Page 39 of A Court of Masks and Roses (Royal Scout #1)

KALI

D ays ago, I would have thought the accusation absurd. Now I can only curse the damn timing. Not that there is ever a convenient time to be exposed.

“Am I on the Royal Guard arrest list as well?” Trace asks after a pause, his voice as even as if discussing new mess-hall bannocks. “Or only the roses’?”

Luca groans. “I was really hoping to hear you curse and proclaim your innocence just now.”

“Anyone who believes I ordered those girls to commit murder would unlikely be swayed by my insistence to the contrary,” says Trace. “Are you supposed to be arresting me?”

“Stars, but you are a pain.” Luca sighs with resignation. “No, Wil is holding up the roses’ request for a reciprocal warrant. He wants to talk to you first.”

I clear my throat. “Is this why the palace grounds are bleeding holy guardsmen?” I ask. “Two hundred of them are all looking for Trace? They are not doing a very good job of it, considering none challenged us on the way here. ”

“Let us not stop to offer critique,” Luca tells me, his face tight. “And yes, that is why they are here. The numbers are all about politics—a demonstration of Bahir’s outrage and all that.”

“Or they are not truly looking for Trace,” I say, though neither man pays me much mind.

“You said Wil needs to see me,” Trace tells Luca, his shoulders tense despite an even voice. “Then take me to him.”

“Us,” I say, my glare daring him to object. After years of ignorance about Bahir’s allegiance, Firehorn can wait another hour while I see what other trouble is brewing.

Trace’s jaw tightens. “Us,” he finally agrees but waves a hand over my tattered clothing. “Though the shorter part of us might wish to change and arm himself as befitting a guardsman before attending the crown prince.”

“Trace,” Luca studies the floor, his voice quiet, “the prince waits with Questioner Calvin in the dungeon hold.” He focuses on straightening his own clothes as the words and their meaning percolate.

After a moment, Luca turns on his heels, nodding to no one in particular.

“I’ve something to attend to before meeting you there. ”

The words Luca didn’t say aloud squeeze the air from my lungs. If you need to disappear, this is your chance . Never mind that Luca would be flogged within an inch of his life for it.

Lord Gapral warned me about the dangers of friendship.

Trace’s hand snaps around Luca’s wrist. “Escort me first, if you don’t mind.”

Dread and relief flooding me in equal measure, I quickly turn away to pull on a fresh tunic and breeches, letting Trace subtly nudge Luca out of the tiny room.

Another few moments to strap Leaf’s pouch to one thigh and a sword to my waist, and I’m as ready as I’m getting.

My forearm is bare and too light without my vambrace of throwing knives, but there’s little to be done on that front.

Even with the knives missing, the change of clothes feels unexpectedly soothing, like a bandage topping a wound.

When I step outside, Trace gives a small, understanding nod.

Hooded cloaks covering our faces, Trace, Luca, and I walk purposefully toward the dungeon. Around us, red-coated holy guardsmen scurry about like cockroaches. Spotting Sergeant Samuels across the courtyard, my hands tighten into fists.

Luca shoots me a dark look, then slows as we approach the dungeon doors. “Trace... you can still—”

Reaching past Luca, Trace opens the door to the moldy gloom and starts down the steps. Lanterns in hand, Luca and I follow the echo of Trace’s boots against the stone. My chest squeezes at the thought of what each of these motions costs Trace. And if he is discovered as an Everett spy...

“It will work out,” Luca tells me quietly, having read my tension if not my thoughts. “That one always lands on his feet.”

No, he doesn’t. Except I’ve neither the heart nor the right to tell Luca exactly how much worse this all is than he thinks.

We are halfway down the staircase, bracing for the inevitable stench, when Calvin blocks our path.

“Hoods off,” he orders with a deathly quiet that allows no disobedience. Holding up a lantern, he inspects each of us, moving from one set of eyes to the next, until coming to a halt before Trace.

“Allow me to make something perfectly clear,” the questioner tells him.

