Caius approached the kneeling Firedrake, stepping over bodies, both freshly fallen ones and desiccated husks.
He stood before the man, chest heaving. Now that his body wasn’t in constant motion, the fight was beginning to take its toll. But he had to stay on his feet just a little longer.
“Remove your helmet,” he ordered, his voice ringing across the hall’s stones.
The Firedrake did as he was told, his hands steady. Admirable, in the face of death. He set the golden helmet on the ground beside him and waited.
“Give me your sword.” Caius sheathed his own daggers despite the blood on their blades.
Again, the Firedrake obeyed Caius’s command.
The sword was far heavier than Caius’s own long knives, but it was much better suited to the task at hand.
There was only one way to deal with surrender among the Drakharin.
Caius hefted the broadsword, the muscles in his back burning with the effort. Gravity did half the work as Caius swung the blade down, severing the Firedrake’s neck in a single clean swipe.
It was a quick death. A merciful death.
The sword clattered to the ground as it slipped from Caius’s numb fingers. Exhaustion was catching up to him, and fast.
Just a little longer.
He turned to the assembled nobles. No longer were they huddled against the walls in fear of their prince. One by one, they dropped to their knees as his gaze raked over them. His eyes landed on Echo. Neither she nor Ivy knelt, which was fine. He wasn’t their prince. Ivy’s fair skin had a sallow tint to it, as if she was about to be sick. Echo’s expression was inscrutable. If she disapproved of what she had just witnessed, she didn’t show it.
Caius turned from them and let his feet carry him toward the throne. When he reached the dais steps, a movement off to the side caught his eye.
Helios.
He was alive, then. Not for much longer.
Caius withdrew one of the daggers from its sheath and approached Helios’s prone form. He had moved, perhaps reflexively, but he was still now, his yellow eyes open and resting on Caius. Blood trickled from a laceration on his head, probably where his temple had struck the stone wall.
“Ivy!” Dorian called, but he was too late to stop her. She ran toward Caius, falling to her knees beside Helios.
The tip of Caius’s knife tilted Helios’s chin up, despite the pained whimper the motion caused. There was a commotion somewhere behind them.
Ivy swore and moved as if to grab the blade with her bare hand, but she thought better of it before touching the sharp edge of the knife. She settled for leveling a glare at Caius, which he ignored. Mercy was wasted on traitors. They had allowed this one into their lives, had trusted him. Helios had earned his pain.
“You know what has to happen.” Caius modulated his tone carefully. He sounded dispassionate. Impartial. He felt anything but. It was, however, not a prince’s place to show weakness in the face of treason. That would only invite more of it.
The blood was bright against Helios’s fair skin, even in the dim light of the fire in the hall’s sconces. Golden eyes stared up at Caius, tight with pain. Helios coughed, his spittle crimson. “I know what I did,” he said once his voice returned to him. “And I know what you have to do.”
It took Ivy a few seconds to put the pieces of their exchange together, but Caius saw the moment realization dawned. Her face fell and she shook her head, too rapidly. “No,” she said. “You can’t.”
Oh, he could. And he would. “He betrayed me. He betrayed us. The punishment for such betrayal is death.” He should have done it then, drawing the blade against the vulnerable triangle of skin that showed over Helios’s armor at his neck. It would have been so easy. But there was something Caius needed to know first. “Why did you do it? Why spy for her?”
A sharp, aborted laugh spilled from Helios’s blood-flecked lips. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not,” Caius replied. One swift flick of his wrist was all it would take. He tightened his grip on the hilt and prepared to strike.
A hand shot out, wrapping around the wrist of Caius’s knife arm. “No,” she said again. Her eyes, wide and watery, met his, and his resolve faltered. “Please. Not like this.”
Ivy’s phrasing was deliberate. She wanted Caius to feel like she was giving him an out. But there was nothing to be done. The boy had to die. His life in exchange for his honor. It was the Drakharin way. It always had been.
Ivy shook her head, tears falling freely now. A shaky hand reached up to wipe them from her cheek, but all Helios managed to do was smear his blood on her face. It looked like a gash on her cheek.
“Please, Caius.” Her fingers trembled against his wrist, but her grip stayed firm. “Please don’t make me watch you kill him.”
Caius looked between her pleading gaze and Helios’s wilting one.
“Do it,” Helios choked out in Drakhar. So Ivy wouldn’t understand, Caius realized. “Don’t drag this out any longer.”
“He betrayed you most of all,” Caius said to Ivy. “Why do you want me to spare him?”
She shook her head, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she fought to find her answer. “I don’t want him to die” was all she said.
Helios coughed again, blood bubbling up from his ruined lungs, choking him. Tanith’s strike must have broken a rib or three. One of them had probably pierced a lung. He was dying already. A knife across the throat would be a mercy. More than he deserved. But Caius relaxed his hold on his blade as he watched Helios’s gaze slide from him to Ivy. The boy was no coward; he would face his death, knowing it was just, but he wanted one last look at Ivy before he went.
And it was the Drakharin way. But perhaps, Caius thought as he looked at Ivy, on her knees, begging for the life of someone who had brought her such pain, it didn’t have to be. Perhaps there was another path, and he could be the one to forge it. He withdrew his knife, and Ivy sagged as her hand fell from his wrist.
“Thank you,” she gasped.
Caius wanted to tell her it was more than a stay of execution, but the words stuck in his throat. It was too close to a lie. He was uncertain—not a feeling he relished. Showing mercy would compromise the position he had only just regained. He was within his rights to claim Helios’s life here and now, but Drakharin law allowed for a trial to determine the matter of his guilt, as indubitable as it was. There would be voices among his own people to see the traitor delivered to a swift and final end. Helios’s death might still loom in the not-too-distant future. But it would not come today.
Today, he was safe.
Caius hoped the boy knew Ivy had just saved his worthless life.
He left her to tend to Helios’s wounds as he ascended the dais and stood before the throne he had lost.
And now he had reclaimed it.
He turned to face his people. They had voted against him once, either out of genuine belief in his sister or out of fear. None of that mattered now.
Now they knelt before him. The Dragon Prince once more.