sacrifice she had given for Alice had been nothing but the stroke of a feather, as if all the magic that had ever touched her the brush of a summer breeze.
It felt as if she might never feel again. Like there would be only flames.
“Nim,” Warrick whispered. “Please.”
She drew in a gasp that seared her lungs with the fire, drew it all from her skin into her chest then lower, into her wound.
For all that was sacred, her flesh was knitting together where the magic had torn her apart.
Like Rhen. Like Calum. Like someone who used magic.
“Bind us,” Warrick had said. Nim’s eyes shot open to find him hovering over her, his expression grim. She could not seem to find her body or anything but the fire beneath her hands.
They were alone. The queen was gone. No Rhen and no guards. The stone was cold again as Warrick collapsed beside her and pressed his forehead to her temple, whispering words she could not comprehend. “Bound,” he’d said before. Bound. Nim was tied together with magic, the fount of power that was the Trust tingling over her awareness, lulling her into a false sense of safety even as it steamed like dark pools in the pits of the queen’s chamber and even as some part of her still warned, run.
But she was alive.
Chapter 22
Warrick helped Nim to her feet, but though she managed to hobble with assistance, she did not have the capacity to ask the questions churning through her mind. She needed to get outside, into Inara, and away from the effects of the magic. She needed to think, to focus. Warrick’s power felt as if it was threaded through her, something darker and more like the Trust beneath. She did not entirely understand what the queen had done. She could not fathom what it had cost Warrick.
They stumbled through the corridors to a throng of onlookers, men and women of the Trust, whose gazes locked on the pair, and revelers from Inara, whose eyes went wide as their seneschal escorted the new constable from the undercity, the pair of them soaked in blood. When they finally came through the gateway, Nim nearly collapsed with relief at the feel of the sun. Warmth, a sense of safety, and feelings of home flooded through her.
But there was no safety. Nimona Weston was to be hanged by a king. She opened her mouth but was stopped short by Maris appearing at her side, sword at her hip, her usual maid’s attire exchanged for a costume more fitting a queen’s protector.
Maris. That was how Warrick had known. She must have seen. She must have—
“Take her to my rooms.” Warrick’s tone was nothing but a command. “If the guard touches her, they will answer to my blade.”