When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the second guard coming from the king’s room.
“She’s killed the king!”
His shout echoed off the stone, and Miri stumbled to a graceless stop at the top of the stairs.
More than a dozen guards were climbing the tower, fully armed and by all appearances eager to kill.
“There!” one shouted, and all eyes came to hers. Miri cursed and ran back toward the king’s rooms and back toward her death. She couldn’t escape it.
Her choices were the tower to the sorcerers or the passage in the darkness, but she could not face the sorcerers, not with the way her body reacted to their magic, and she didn’t have time to kill the mistress and the other guard with a dozen more on her heels. Miri turned into the solar, running as fast as she’d ever run. She only paused to topple a cage of vipers. As they spilled over the floor, she picked up a statue and smashed it through the window of a carved case. Something bigger waited inside, a dark and dangerous thing, but Miri didn’t waste time watching to see if it moved. She crossed the final distance and leaped onto the ledge of a high window into the strange glow of coming light.
The castle was awakening. She should be walking silently through its halls and down that long flight of stairs as if she were a lady on her way to the chapel, not perched on the edge of a tower, staring down a sheer stone wall to her death below.
“Maiden save me,” Miri whispered.
The clamor of kingsmen and weaponry was behind her, and there was only one way out. She grabbed a long silk drapery and threw herself out the window. A spear rushed through the air beside her, shaving Miri’s shoulder as she swung wide and slammed into the wall. The drapery came loose of its mooring, and Miri slid lower along the wall, her arms scraping rock. She kicked against the building and held her breath, letting go of the fabric to drop to the narrow roof of a garderobe below. It was slanted, and she managed to land, but her feet slipped over the stone, skidding as she tried to gain purchase. She could not, and as she careened downward, her body slammed into a support that knocked her wider from any decent path. She fell.
Princess Myrina of Stormskeep, daughter of the Lion Queen, was going to die on the stones of a stolen castle, covered in the blood of a bastard king.
Chapter 23
Cass watched a dark figure fly from the king’s tower window. He had moved nearer the moment the first scream had sounded then watched without breath, as it had been followed by the shouting of men. Something had gone wrong, but he hadn’t expected the woman to fling herself out the window on nothing but a thin strip of fabric. She landed hard on the roof of a garderobe then slipped. Her descent was slowed by various corbels and lintels before her body disappeared onto the rampart.
Cass ran, though he feared her already dead. Arrows were launched through the air toward the rampart, and Cass’s frantic heart picked up pace. Terric had said the queen had friends in Ironwood. Cass hadn’t realized they would be willing to fight.
Alarm bells rang through the air before Cass reached the castle walls, but his boots were swift in their flight. It was only nearly dawn, but inside those walls must have been sixty kingsmen at the ready, two sorcerers, and gods knew what else. He rushed toward the wall, hearing the shouts and running men atop the parapet. Fighting and the sounds of swords clashing led Cass toward the castle gate. The portcullis had not yet dropped, and if he went through, he would likely never escape. But that did not slow his pace. He rushed forward, assured in his fate, and was knocked solidly from his feet by a heavy black mass.
The breath rushed out of him with a huff as the body that had landed on him groaned. Cass struggled to right himself and saw a dark figure gesture at him through the hole above. The man turned and clashed swords with another, and Cass jerked to stare at the form over him.
It was Miri, covered in blood, her eyes closed, and her head lolling to the side. They’d shoved her through a bleeding murder hole. He shifted her body, carefully rolling her to her back, but she was still warm, still limber, and thank the gods, she still breathed. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment, but she immediately winced in pain. He’d seen enough—the honey brown of her eyes had been swallowed by darkness. She was not the Miri he knew. The sorcerers were too near, and her body was too injured to run.
Cass hauled her into his arms and ran from the gates just as the portcullis’s chains began to rattle.
He bolted from the castle with kingsmen coming from every direction in the half light. There were other figures, too—men and women who stood in watch, those who would have heard the bells and come from curiosity, and those who held weapons and wore fighting gear. The last ones would be loyal to the dead queen and willing to risk life and limb in any fight with the king’s men.
Cass ran forward, turning down the first alleyway that came in an attempt to get Miri someplace safe. But the manor was too near the castle, and the grounds would already be swarming with kingsmen. He had no place to hide her, no place that was safe. Terric and the others were fighting kingsmen, dying in the name of the queen. He glanced down at Miri and felt a stab of fear run through him.
Clumps of blood covered the side of her head. A chunk of torn hair was pasted to it in a tangled mess over her cheek. Blood caked her chest and soaked the bodice of her dress. Cass swallowed whatever was rising in his throat, pressing on with very little in the way of breath. He had no idea how far he’d carried her or how much farther he could go. Wary faces peered through windows. All of Ironwood had been awoken by the bells and the chaos behind him. It would only take one to do them in, one loyal to the king to call out to the guards.
Cass raised his head to the sky, breathing in through his nose and praying for strength. There was only one place to take her to give him a chance to keep Miri alive and scrape out of the mess. He shifted her in his arms and walked on with the last bit of strength he had left.
Cass burst through the door into Ginger and Hugh’s kitchen. They stared blankly up at him for a moment as they sat at their table with mugs of morning tea. Cass’s arms trembled beneath the weight of Miri’s form, and his legs were ready to give out, but he was prepared to grip his dagger if need be. He hoped he didn’t have to.
Ginger shoved to her feet, hand going to her mouth as her eyes trailed over Miri. Hugh’s chair slid back with a noisy growl, but neither approached. They stared at Cass.
“I need your help,” he said. “It will put your lives in danger.” He did not say the rest—that he would be forced to kill them if they didn’t agree. He would kill them to protect the daughter of the Lion Queen. The idea made him half sick. He hoped he had chosen well and wasn’t wrong about them.
Ginger moved forward without even glancing at Hugh, her hands outstretched to take Miri from Cass.
“Understand…” Cass said before she reached them. “Understand that she… she has killed the king.”
Ginger stopped, blinking up at Cass, but Hugh still hadn’t moved. Housing someone who’d murdered a king meant not simply death. It would be torture, disgrace, dishonor, and punishment to anyone they knew.
“The bells,” Ginger said. Her eyes fell to Miri. “Is it true?”
Cass realized that she was not merely asking about the killing of the king. Ginger had, somehow, suspected Miri was more than simply the trader girl Bean.