Swords clashed all around them. Kelsea scrabbled beneath the cover of Mace’s frame, trying to get her knife from her boot. Exploring with her free hand, she found a knife handle protruding just above her shoulder blade. When her fingers brushed it, a bolt of pain arrowed all the way down to her toes.
Stabbed, she thought, dazed. Mace didn’t cover my back after all.
“Galen! The gallery! The gallery!” Mace roared. “Get up there and clear it out!” Then he was jerked away from Kelsea. She scrambled to her feet, knife in hand. All around her, men were fighting, three of them attempting to skewer Mace with long swords. Her uncle’s men, the deep blue uniforms swirling around them as they fought.
A breath of air came from behind her and Kelsea whirled to find a sword coming for her neck. She ducked, slid under her attacker’s arm, and shoved her knife upward between his ribs. Warm wetness splattered her face, and she closed her eyes, blinded by red. The dead man fell on top of her, crushing her to the ground with a pure, bright explosion of pain as the knife in her shoulder hit the floor. Kelsea’s teeth clenched on a scream, but she shoved the man off, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. She ignored the blood trickling down her face, pulled her knife from her attacker’s rib cage, and hauled herself to her feet. Her vision was clouded by red gauze that seemed to cover everything. Someone grabbed her uninjured shoulder and she sliced savagely at the hand.
“Me, Lady, me!”
“Lazarus,” she panted.
“Back to back.” Mace pushed her behind him, and Kelsea planted herself against his back, hunching forward to protect her shoulder as she faced the audience. To her surprise, none of the nobles appeared to have fled; they remained in orderly rows behind the pillars at the foot of the steps, and Kelsea wanted to shout at them. Why didn’t they help? But many, the men in particular, weren’t watching Kelsea. They were watching the fighting behind her, their eyes darting avidly between combatants.
Sport, Kelsea realized, sickened. She held her knife up toward the crowd in as threatening a gesture as she could muster, longing for a sword, though she had no idea how to use one. The blade dripped crimson, slippery in her blood-coated hand. She remembered when Barty had given her that knife, on her tenth birthday, in a gold-painted box with a small silver key. The box must still be in her saddlebags, somewhere upstairs. She had finally used her knife on a man, and she wished she could tell Barty. A wave of darkness crashed across her vision.
Pen had stationed himself in front of her now, a sword in each hand. When one of the Regent’s guards broke forward, trying to push through, Pen sidestepped him neatly and chopped off his arm at the biceps, burying a sword in his rib cage. The man screamed, a high, thin shrieking that seemed to go on and on as his severed arm landed several feet away on the flagstones. He dropped to the ground and Pen resumed his waiting posture, unfazed by the blood dripping down his sword arm. Mhurn joined him a moment later, his blond hair streaked with crimson and his face whiter than ever now, as if he were on the edge of fainting.
Two men appeared on her periphery and Kelsea swung that way, trying to tighten her grip on the slippery knife. But it was only Elston and Kibb, planting themselves on either side of her, their swords dripping blood. Kibb had taken a wound to the hand, a deep gash that looked like an animal bite, but otherwise they appeared unharmed. The clang of swords came more slowly now, the fighting dying down. When Kelsea looked out into the crowd, she saw that Arlen Thorne had disappeared. The priest, Father Tyler, was crouched against the nearest of the massive pillars, hugging his Bible to his chest, staring at a blue-clad corpse that lay bleeding at the foot of the dais. The priest looked as though he might faint, and in spite of her distrust, Kelsea felt a brief flash of pity for him. He didn’t seem the sort who’d ever been strong, even as a young man, and he wasn’t young.
He needs to recover, another, colder voice snapped in her mind. Quickly. Kelsea, brought back to herself by the steel in that voice, nodded in agreement. It was extraordinary, how a coronation could mean so little and yet so much. Her legs gave way and she stumbled against Mace, hissing as pain dug into her back like a burrowing insect.
Women scream when they’re hurt, Barty’s voice echoed in her head. Men scream when they’re dying.
I’m not going to scream, either way.
“Lazarus, you have to hold me up.”
Mace got an arm beneath hers and firmed it up, giving her something to lean on. “We need to get that knife out, Lady.”
“Not yet.”
“You’re losing blood.”
“I’ll lose more when the knife is pulled. First this.”
Mace inspected the wound in a cursory way. The color drained from his face.
“What?”
“Nothing, Lady.”
“What?”
“It’s a grave wound. Sooner or later you’re going to pass out.”
“Then hit me and wake me up.”
“I was set to guard your life, Lady.”
“My life and that throne are one,” Kelsea replied hoarsely. It was true, though she hadn’t fully realized until she said it. She reached up to clutch Mace’s shoulder, pointing to the sapphire on her chest. “I’m nothing now but this. You see?”
Mace turned and shouted to Galen in the gallery. Two bodies clad in blue tumbled over the wall and landed with a wet thud on the flagstones. The foremost members of the audience cried out and drew back several feet.
