The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,175
head, or to reach Lia as soon as possible? Because in this much he is right—no one can get a special team together for you as quickly as he can. And it was true. Any delay, even by one day, and I wouldn’t have reached Lia in time. It had been the right decision, and Sven had helped me reach it.
But with the decision to pull troops—there was no changing my mind. I hadn’t needed his counsel. I knew what I had to do, not just for Lia, but for Dalbreck. I’d explain it to him. By now he had probably cooled off. He’d be sorry he had missed a meeting with the king.
Lia’s father hadn’t been what I expected. Now I knew where Lia had gotten her calculating straight face from. He’d made me squirm. I hadn’t realized he’d been playing with me until he issued Lia’s punishment. Somehow he knew there had been something between us. There was still something between us. Something I was trying to forget. It had been all I could do to tear my hand away from her arm when I’d stumbled into her. I had been careful in my movements when I was around her, conscious in a way that had become tiring. It was like I was standing on a log in a wrestling match again. One misstep, and I would be up to my waist in mud. When we were busy with tasks that needed to be addressed, it was easier—we simply worked together—but in those unplanned moments like when I stumbled into her, everything was unsettled, teetering, and I had to renavigate the space between us, remembering not to do what had been so natural before.
“Sentry,” I called, when I reached the east wing, where the prisoners were held. “Colonel Haverstrom passed this way?”
“Yes. Some time ago, Your Majesty. He’s still down there,” he said, nodding toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
No doubt he was chewing off the captain’s ear now, instead of mine. I would owe Azia.
I entered the passage, and the stairs were dark. Night had crept up quickly, and the guards had failed to light the lanterns. Only the flickering torches from the lowest level provided any light at all. Just a few steps down, I sensed a pervading quiet, a silence that seemed too deep. There were no murmurs, no clatter of metal trays or plates, though it was the dinner hour. My hand went to my sword, and when I turned at the landing, a body lay facedown, sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. It was Sven.
I drew my sword and ran.
I rolled him over, and that’s when I saw another body, and another. A soldier. A servant with trays of food spilled around him. Their eyes were open, unseeing. The cell doors were all ajar. My blood raced, trying to attend to Sven and look for danger at the same time.
“Sven!” I whispered. His abdomen was soaked in blood.
“Guards!” I bellowed up the stairwell. “Sentry!”
I turned back to Sven. His breaths were shallow, his lips barely moving, as if he was trying to speak. I heard a noise and spun. Another body lay in the other direction. Azia. I crept down the hall toward him, my sword raised, and bent to feel his neck. Dead. It was the trickle of his blood into a drain that I’d heard.
I peered into the first cell. The court physician lay in the center of the room, his throat cut wide open. The next cell had another dead soldier. The rest were empty.
Guards trampled down the stairs, Lia right behind them. “They’ve escaped!” I yelled. “Call a physican! Sven is still alive!”
But barely. I pressed on the wound. “Come on, you old curd! Stay with us!”
“Close the city gates!” Lia shouted. “Alert the guard and camp!”
She dropped to my side and helped me press on the wound, but it seemed there was no way to stop it. Blood oozed through our fingers. Kaden ran down the stairs, taking in the grisly scene. He pushed past us, his sword drawn.
“They’re gone,” I said. “I should have let you kill the bastard when you had the chance.”
I pulled off my jacket and used it to help stop the bleeding. Lia’s and my hands were both soaked with blood.
“Stay with him until the physician comes,” I told her. “Don’t let him go!”
And I ran up the stairs to hunt down the animals who had done this.