“He will kill you. He won’t hurt me.” I didn’t take my eyes off Patrick. “Once I wondered if a dead queen was better than a defiant queen, but I know better now. Patrick won’t harm me, because he knows the power of my name. He’s nothing if he’s not fighting for me.”
Tobiah backed off, but Patrick pursued, forcing me to work to keep myself between them. I blocked and redirected blows, chest burning with the effort. Heat poured over the street, and sweat made my clothes cling to my skin.
The rapid noise and silence of Chrysalis’s wraith-control effort made my head spin, and banners of mist had fallen in our space. They were glowing.
“Stay close,” I told Tobiah. “The wraith won’t attack if you’re near me.”
He grunted behind me, followed by the twang of his handheld crossbow firing. “I am in awe of the way you inspire such loyalty. Nevertheless, the wraith has us surrounded.”
I couldn’t look away from Patrick to confirm, just strike and block and move and block and thrust and block. “Well, maybe”—I gasped—“you should do something.”
“I just shot a streetlight in the eye. What more do you want from me?”
My sword arm shook with strain as I attacked again. Patrick blocked me with ease. “You won’t last much longer,” he said. “When you’re finished with this, I’ll kill the foreign king and hang his body from the castle wall. I’ll say this is what the vermilion queen and her Red Militia do to enemies.”
“You will not.” I lunged for Patrick, and when he moved to parry, I stepped inside his guard and thrust my dagger into his stomach.
Blood poured from the wound as he staggered back. “Wil?” Patrick clutched his gut with both hands, his face filled with surprise and hurt. For a heartbeat, he was the same boy who’d given me writing supplies in the old palace, swearing to help me reclaim my kingdom.
No matter the cost.
“I’m sorry, Patrick.” I made myself watch as he fell to his knees, his eyes locked on mine. Around us, the bursts of din grew longer as people broke free. Tobiah stood at my side, and a line of my soldiers at my back. On the street behind Patrick, I caught Melanie and James running toward us. “This was never what I wanted. Our problems have always been so much bigger and more complex than what you saw.”
“You’re wrong. You need me.” Patrick scraped his sword off the ground and lunged.
Tobiah moved toward me at the same time I grabbed him and pulled him to safety, a breath away from the sword point.
Patrick’s blade clattered on the ground. He grunted and fell forward. Behind him, James pulled his sword free of Patrick’s heart, and Melanie looked on with a cold, distant expression.
Patrick was dead.
Heavy moments stretched as we stared at Patrick’s body on the ground. Prince Colin’s body lay close by. A faint numbness settled over me. Something I’d always thought was impossible had just happened. And I’d lost another Osprey in the process. Another person I’d once called a friend.
“Your Majesties!” Denise dragged my attention back to the park and the chaos within.
Chrysalis had recovered control of the wraith, so the battle had resumed. Blades clashed and people screamed. Everywhere I looked, there were bodies on the ground, and others trying to flee.
“We have to stop this. Come with me.” Tobiah took my free hand and pulled me toward a tall building. We threw our hooks and climbed up the side of an old, pre-wraith structure. Melanie and James guarded from below.
On the roof, we could see the whole battleground, all the reds and blues intermixed, and those with black knives on their uniforms struggling to contain the fighting. Wraith beasts plowed through, growing with the heavy concentration of mist.
“People of Aecor!” Tobiah called. “People of the Indigo Kingdom!”
No one heard.
I touched his hand. “What do the people call you, Tobiah Pierce? What do they whisper about you?”
“The heir to four Houses?” He shook his head as understanding dawned. “No, I don’t think I should. There’s already so much wraith.”
“And it’s what’s causing the panic right now. Contain it. I know you can.”
He sucked in a heavy breath and braced himself with one hand on my shoulder.
A mirror appeared on a storefront across the way. Then another to our right. And another beneath us.
Dozens of mirrors popped into existence. Round, oval, rectangular, octagonal: they appeared in a hundred shapes and sizes, fixed to the walls and lying on the streets. They were all bare, sharp glass.
Tobiah stood at my side, his face upturned and his eyes closed in concentration. His skin was pale and slick with sweat, but mirror-reflected wraith light shone onto him. Us.
Wraith shrieked and spiraled upward, but Tobiah’s mirrors caught it—for now. Even the beasts were motionless, trapped in their reflections.
Everyone looked at us.
“People of Aecor!” I called, same as Tobiah had. “People of the Indigo Kingdom!”