“I have two young girls in a place in which they have no business being. If I so much as smell an intention to intimidate them into anything, your day will go from bad to worse very rapidly. Prince William or no Prince William. Do you understand me, guardsman? ”

“It’s a misunderstanding, Calvin,” I hear myself say. “There is—”

Trace silences me with a hand. Raising his chin, he stares at the questioner and, after a moment of heavy silence, bows with his hand over his sword. With a jerk of his head, Calvin leads us the rest of the way down and into the dusty meeting room.

Wil stands with two girls of twelve or thirteen years. One petite and agile with coal-black hair and an angled face, the other plump and ungainly. Both frightened. The girls shy away from us. If they’ve seen Trace before, they give no sign of it now.

Wil, his hair and clothes equally disheveled, steps forward. “I think I like it better when it’s you pulling me out of trouble,” he tells Trace.

Trace bows his head, the short nod carrying more weight than a glamorous display. “I understand that I’m wanted for murder.”

“You are not wanted for anything,” Wil snaps, though his voice’s rising inflection takes some of the power from the words.

“Not by the Crown, at least. The Holy Guard has made a claim based on Alexa and Jasmine’s words.

” He points to the girls. “They are—were—runaway Order of the Goddess acolytes. A rose caught them in the North Wood and attempted to take them back to the temple. Jasmine hit him on the back of the head with a rock, which ended the pursuit more permanently than intended. The guard’s partner found the body and, shortly after, Alexa and Jasmine themselves. Who gave the Holy Guard Trace’s name.”

“An accident, then,” I say. “Not murder.”

Luca and Trace exchange glances. “The specifics will little matter to the Holy Guard,” says Trace. “And King Firehorn may be pressured to agree to the charges to appease the Order. I wager it is the escape more than the guard’s death that upsets Bahir.”

The girls shrink back, pressing against each other, and Calvin shifts his weight to subtly impose himself between Trace and his accusers.

“It’s all right,” Trace tells them. “You are whisperers?”

Hesitant nods. Trace turns to Wil. “Bahir’s men round up whisperers and force them to labor in the Order’s fortress. Kidnapping, enlisting, buying—whatever it takes. ‘Acolyte’ is the bishop’s term for slave. I help escapees get to safety.”

I glare at Trace, whose meddling in Dansil’s affairs—and putting himself in danger of several executions—appears vaster than even I imagined, the matter of this being the pot calling the kettle black notwithstanding.

Being an Everett prince in Dansil court isn’t enough?

You needed to subvert the Order of the Goddess while you were at it?

His eyes flick to me. What did you expect me to do?

“Slaves?” Wil shakes his head, his long lashes cutting the air with a sharp arc. “Surely you exaggerate.”

Trace snorts. “What exactly did you think happened to all the whisperers turned over to the Order for ‘salvation’?”

Calvin rubs his top lip. “How do you go about the rescues?” he asks mildly.

Trace draws a breath and faces the questioner. “A meeting point in the woods. I check it routinely for runaways, but I’ve been away for several days.”

Because of me. Trace is a hair’s breadth from being uncovered and it’s all because of me.

Alexa’s throat bobs. “We went to the woods. And we waited a long time. But we were unsure of what Master Trace looked like, and when we heard someone coming... By the time we realized we should have stayed hidden, it was too late.” Her voice drops to a whisper.

“We didn’t want to go back to the Order. ”

Calvin studies the floor, as if regretting his own question. “And where do you take the escaped slaves, guardsman?”

My stomach clenches, because deep in my bones, I know the answer. Lie , I beg Trace with my mind. Make something up. Say there is a town somewhere. A small town at Dansil’s outskirts, far away from Delta.

Trace’s spine straightens. “Everett,” he says firmly. “I arrange for their passage to Everett.”

Cold silence fills the room. Luca’s eyes widen as he stares at Trace, as if waiting for the punchline of a jest.

Wil steps back. “That’s... Stars. You made secret arrangements with Dansil’s enemy at a time of war? That’s treason.”

