Instinctively I looked at Kest, wondering what our chances might be – of course he’d know what I would be thinking now. But I could tell he was truly disgusted with me: I was already looking for some new way to use the Greatcoats as a tool for my own ends.
Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers . . . what has happened to me? How did I turn into this . . . this thing I’ve become?
I heard the click in the lock as Brasti worked it open and a moment later we were racing through the halls and up the stairs. Whatever hopes I’d held for a bloodless transition of power had been dashed. I’d be killing as many of Ossia’s men as it needed to win this damnable game we’d begun.
*
I’d expected to encounter more resistance, but by the time we reached the throne room, chaos had already taken over. Antrim, bless his untrustworthy heart, had obviously failed to follow my orders because he and some thirty Aramor guardsmen were waging a bloody fight against Ossia’s troops. When he saw us coming, he barked an order to his men and they made a sudden surge against the opposing force, only to suddenly pull back, leaving a gap for us to race past and into the throne room. The look on Antrim’s face told me that he would be holding me accountable, whatever came of this.
The scene inside was even more confusing: several guardsmen were trying to protect Filian and Trin, who was screaming threats at anyone who came near. On the other side of the dais, Aline was rising from her throne; only Duke Jillard was nearby. At first I didn’t understand who Trin’s men were fighting, since the only Aramor troops I’d seen were still outside in the hall – then I noticed the opposing soldiers’ plain clothes. ‘They wear no armour,’ Ossia had said.
And at last everything fell into place: Ossia hadn’t come to take power for Filian. She’d brought her troops to kill him.
‘A mother’s burden always comes to a terrible end in this sad and broken country,’ she had said.
This was why she’d wanted the Greatcoats out of the way: not because she was going to betray our pact, but because she was going to take it one step further by killing her own son to ensure Aline took the throne. She thinks Patriana’s influence will have made Filian into a monster, I realised, just like Trin. So Ossia had locked me in the dungeon to prevent me from interfering as she murdered her own child in the name of saving the country.
Ossia’s men cut down the guards protecting Filian, and I watched in horrible fascination as the Duchess herself, a poignard in her hand, approached the boy. She was going to kill him herself.
A mother’s duty.
I started towards her, but I wasn’t running now; I was walking. Some part of me had made a decision. I hadn’t wanted Filian to die, but if this was the way of things, then the hells for him and Trin and all their machinations. Aline would take the throne: she would be Queen and I could finally rest, knowing my King’s daughter and his country and his dream were safe once and for all.
Trin screamed a curse, but even if there was magic in it, it wasn’t enough to stop Ossia’s cold determination. Something black and oily glistened on the tip of her blade in the dying afternoon light that poured through the windows. Poison. She wasn’t taking any chances.
‘Falcio!’ Kest called out, and when I turned, I saw he and Brasti were caught in the press and fighting to keep from being taken down. I turned back to the dais and the events unfolding there.
‘Falcio, this is murder!’ Kest shouted, and he was right: it was murder – but I wasn’t the one doing it. Ossia had freed me from that burden. Filian tried to catch my eye and I wondered what he saw in my face: was he expecting me to run to save him, the boy who would destroy my country and the girl the King had named after my wife so I would know I had to protect her? The young fool so in love with Trin that he couldn’t see the evil that drove her? Whatever fine intentions he might have, as soon as he took the throne he would marry her and she would be the one in control. She would turn this country into a bigger hell than it had ever been.
He was still looking at me but I didn’t even bother to mouth the words ‘I’m sorry’ because in that moment, I wasn’t.
A shout from the other side of the dais drew my attention. Aline, her own small belt knife in hand, was running towards Ossia, with Jillard chasing after her, but he was moving too slowly. I was running too, now, realising that in my willingness to forsake the law to save Aline, I’d forgotten the most important thing about her: Aline would never allow someone else to be murdered for her, and she would never forgive me for allowing it to happen.
Her courage snapped me out of the fog I’d allowed to envelop me – but it was too late, because Aline failed to reach Ossia in time to stop the attack.
Instead, she got there just in time to get between Filian and the blade.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Sounds of Breathing
Screams, shouts, whispers, laughter . . . the human voice is capable of a remarkable assortment of sounds when words fail us, when reasoned, ordered thoughts cease to mean anything in the face of a world turned upside down. And yet it was the sounds I noticed most through the chaos and wreckage that was Aramor’s throne room.
My other senses had slowed down, coming too late, like thunder preceding the lightning. I knew I was running towards Aline, but only because I could hear the clap of my boots against the hard marble floor. Men had tried to get in my way, but I knew that only because of their groans, the scraping of my rapiers as they slid through leather armour, the wet sigh of steel withdrawing from flesh. I knew Aline had fallen to the floor from the dull crack of her head striking the marble and the soft sigh from her lips. I knew she was still alive, but only because I heard her speaking to me.
‘Time,’ she said, so softly that I shouldn’t have been able to hear the word over the din, and yet I could.
I looked down at her stomach, forcing my eyes to focus, to take stock of the cut that had slashed through her gown just above her waist. The wound was deep, but a cut is not the same as a puncture; none of her vital organs had been struck. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ I said.
I felt a squeezing of my right hand and only then noticed she’d taken it in hers. ‘It will be all right, Falcio.’ The tears filling her eyes belied her words.
Someone was shouting over and over for a doctor, swearing all the while. I think it was Duke Jillard.
‘Hey,’ I said to Aline, trying to keep my voice light even as the clashing of steel came perilously close. A clang, almost like a bell, told me that Kest was nearby, protecting us with that big shield of his. I took a bandage from inside my coat and started to wrap it around Aline’s belly. ‘It’s just a little scrape, barely worth making such a fuss over.’
She gave me a little smile. ‘I love how stupid you are sometimes.’
My own tears were tracing lines down my face, but I only discovered that because of the strangled sob that came out of me unbidden. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’