I love you,I sent him.
And I love you. Just try to stay calm, okay?
How can I when these things are so damn heavy?
I was not at all surprised to find we were being delivered to the throne room. To keep calm, I listened to the chain clanking against my gauntlets as I counted the guards. There were eleven guards delivering the two of us to the king. The bald one to my left was the one with the key to the gauntlets, as I saw the same type of large key I had taken off the king.
As we continued downward, of course having to take the stairs under the weight of the gauntlets, I searched around every corner and turn, looking for the staff. I didn’t know what they could do, other than warn the others. By the time we made it down the stairs, my legs were burning, and my shoulders ached. Were it not for the man with the chain pulling on the gauntlets before me, I was sure I would have fallen down the stairs.
Not finding people as we continued for the throne room, I also looked out the windows for light. Owen hadn’t been on duty yet, so it was still night. But when morning came, he’d find us gone, the guards murdered, and he’d grab The Six and Keir to come to our rescue. Keir might even sense something was wrong with Krew’s magic again, just like he did the night of our bonding. All the help we needed was right here within the castle walls.
We had to stall. We only had to distract the king long enough for the sun to come up.
The tall throne doors opened slowly.
My fear multiplied when I saw Keir already in the throne room with four more guards. As I glanced again at the faces of all these guards charged with putting the gauntlets on us and bringing us before the king, I knew that none of them had helped us with the fire the night before. They likely hadn’t been allowed to. Because of this.
Keir looked at us and I could see his rage in both his magic burning along his bare chest and torso, and also in the look he gave us. He likely thought the king’s guards wouldn’t have been able to overpower the both of us.
But he’d been wrong.
The men holding our chains brought us forward so we were all standing in a line twenty feet from the dais. Krew on my left, Keir on my right. I was in my favorite light pink nightgown, both of them were barefoot and shirtless, wearing only the pants they had slept in.
I kept my eyes on the guard who held the keys as he moved forward to the left of the dais.
“Good morning,” the king sneered from where he lazily sat on his throne.
“Coward,” Keir spat.
The king just switched his attention from Krew and me to his other son. “Mmm?”
Keir was furious, his neck muscles tensing as he spoke. “You slapped gauntlets on us and pulled us from our beds in the middle of the night.”
The king gave a noncommittal shrug. “Got the job done, did it not?”
Keir’s eyes stayed on his father. “You are acoward.”
The king stood slowly and took a deep breath. “I have ruled for far longer than you’ve been alive, son.”
“We cleaned up another one of your messes and now we are being punished for it,” Keir seethed.
“You,” the king snapped. “The two ofyouhave been creating far more messes than I.”
My stomach dropped. He knew the princes were disloyal. My magic was burning and pulsing. There was no way out of this. None other than to stall, but my magic felt like it would burn me from the inside out if I didn’t use it soon. And yet, I couldn’t.
The king continued, “And as a ruler I can appreciate the initiative of creating a plan to get the throne out from under me, hell I even half expected it.” He paused, his face going red with his anger. The guards were all silent. “But I did not expect to learn the leaders of the disloyal movement were my own gods damned sons!”
Neither Krew nor Keir bothered to try to deny it.
“You could have lit the entire castle on fire,” Keir argued, his magic also fighting to be freed.
“He knew we’d save it, Keir,” I offered, trying to get him to calm down. If the goal here was to stall, Keir needed to pace himself. “He just needed us weak.”
The king nodded toward me. “She gets it. She figured out far more than most too.”
“So you admit you poisoned the other countries?” Krew asked, his voice ragged. “Youwere the disease?”
“Wylan is now the strongest country in the realm,” the king explained slowly. “I don’t think you realize the sacrifices that have had to occur to ensure that. At one point, war was imminent.”
