I deserved so much better.
I looked to Krew and held the sword out at arm’s level. My shoulders still hurt from the weight of the gauntlets.
Krew took the sword from me and brushed a kiss against my temple.
“Would you do the honors?” I asked quietly.
“I am your father!” the king boomed from under the weight of two different hues of blue magic. “I am your king!”
I wiped at my nose. “If you have to remind others of either of those, it means you are adept at neither.”
Krew turned toward his father, his magic still pouring from one hand to keep the king on his knees, even as he held his mother’s magic in the sword. “My son will never know you,” Krew promised as he strode forward. “And the entire realm is better off without you.”
“You have no son,” the king bit out.
Of course he’d argue up until the very end.
“Don’t I?” Krew asked.
The king’s brow furrowed.
Krew brought the sword above his head, both hands on the hilt. “Your reign has run out.” And he drove the sword down, the exact spot Owen had trained me to hit, between the collar bone and the neck. He sliced through the king’s body, then brought his mother’s sword back out.
Blood spilled from the king’s body as he fell to the side with the blow.
Krew’s magic fell, and I noticed he too had blood at his nose.
Unable to take my eyes from the king, I saw he was dead immediately. It’d been a far swifter death than he deserved. I was somehow expecting all his dark magic to fly out of his body, but it didn’t. One moment he was alive, the next he was simply gone.
Silence blanketed the throne room as we all stayed put. Shadow broke it a few beats later when he sent up a howl which made me shiver. Rafe responded with one of his own. Out the broken glass of the window, I heard another howl in the distance.
Keir’s boots crunched on the broken glass as he walked over to where the king’s crown still sat on the ground and picked it up, loosely holding it in his fingers as he made his way back over to Krew.
And there on the dais in front of a toppled throne stood two princes. One with a bloodied sword in his hand. One with their father’s crown in his. They stood side by side, victorious.
They’d saved Wylan. For all of us.
Owen was the first one to take a knee, and one by one everyone else in the room, including the guards, did too. Wylan had a new king.
King Theon Valanova was no more.
CHAPTER45
As the sun painted the sky with the first rays of golden morning light, I stood before the pyre and felt nothing other than relief. The king was dead. Finally.
It had been two days since that fateful morning. I’d collapsed shortly after the king died, exhaustion taking over as soon as the adrenaline wore off. I’d slept for an entire day.
The princes had asked for the papers from the king’s safe to be brought forth immediately. The ones where they would finally, after twenty-six years, learn who was born first and would be taking over the throne.
But getting into the safe had turned out to be quite the chore. Even in his death, Theon Valanova couldn’t make things easy for his sons.
Nara, meanwhile, was removed from the king’s wing, and taken to a much smaller room, much like the ones we had when we first arrived at the castle. She was being given time to mourn before she would eventually be going back to Rallis. Though it wouldn’t be as grand as castle life, the princes would make sure she lived comfortably there.
Yesterday, we had taken Maurice’s body back to Rallis and stayed for the lighting of his pyre. It was a sad affair, and I wasn’t sure how to wrap my head around the fact that such a vibrantly loud man could really be gone.
He’d given his life to make sure we took down the king. We’d all risked everything that morning. And Maurice was gone because of it. I’d shed hundreds of tears before Maurice’s pyre yet found not a single one left for the former king.
“Let this stand as a fresh start in Wylan,” Keir began as he stood in front of the pyre. His voice didn’t waver or shake. Krew was to the right of him, and I was to the right of Krew, tucked under his arm. Numerous Savaryn families and parliament members were present, so this wasn’t a speech to remember the king, but rather a message the princes were ready to send. As if word of their killing their own father hadn’t already sent message enough. “There is no mourning. This is simply the end of tyranny in Wylan. The beginning of a new era.”
