Page 79

Then everything seemed to move all at once.

Several more heartbeats passed, as Salas’ adrenalin calmed itself, running thin. Jovack supported him while he breathed, calling for a doctor.

That was when palace bells, from up in the watchtowers, began to thunder through the halls in ringing gongs. There was only one meaning behind the insistence of those loud, alarming bells.

There was an intruder, or intruders, entering the Susconian palace, able to do so now that the magical wards kept in place by Victoria were no longer sustained with her death.

The Diagorians had come.

“No,” Salas whispered.

The ground seemed to rumble with a coming storm.

The roars of the Diagorian beasts were quick to follow. They were louder than the sounds of battle cries, or men rushing to suit-up at the armory. Louder than the drawing of swords, and the swings of the blades to follow.

The sounds were all like that dreaded beginning.

“Don’t move, someone will come to get you out,” Jovack assured, standing up.

He drew his own sword, staring at the entrance apprehensively. Guards ran into the room, perhaps to warn the King, though whatever they had to say was cut short when several Diagorians, in full beast form, pounced into the room, snapping teeth.

Salas swallowed, looking up at Jovack, feeling nothing but pain, and it came more from just the gaping wound in his back that he bled from, or the swirl of magic within his core that continued to have him deteriorate from the inside out. It was a different kind of pain.

He had come here to kill this man, as the curse over him placed by Emperor Eldron still required the blood of a traitor, the truest traitor, and he had come here to ensure that.

“Salas?”

King Jareth stood just past the threshold to the arched entrance of the throne room, his tensed, muscled form completely naked from having shifted, body rippling with energy as he took in the scene. His hard, raging eyes landed on Salas first, seeking him automatically, and when he noticed Salas’ state, curled on the floor, obviously wounded, his nostrils flared and murderous intent was thrown to Jovack.

Then Jareth rushed forward and attacked.

Jovack immediately faltered, his sword pushed aside, eyes wide as Jareth grappled him.

Won’t it be easy, then?Salas reasoned. Allowing Jareth to kill Jovack, and he wouldn’t have to feel this pain anymore? He saw how the story would play out then, with disturbing detail and accuracy, and which tale would be painted up in tapestries or cut out into the flesh of stone to immortalize the heroic tale.

But it was just a tale as old as time: one king ruling and falling after a bloody reign so another could take his place.

That wasn’t the ending Salas wanted, he realized.

It needed to be him.

He didn’t know where he found the energy to stand, but with the last bit of resistance towards the pain that he’d kept tucked away, he rose.

“Stop,” he said, just a whisper.

But Jareth heard, above the bells ringing from afar and the sound of fighting drifting in from the halls, and he stopped immediately, all motion seizing. The look he threw to Salas was both tentative and alert, as well as questioning.

“I must do it,” was all Salas could explain.

Jareth took Salas in, and at first Salas thought the King would look at the state of him and decline, that he would simply rip Jovack’s head off and be done with it.

But he did not.

He stepped aside.

Salas was shaking as he retrieved the witch’s bloody dagger from where it had landed when pulled from him.

Jovack was on the floor, perched up on his elbows, watching Salas with hooded eyes. There was no fear there, only a heavy understanding as he watched Salas approach with the dripping weapon.