Kingslayer

They entered the palace through the servant passages at midnight.

Wren met them at the kitchen door and led them through the passages that Aldric had memorized in his first week. The passages that ran behind the walls like veins. They moved in silence. Elara behind Wren. Aldric behind Elara. His sword at his side. No armor. Just the blade and the shirt and the letter carved into his chest that throbbed with every heartbeat.

The palace was quiet. The midnight watch was changing. Renard had done what he had promised. The inside guard had been delayed. Five minutes. Maybe six. The window was narrow and they moved through it.

The King's private chambers were in the heart of the palace. The deepest rooms. The most protected. Wren led them to a passage that ended behind a panel and he pressed the panel and it opened and they stepped through into a dressing room. Clothes on hooks. Boots on the floor. The smell of leather and lavender.

Wren pointed to the door at the far end. The door to the King's bedchamber. He turned and went back through the panel and disappeared.

Aldric looked at Elara. She stood in the dressing room and her face was the face from the tower. Cold. Clear. The knife was in her hand. The small knife. The one he had carried. The one she had used on him. She held it the way she held everything. With ownership.

"Stay here," she said.

"No."

"This is not a negotiation. Stay here. I go in alone."

"You go in with me or I do not let you go in."

She looked at him. Her eyes were flat. The clarity was there. The cold. But somewhere under it something else. The thing that was between them. The thing that said you are mine and I am yours and we do this together.

"Together then," she said. "But when we enter I speak first. You do not move unless I tell you to move. You do not speak unless I tell you to speak. And you do not interfere with what happens. Is that understood."

"Understood."

She looked at the door. She took a breath. She let it out.

She opened the door.

The bedchamber was large. A fire burned low in the hearth. The bed was against the far wall. Heavy curtains. Silk sheets. The King slept in the center of the bed with one arm above his head and his face was relaxed and young and he looked like the boy he had been before he became the man he was.

Elara walked to the bed. Aldric followed. His sword was drawn. His hand was steady. He had killed twenty five men and this would be twenty six and it would be the easiest and the hardest of all of them.

Elara stood at the bedside. She looked down at her brother and her face held something that was not the cold clarity and not the hunger. Something older. Something that had been there before the tower and before Greyhollow and before everything. The face of a sister looking at a brother she had grown up with. A brother who had played with her in these passages. A brother who had become something else.

She put the knife against his throat. The flat of the blade. Not the edge. She pressed it against his skin and his eyes opened.

He saw her. He did not move. He did not cry out. He looked at his sister standing over him with a knife at his throat and he was afraid and the fear was naked on his face and he did not try to hide it.

"Elara," he said. His voice was thick with sleep and fear.

"Hello brother."

"How did you."

"That is not important. What is important is what happens next."

"You cannot do this."

"I can. I am. The question is how."

She pressed the knife. The edge now. Not cutting. Pressing. The steel indented his skin and a thin line of red appeared and the King did not move because moving would open his throat.

"You put me in a tower," she said. "You left me in the dark. You used my own methods against me. You looked at the scars on his body and you called me sick."

Her voice was low. Steady. Not the voice of a woman in rage. The voice of a woman reading a verdict.

"You were right. I am sick. But not in the way you meant. I am sick in the way that a blade is sick. In the way that a storm is sick. I am the thing I am and I cannot be otherwise and you tried to cage me and the cage did not hold and now I am here and you are there and the knife is between us."

"Elara please."

"Please. You say please. You who put me in a tower for four days. You who left me in silence. You who took everything from me and called it justice. You say please."

She leaned closer. Her face was near his. Her eyes held his.

"I want you to know something before you die. I want you to know that the man standing behind me with the sword. The man you sent to the front to die. The man you called simple. He came back for me. He rode three hundred miles. He crawled through the walls of your palace. He found me in the dark. He held me while I cried. And then he stood in a room while I cut his name into his chest and he did not move. Because he is mine. In a way that you will never understand. In a way that your small clean mind cannot comprehend. He is mine and I am his and that is the only thing in this room that is not about power or politics or thrones. It is about a man who would die for me and a woman who would kill for him and you are in the way."