Trace turns to face Calvin, each movement slow and measured. “I imagine you have other questions for me, sir. Where would you like me?”

I freeze. No.

“I think we’re comfortable here for now,” Calvin says, crossing the room to his steeping pot. “Especially after the fine work the ladies did cleaning it up. Tea?”

“Your Highness!” The door to the room crashes open, halting Calvin’s hand short of the first porcelain cup.

Trace, Luca, and I all reach for our swords before a young guardsman trainee’s explosive appearance registers in our minds.

The boysurveys the room frantically, stopping only when he finds Wil.

“Thank the stars. I heard you were here,” the boy manages, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.

“We’re under attack. The Holy Guard has taken the palace. ”

“A coup.” My face snaps to Trace. Of course the hundreds of holy guardsmen roaming the palace weren’t really seeking him—they needed an excuse to fill the palace grounds.

And that day after the Viva attack when I noted how very diligent the roses were—they weren’t looking for Viva agents. They were scouting. The bastards.

Trace nods as if he’s read the deductions in my eyes and they match his own. “We need to get the prince out,” Trace says curtly, replacing the teacup in Calvin’s hand with a lantern and herding everyone toward the door. “Is there another way out of here besides the main door?”

“This is a prison,” says Calvin, gathering a pair of stray cloaks. “The only other way out is with the Goddess.”

“Then we run,” Trace says. Gathering Wil, Calvin, and the girls between us, Trace, Luca, and I rush up the stairs, leaving the trainee to continue passing the word.

My pulse beats hard, my mind still numbly stumbling over the news, waiting for someone to laugh and call us all sorts of idiots for believing the jest. Instead, the tap of our boots on stone echoes against cold walls, and the clash of blades and screams grows louder as we approach the sun.

The bright light of the outside hits me just as a blade does, and I parry before I can even see the rose whose steel tried to take my life.

The man backs up a step, then widens his eyes as Wil spills out from the dungeon entrance.

The rose opens his mouth to scream, but Trace cuts him down before any sound emerges.

Ripping the cloak off himself, Trace shoves it into Wil’s arms, and the prince obediently conceals himself while we take quick stock of the battlefield.

At the west end of the palace compound, the dungeons are somewhat insulated from the chaos of the main courtyard, a hundred paces to our left.

There, bodies litter the grass and bleed rudely over the bright flowers.

Some guards still face off, their swords glinting cruelly in the sunlight.

But most of the screams and sounds of combat are coming from within the palace itself .

Leaf . My mind is suddenly blank except for one purpose. I adjust the grip on my blade, readying myself for battle. Leaf is in the palace, a lamb for the Order’s slaughter. I’m coming for you. It’s all I can do to keep myself from bolting there blindly, soldiers and swords be damned.

“North Wood,” Trace shouts, a commander on a battlefield. “Shelter there.” He makes a hooking motion with his bloody blade, ordering us to turn right and circle back to the rear of the palace.

Luca pushes Calvin and the girls along the ordered path, but Wil and I remain rooted in place.

I know I need to leave, to grab Wil and run.

But leaving Leaf here, even temporarily, cracks open my soul.

It little matters that I’m coming back for her the moment I ensure the future king’s safety—it still hurts.

I’m coming, Leaf. I send the thought as hard as I can with my mind, hoping she hears it. Hold fast a few more minutes, and I’ll be back.

Trace grabs the prince’s arm. “You want to live? You do what I say,” he shouts into the boy’s face, twisting him toward the path. “Follow Luca. Now.”

The prince stumbles and stops, his voice flat and distant. “My father. I don’t need to live—the king does.”

Trace opens his mouth to reply but I speak instead, the words too horrid to be my own. “You are the king now, Wil,” I whisper, pushing him forward before he can turn to see what I just saw.

King Firehorn’s severed head being hoisted up the flagpole.

With one more glance at the palace—at my sister—I grab the new king’s hand and I run.

Finish Kali’s adventure in A Court of Truth and Thorns .