The bells had fallen silent, but the halls still echoed with their alarm. It had been so long since she’d been privy to the signals of the guard, but the pattern aside, any bell, any sort of warning, was no good. It meant the castle was under attack. It meant a threat to the king.
Chapter 24
Nim burst through a pack of armed guards and into the throne room. The corridors had been filled with scurrying staff and courtiers, the cacophony of their shouts and warnings making no sense at all until she saw what was happening with her own eyes, until she felt it.
Cold stillness settled over the edge of the room as every king’s guard and courtier lined the wall, as far from the throne as possible. The king’s chancellor was making a sign meant to ward off curses while his ewerer cried. Thin mist rose from the floor, writhing like phantom snakes from its stones—magic manifested in ways that even those without Nim’s senses could not deny. At the center of the room, Warrick stood alone, the back of his black robe impeccable over wide, straight shoulders. He seemed frozen, unable to do anything but watch as Stewart sat upon the throne.
The king had gone ashen with scarlet lesions scattering his flesh as if he’d been if struck by a strange, sudden plague. He stared at Warrick, his son, the single person left of his family and paramount in his battle with the Trust, the heir to Inara.
Stay, Stewart’s gaze seemed to warn. Do not step closer. But his warning was meant only for Warrick, not Nim or the crowd.
It was not a plague, nothing of the sort. Whatever held back the other onlookers did not hold Nim back. She took a slow step forward, her slippered foot touching stone that seemed to sing with power. The mist snaked around her feet, caressing her bare ankles in a way that made her curse herself for not having worn her usual attire. She would have given any of the fat jewels Maris had tried to drape at her wrist for a decent pair of boots. There was a shuffling of the onlookers, and Nim glanced back to find her maid shoving through the crowd to stare at the spectacle before her, sword drawn. She was wearing a pair of unmatched boots.
Her eyes met Nim’s, all calculation gone. Maris saw it, too—the magic, the king, the thing that would come to pass—and her quest to find Nim seemed to fall away. Nim swallowed hard before looking back to the scene. She approached Warrick slowly, the magic beneath her feet growing stronger, bolder, licking up her legs to snap and hiss where it met the magic woven through the dagger at her thigh. It cracked and stung where it struck, tingled over her arms, and whispered to her promises that Nim did not want it to keep.
Run from here, her thoughts said, as fast as you can. But her heart beat with the pulse of the magic, every thump drawing her near, near, near. She did not slow beside Warrick but only glanced up at him as his face turned toward hers. His expression was tortured, and rage simmered beneath his intimation, but he did not move. Nim could feel the dark, insidious thing she’d felt before, held just out of her reach—the darkness that had come when he’d made a bargain with the queen.
Her step faltered as she stared at him, her stomach suddenly weightless, as if the floor had become an abyss. Warrick had made a deal with the head of the Trust to save her, a deal with a queen who had asked both Nim and Warrick to kill the king.
He seemed to read the path of her thoughts in her expression, and she felt his shock of betrayal even before she’d registered her own doubt. Warrick saw her make the connection as he stood before his dying father, and it was a dagger to his heart. Her mouth opened on a denial, but Warrick turned away, his emotions closing off entirely as he stared at the king.
Beyond Warrick, still lining the walls of the room, the courtiers looked on. What they thought was impossible to know, but before them was a tableau no one could deny. Nim, outcast from society for her father’s ties to magic, had been restored to king’s service by a seneschal who’d only recently gone to fetch her, bloody and beaten, from the Trust. He stood, even now, surrounded by the writhing forms of magic. They’d no idea they would be meant to accept him as king.
She took a steadying breath and looked at Stewart. He seemed paler still, his cheeks gaunt in the way of Nim’s father when the magic had hold of him, when it was too late to draw him back.
The king might not have wanted Warrick at his side, not when whatever illness he appeared to suffer might be burned away by the citizens of Inara to prevent its spread. But he would have had no objection to her being burned, not when he’d vowed to hang her for precisely what she’d done—she had destroyed them, the king and Inara, and maybe Warrick’s chance to remain heir. It was not a plague, in any case. It was magic, dark and vile. It tasted of regret, sour and sulfurous, and called her to it as it had since she was a child. But the magic was not why Nim had come.
He was the king. The king was Inara. Whatever Stewart had done, it had been in service to their home, to keep Inara safe. He did not deserve this fate.
She knelt before the throne, her knee meeting the step at Stewart’s feet. “Your majesty,” she said with a low bow. “I am made of regret. All that I have is yours. Dispatch what is left of me to do your will.”
When her gaze rose to meet his, she flinched at what she saw—forgiveness and resignation but none of what she deserved.
“She’s won,” Stewart rasped. “You were merely a weapon that she wielded better than I.”
His long fingers curled around the edge of the chair, strained white against his ring. The head of the Trust had not taken him easily. She might have—the sacrifice was already made—but forcing him to bear the torment was only part of her game. His suffering was not for Stewart alone. It was for Warrick, too, watching silently behind her, the same as the head of the Trust had done when Nim lay bleeding on her chamber floor. She wanted Warrick to witness, to know what she was capable of. It was meant to hurt, the same as it had been with Nim’s own mother.
“You will not have given up so easily.” Nim reached forward to take his hand. “Tell me what you’ve planned, what I might do.”
Stewart opened his mouth to reply, but the magic swam past Nim, causing slithering unease. A cough wracked Stewart, his hand crushing hers as he bent forward to steal a gasping breath. She placed her other hand over his, glancing around the room for a sign of the source.
They were there, somewhere. She could feel it. She did not see Calum or Rhen’s faces among the watching crowd, but whatever Stewart had meant to say was stolen by one of the queen’s sons. For a moment, Nim’s eyes met Warrick’s, and a fresh stab of pain overwhelmed her fears. She followed his gaze back to the king. His tunic was tinged pink, and a red stream ran from the corner of his mouth. He’d gone even whiter, the lesions blooming like roses on a bed of pale ash. Nim cursed, right there on the dais. A wild desire to jerk her hands free of his hold and run drove through her, but Stewart’s words held her still.
“You’re all here,” Stewart announced to the watching crowd, “and you can certainly see what she has done.”
For a terrifying heartbeat, Nim thought he meant her, but the she Stewart spoke of was a woman he would not name, not the head of the Trust, not when it might invoke her. As if such a threat could have hurt him anymore.
He tightened his grip on Nim, shifting so that he might sit taller, so that his voice might carry. But the courtiers were as silent as the grave.