She straightened. She looked at Aldric.

"Do it," she said.

Aldric stood behind her. His sword was raised. The King looked at him. The fear was there. The naked human fear of a man who is about to die. And under the fear something else. Something that looked like understanding. As though in the last moment of his life he saw what Elara was and what Aldric was and the thing between them and he understood it for the first time.

"Ser Aldric," the King said. "You do not have to do this."

Aldric looked at the King. He looked at Elara. She stood with her back to him. Her hand on the knife at the King's throat. She was not looking at him. She was looking at her brother and her face held the cold clarity and the hunger and the thing that the tower had let out and it was all there on her face and she was not hiding any of it.

"Do it," she said again.

Aldric brought the sword down.

The King died. Not quietly. Not cleanly. The sound was terrible and the blood was everywhere and Elara did not step back. She stood at the bedside and the blood hit her dress and her face and her hands and she did not move. She watched. She watched the life leave her brother's eyes and her face held something that was not satisfaction and was not pleasure. It was completion. The completion of something that had been building since the tower and before the tower and before Greyhollow and before everything.

The room was silent. The fire crackled. The blood spread on the sheets.

Elara looked at her hands. They were red. She turned them over. She looked at the blood the way she had looked at his blood. With interest. With possession.

She turned to Aldric. She looked at him. His sword was still in his hand. The blood was on the blade and on his hands and on his shirt and the letter on his chest was hidden beneath the fabric but it throbbed as though it was speaking.

"It is done," she said.

"It is done."

She dropped the knife. She walked to him. She put her bloody hands on his face. She looked at him and her face was the face of a woman who had just killed a king and the face was calm and clear and terrible and beautiful and he looked at her and he saw what she had become and what she had always been and the two things were the same thing and they had always been the same thing.

"We need to go," she said.

"Yes."

She took his hand. Her bloody hand in his. They left the room. Through the dressing room. Through the passage. Through the walls of the palace. Behind the stone. Through the veins of the building that her brother had ruled and that she would rule now.

They emerged into the city. The night air was cold. The streets were empty. They walked through the dark hand in hand and the blood dried on their skin and their clothes and the city did not see them and the palace did not know yet that its king was dead and by the time it knew the princess and her knight would be gone and the world would be different.

They walked to the Thorne townhouse. Lady Thorne opened the gate. She looked at the blood. She looked at their faces. She did not ask.

"It is done," Elara said.

"I see that," Lady Thorne said.

"Send word to Thorne. Tell him the throne is empty. Tell him to gather the council. Tell them I will address them at dawn."

She went inside. Aldric followed. She went to the sitting room. She sat by the fire. She looked at her hands. The blood was drying. Cracking. Turning brown.

She looked at Aldric. She looked at the blood on his shirt. On his hands. On his sword.

"Put the sword down," she said.

He set it against the wall.

"Come here."

He went to her. She reached up and took his shirt. She pulled it up. She looked at the letter. The E. The final mark. It was scabbed and angry and the edges were red and it sat over his heart like a brand.

She put her hand over it. Over the letter. Over her name.

"It is done," she said. "And you are still here."

"I am still here."

"And you will stay."

"I will stay."

She pressed her hand against the letter. The pain came. Sharp. Immediate. He did not make a sound.

"Good," she said. "Good."

She closed her eyes. She leaned back in the chair. She kept her hand on his chest. On the letter. On her name.

Outside the city was waking. The dawn was coming. The council would be gathered. The throne was empty and the princess would fill it and the knight would stand behind her chair the way he always stood. Invisible. Loyal. Simple.

Hers.

The fire burned. The blood dried. The night ended. And the woman who had come out of the tower sat by the fire with her hand on her name carved into a man's chest and she was not the woman who had gone into the tower and she was not the woman who had lived in Greyhollow and she was something new and something old and something that did not have a name except the name she had cut into his flesh.

Elara.

That was the name.

That was the only name that mattered.