Tomman Hail of House Ever-Loyal was going to die before the sun rose.
It wasn’t as heroic as it sounded.
It was a lonely, terrible thing. Made worse by the lonely, terrible knowledge weighing on his chest. The secret he’d uncovered.
It’ll be our lives if we’re caught, he’d said.
Now, as then, he believed the cause worth the cost.
Even as he heard the pounding at the door announce the Queensguard’s arrival to his family home, Captain Baeth at their head. The middle of the night wasn’t an hour at which anyone bore pleasant news.
They carried torches of fire, not shards of the Queen’s mirrorglass. Danger flickered in the wicked orange light that dappled their well-trained faces.
Better them than a sorcerer, Tomman thought.
Father led them into the sitting room. Mother, straight-backed and proud in her dressing gown, asked if Baeth would like some tea.
The captain had already trained her unyielding gaze on Tomman. Having stood opposite that look for countless lessons in sword and dagger, he knew there was no parrying it.
“Tomman Hail Ever-Loyal.” The Queensguard stood straighter when Baeth spoke. None of them would look at Tomman, at his parents. “You will be remanded to the Queen’s mercy.”
Live steel strapped at their waists. Authorized to use force if command wouldn’t suffice.
Whether Tomman resisted or not, the result wouldn’t change. He’d seen where this path might end—too soon—and he’d taken it anyway. Made the path his.
No illusions of being stuffed in a cell to go mad. What he’d discovered couldn’t be hidden. It had to be erased.
If the Queen hoped to maintain the pretense of civility in front of his parents, Tomman intended to play along. It would make this easier for them.
“I surrender,” he said immediately.
“Like shitfire you surrender.” Lord Ever-Loyal came to stand beside his son. “Baeth, I learned the blade from your father before he was pinning your diapers. When the Queensguard take a man in the middle of the night—we know he won’t return. What is this?”
Captain Baeth shook her head. Her hand must have been forced. She would never have done this willingly, but she was keeping her grief private, admirably stone-faced. Then Tomman saw her eyes, blank and cracked as an old mirror. His fear bottomed out into despair. She was no friend of his, no friend to anyone but the Queen. “Not another step. The slightest resistance could be cause for deadly force.”
“What are the charges? Against my son?” Father swept the Queensguard with a practiced gaze. “These are no escorts.”
Movement from the side and rear. A hiss of steel. Lady Ever-Loyal gasped and the Queensguard whirled with blades in hand to face Ainle, Tomman’s nine-year-old brother, who’d stepped into the room rubbing sleep from his eyes. He stopped short, cry cut off, a red stain blooming along the collar of his blue pajamas.
Groundskeeper Eraith entered at the same moment, straight from the stables with pitchfork in hand, to ask what the trouble was.
Tomman yelled to stop it, but it had already begun.
The shouting, the weapons, the smell of fresh blood, and the Queen’s lifetime of lies. More than sufficient powder and flame.
Baeth signaled the attack.
Tomman’s vision became a blur of his mother’s howling mouth, her flying hair. She raced to Ainle’s side as his father drew his Queensguard sword.
Lord Ever-Loyal was an exceptional duelist.
But he stood against thirty swordsmen.
He refused to kneel, so they cut him down, across belly and chest. Blood on the starburst tile Mother loved so much. Tomman didn’t see her body lying with the others. Had she fled in time to warn the girls?
Tomman fought, but Baeth had always bested him in practice. Now was no different. She brought the hilt of her sword into the bone of his cheek. He staggered, fell to his knees. She caught him and pinned him to the wall with a knife through his palm. Held the point of her sword, still sticky with Lord Ever-Loyal’s insides, to Tomman’s throat, forcing his chin up so he had to watch.
They’d never planned to take him alive.
They were merely saving him for last.
Mother’s impeccably set dining room was a mess. Three of the seven fae-glass windows were shattered. Tomman broke free, struggled with Baeth, used the knife that pierced his hand to cut her bottom lip and chin. Baeth had the bigger weapon, the longer range. The struggle ended quickly. He was pinned again.
The slaughter continued.
All night there was weeping, begging, servants spitted while Tomman was forced to bear witness. Iron-toed boots in his gut and iron-soled boots crushing