Red Heir - Lisa Henry Page 0,72

definitely lying dead on the floor. Quinn stood over him, gaping. And Loth had been... stabbed? It was weird, but he didn’t actually feel any pain. Possibly that was because he was already drifting between life and death, and his senses were no longer working. Oh gods. What a waste. He was so young and so pretty.

Ada stomped over to him and peered down at him. She tugged the knife free and inspected the tip of the blade for blood.

Loth’s eyesight must have been going too because he couldn’t see any.

“Get up, you idiot,” Ada said, which Loth felt was very rude of her considering he was dying. He blinked at her silhouette, craning his head in case she was blocking the light he’d heard so much about, the one he was supposed to head into, but all he saw was ordinary sunlight, dust motes floating gently through the air, and a cobweb dangling from the ceiling. Huh.

Loth carefully felt around the torn fabric of his doublet. That was when he discovered that thanks to Dad’s habit of always double-backing and triple-stitching everything he ever made, plus in this case adding a layer of padding to smooth out the lines, the stab wound in Loth’s gut turned out to be less of a gaping hole and more of a...

“It’s a scratch,” Ada said with a derisive snort. “It’s barely even bleeding. Get up, you wuss.”

“Are you sure I’m not dying?” Loth asked and peered down at his stomach. “Because for a little while there I couldn’t even speak.”

“That’s because you were winded from where you hit the floor.” Ada nudged him with the toe of her boot. “Get up.”

Loth ran his hands carefully over his stomach. “Are you sure?”

Ada raised her eyebrows and held up her axe. Her eyes gleamed. “If you want to be dead so badly, I can help you out.”

Loth got up. “What about your contract to protect me?” he asked. “Or was that all nonsense, and secretly you and the others stepped in because shared adversity has made us all friends? Are we friends, Ada? Do you secretly love me? Because I’m amazing, I know! You can admit it. Say that you love me, Ada.”

“No,” she said shortly.

“Say it!”

“No.”

“You love me!” Loth exclaimed, “My roguish charm and boyish good looks have melted your pragmatic, ice-cold heart!”

“I don’t love you,” Ada said frankly. “I think you’re a dickhead.”

“But you protected me!” Loth beamed at her. “You protected me because you love me! There’s no contract. I don’t have any money and—”

The blade of Ada’s axe hit the floor right in front of the toe of his boot. Loth took a step back.

“There is a contract,” Ada said, grinning at him through her beard. “But we’re not contracted to protect you. We’re contracted for Quinn.” She put her hands on her hips. “Your parents could only afford one contract, and they probably figured you were slippery enough to get out of any trouble on your own.”

“My parents are the ones paying you?”

“Your mum arranged it, offered us the job while you were off getting prettied up. Nice arse in those trousers, by the way.”

“But—my own parents, and they paid you to protect Quinn and not me?”

Ada shrugged. “Well, to be fair, Quinn is a much nicer person.” She patted his leg. “Besides, nobody was really expecting you to go through with your whole ‘I’m the prince’ routine and actually put yourself in danger.”

Yeah, that had taken Loth by surprise too. He grunted at Ada and then stepped over to where Quinn was standing over Lord Doom’s body. Pie was perched on Quinn’s shoulder with his wings stretched wide, arching his neck and trilling as Quinn scratched under his jaw absently.

From over by the door, Dave cracked two soldiers’ heads together, then came lumbering over to join them. “Pie!” he exclaimed.

Pie chirped and fluttered over to him.

“Dave,” Quinn said quietly. “I thought you said Pie wasn’t poisonous.”

“He’s not!” Dave’s green brow creased in thought. “He’s not poisonous, he’s venomenomous.”

“Venomous,” Quinn murmured.

“S’wat I said!” Dave said with a proud grin. “There’s a diff’rence!”

Quinn threw Loth a wide-eyed look, and Loth reached out and pulled him into a hug. Quinn clung like a rabid possum for a moment, and Loth could feel his shuddering breath on his neck. Then Quinn straightened, blinking, and shook his head. “What just happened? I mean, I’m not going to lie, but I honestly thought we’d be dead right now, and my brain is having some