“Wary now!” Mace barked. “Eyes on the crowd! Kibb, you need a doctor?”
“Fuck you,” Kibb replied in a good-natured tone, though his face was white and he was clutching his hand in a death grip. “I’m a medic.”
Many of her uncle’s guard were dead on the dais. Several of her own guards were sporting wounds, but she could see no grey-clad bodies on the floor. Who had thrown the knife?
The Regent remained seated, his manner still unconcerned despite the blood that spattered his face and the four Queen’s Guards who had him at sword point. But a thin layer of sweat gleamed on his upper lip now, and his eyes twitched continuously toward the crowd. Considering the lax skills of his guard, it had been a fool’s attempt on Kelsea’s life. A delaying tactic; her uncle knew the importance of this crowning as well as Kelsea did. An entirely new landscape of pain had begun to radiate outward from her shoulder, and blood was pooling in the small of her back. She sensed that she had very little time. She reached out and grabbed one of her guards, a young one whose name she didn’t know. “Get the priest.”
With a doubtful glance, the guard went and hauled Father Tyler back up to the dais, where he blanched at the pile of dead bodies strewn across the floor. Kelsea opened her mouth and that cold voice emerged, a tone of command that didn’t seem entirely her own. “We’ll continue now, Father. Stick to the essential language.”
He nodded, producing the tiara in one shaking hand. With Mace’s help, Kelsea knelt back down on the floor. Father Tyler opened his Bible again and began to read in a quavering voice, the words running together in Kelsea’s ears. Beyond the priest, she saw the beautiful redhead, still as stone on the top step of the dais, her body streaked and smeared with blood. It had painted her face and soaked through the blue gauze of her clothing. She hadn’t moved an inch, but she was alive; her grey eyes stared at the same fixed point on the floor. Kelsea closed her eyes for a moment, and then she was looking up at the ceiling, an enormous vaulted expanse, revolving above her.
Mace’s boot landed in the small of her back, and Kelsea bit her tongue against a scream. Her vision cleared slightly, and she saw the priest advancing upon her, Bible closed, tiara in hand. Her guard tensed up around her. Father Tyler leaned down, his eyes wide, his face drained of all blood, and Kelsea felt her earlier suspicions inexplicably vanish. She wished that she could comfort him, tell him that his part in this business was almost done.
But it isn’t, another voice whispered, quiet but sure in her mind. Not even close.
“Your Highness,” he asked, his tone almost apologetic, “do you swear to act for this kingdom, for this people, under the laws of God’s Church?”
Kelsea drew a hoarse breath, feeling something rattle in her chest, and whispered, “I swear to act for this kingdom and for this people, under the law.”
Father Tyler paused. Kelsea tried to draw another breath and felt herself fading, drifting to the left. Mace kicked her again, and this time she couldn’t stop the small screech that escaped her lips. Even Barty would have understood. “You’ll watch out for your church, Father, and I’ll watch out for this kingdom and its people. My vow.”
Father Tyler hesitated a moment longer, then tucked his Bible into the fold of his robes. His face was a mask of resignation and regret, as though he could see into the future, the many possible consequences of this moment. Perhaps he could. He reached out and set the tiara on Kelsea’s head with both hands. “I crown you Queen Kelsea Raleigh of the Tearling. Long be your reign, Majesty.”
Kelsea shut her eyes, her throat choked with a relief so great that it bordered on ecstasy. “Lazarus, help me up.”
Mace hauled her to her feet, and her legs promptly gave way. His arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her up like a rag doll, pitching her torso forward to avoid the knife hilt buried in her shoulder.
“The Regent.”
Mace swung her carefully around and Kelsea faced her uncle, finding his eyes bright with stupid desperation. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned back against Mace until the hilt of the knife bumped his chest. The pain jolted her awake, but not much; darkness was closing in now, a blackening border around the edge of her vision.
“Get off my throne.”
Her uncle didn’t move. Kelsea leaned forward, summoning all of her strength, her breath rasping loudly in the vast, echoing chamber. “You have one month to be gone from this Keep, Uncle. After that . . . ten thousand pounds on your head.”
A woman behind Kelsea gasped, and muttering began to spread throughout the crowd. Her uncle’s panicked eyes darted behind her.
“You can’t place a bounty on a member of the royal family.”
The voice behind her was an oily baritone that Kelsea already recognized: Thorne. She ignored him, forcing words out in thin wheezes of breath. “I’ve given you . . . a running start, Uncle. Get off my throne right now, or Lazarus will throw you out of the Keep. How long . . . do you think you’ll last?”
Her uncle blinked slowly. After several seconds he rose from the throne, his stomach ballooning as he stood upright. Too much ale, Kelsea thought vaguely, followed by: My god, he’s shorter than I am! Her vision doubled, then tripled. She nudged Mace with one elbow, and he understood, for he hauled her forward and eased her onto the throne. It was like sitting on a freezing cold rock. Kelsea swayed against the icy metal, shut her eyes, and opened them again. There was something else she had to do, but what?