Queen of rot and pain

My survival instinct leapt in my chest, shoving a gasp past my lips. A whiff of iron and sweetness crept into my mouth, quickly tainting my gums with the stench of urine and guts, letting my stomach spin for reasons I didn’t want to explore.

 Had Enosh not warned me of his plan to bathe the lands in blood? Had it not made sense, terrible as it may be, for mortals had brought this day of reckoning onto themselves? If we wanted revenge on those who’d wronged us—to destroy all under the Sun of Helfa and gain life for me and our child—then these men needed to die.

But the squire was no man.

He was a boy.

I

Barely old enough to grow a damn beard, let alone lift a sword. Devil be damned, he’d probably spent all week watering the horses, filling cups of ale, and pouring the commander’s pisspots into the latrines.

“P-please, Your Highness,” the boy stammered, letting my gloved fingers curl into the mink of my dress no matter how I didn’t want them to. “I… I have a younger sister at home who… She’s carrying my babe.”

Well… maybe not i

But not terribly guilty, either.

Yarin chuckled. “Tsk, tsk, tsk… not even I am depraved enough to rut my own sister.”

“If only because we do not have one,” Enosh clipped over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to the man. “Are you suggesting that you wish to feed the crows?”

“No!” the boy blurted, eyes nervously flitting from Enosh to the blade as he hesitantly nodded. “Unbind me, and I… I will do it.”

His arms fell forward right then.

I breathed.

Breathed again.

It was all I could do to keep down this desperation, this inkling that these lands I called home might soon resemble those beyond the Soltren Gate.

And if we found a young alemaid in some tavern, would she have to cut her wrists, too? What of the stable boys? What of the motherless babes screaming inside the temples? When Enosh had said bloodshed, whose blood had he been talking about, exactly?

Watching this boy pick up the blade… it shook me beyond comprehension.

As it shook him, for he dropped the blade into the snow with how his hand quivered. Nausea bit at my throat when he lifted it from the white powder. He shoved back the leather covering his arm, brought the blade to the pale skin, and—

“Stop,” someone said.

Me.

I’d said that.

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