"Start it?" Dain's tails lashed through the air with enough force that I heard the air moving. "Lady Theynorë, I can understand wanting to put an arrow through my heart. You're hardly alone in that desire. But the second a fucking arrow went into my soulmate—" His words all but dissolved into his growl, and with a visible force of will, Dain relaxed. He laughed, a tight sound, breathing hard. "The war started at that very moment, Viessa," he said casually. "One of you spilled her blood, and now the Court of Mercy will answer to the Beast of Phazikai."

I closed my eyes, trembling, and listened to the sound of his sword claiming another life.

28. Challenges Issued

Chapter 28

Challenges Issued

I fled.

As soon as the Queen stood, as soon as it would no longer maybe cost me my life to get up out of that chair and leave, I fled. I left and I didn't go back to my rooms, because they connected to Dain's and Dain had killed two people for me, killed two people and answered the first volley of a war with his bloody sword. My four guards stayed in a square around me, and I lied and told myself that they would protect me against Dain, keep him away from me, let me sit and scream and wonder if I needed to go to the Queen and ask for an iron dagger chased in gold.

I went to the stables and I asked for Dain's black stag, so that he couldn't follow me on it. I borrowed a dagger and I hacked off the skirt of the beautiful blood-red dress, and made slits up the side. I got onto the deer and I ran away, my guards following in a skein behind me.

There weren't any thoughts in my head, not really. I was reeling, nothing but images and tumultuous emotion in my mind. It had been worse than seeing Dain kill those people in combat and worse than seeing him carry out an execution. Killing to stay alive and carrying out a sentence of death with clean precision weren't evil acts. But what he'd done, in front of me and everyone? Angry and vicious?

I couldn't get it out of my head, not as the wind dried my tears and the trees turned into brown blurs. Blood. So much blood, always blood. Four skulls on my breakfast table, four arrows in my soulmate. Was this my life now? Was it inescapable?

The cold autumn air bit at my bare legs and arms. I embraced the cold, wishing it could numb the rest of me. It all swirled together: the CRACK of the gendarme, the thunk-thunk of arrows into Dain's back, the wet shnk of his sword through a woman's chest. Over and over, until those sounds were all that was left of me—CRACK thunk-thunk shnk CRACK thunk-thunk shnk CRACK—