since you were a child, and your family has served our kingdom well. Harder still to deny the request of a dying man we once counted a dear friend. But even your father would’ve seen the necessity of our decision if he’d lived to see the results of your failure.”
“Dying?” The word croaked its way out of Killian’s throat, shock making him ignore his gut’s warning that a reaction was precisely what the King wanted from him.
“Your father passed on. You didn’t know?”
My father is dead.
White-hot pain sliced through his gut, and he found himself searching the faces of the High Lords for answers, but with the exception of Dareena’s, all he found were blank expressions. And all hers contained was sympathy. “How?”
“Cyntha?” Serrick gestured to an older woman standing in the shadows of the room. She wore the white robes of a marked healer, the pale skin of her forehead tattooed with the half circle representing those trained at Hegeria’s temple in Mudaire, her long black braid laced with grey and upturned eyes creased at the corners.
“Heart,” the woman said impassively. “My fellows reached him too late, and not even a god-marked healer can bring back the dead.”
She had no reason to lie, but the words rang false. His father was not young, but he’d been as fit as a man half his age. If he’d been killed in combat, Killian would’ve accepted it, but this …
“It was the shock, we expect,” Serrick said, his fingers laced together, elbows resting on the table.
“Shock?”
“Yes. Shock.” The King’s face was full of sympathy. “To have his favored son—his god-marked child—fail so spectacularly and with such enormous consequences … Even the most stalwart of hearts can only bear so much. And yet that you be spared was his dying request. Here, you can read it for yourself.”
Riffling around on the table, the King plucked up a piece of paper and handed it to Killian. It was stained with a circle of wine, someone having carelessly set a glass atop the news that his father had passed. Killian read the brief message, which was from one of High Lord Calorian’s lieutenants:
I regret to inform you that High Lord Calorian succumbed to a weak heart this morning, the healers reaching him too late to save his life. His final words, which he asked me to relay to Your Royal Majesty, were a request that Your Grace have mercy upon his beloved youngest son, Killian, and not hold him to blame for the events at the wall. All men are fallible, High Lord Calorian said, even those marked by the Six, and he begged that Your Grace allow his son the opportunity to redeem himself on the battlefield.
Killian read and reread the words, his eyes stinging with unshed tears. Then he lifted his face.
Serrick’s smile had disappeared. “We’ve no doubt Tremon has claimed High Lord Calorian’s soul. He was faithful, even if with you, it was a misguided faith.”
Killian clenched his teeth, it taking all his willpower to keep from wringing the man’s neck. The only person in the room capable of stopping him was Dareena, and she was on the far side of the table. Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, High Lady Falorn shifted, the boot that had been resting on her knee dropping to the floor in anticipation. Killian wouldn’t get the jump on her.
Serrick pressed his palms flat against the table. “Unfortunately, we cannot make decisions based on sentiment, Lord Calorian. Derin breached the wall because of your dereliction of duty, and—”
“Your Majesty,” Dareena interjected. “Derin’s attack from the rear was a plan months, if not longer, in the making. They had to have been sneaking soldiers in through Mudamora’s border with Anukastre and then traveling north, where they took over the Tarn garrison with no one the wiser. To punish Killian alone is unfair. Many had to have failed in their duties in order for such an attack to have been even possible.”
“But he is not just anyone,” the King responded. “He is one of the Marked Ones. And we must show our faith by punishing those on whom the gods have turned their backs.” He bowed his head for a long moment, then said, “At dawn tomorrow you, Lord Killian Calorian, will be—”
“Father.” Malahi’s voice rang clear as a bell across the chamber, and Killian’s heart skipped. “Is it not possible that the failing was not Lord Calorian’s, but ours?”