Page 18 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

18

THE PRICE

T he singing at breakfast was quieter than normal, perhaps out of respect for the newlyweds, but it woke Beau nonetheless. Perfect comfort, the pile of bodies and blankets he lay in. His exhaustion threatened to drag him back under into sleep, but he didn’t want to miss a moment of this.

He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the softness of Penny’s hair against his chest, the faint sound on some of El’s sleeping exhales like a whimper, the sweet smell of baking bread.

Small footsteps pounded eagerly across the common room floorboards, and Nate shrieked something before Ma could shush him. She was almost as loud when she said, “ Get that mud out of my inn, boyo, I won’t ask you again. His Highness will be about later, and then you can…”

The noise subsided, and Elias must’ve woken, too, because he stretched his back, his body pressing interestingly against Beau. “Good morning, Highness,” he rumbled. “How are you feeling?”

“Comfortable,” Beau whispered. It was strange, still being this comfortable with Elias. He should’ve been afraid of him, maybe. But he’d always known Elias was something special; now he had a name for it: My Watcher.

El chuckled and pulled Beau closer, making space for his hand to slide down the prince’s chest, along his stomach, lower still to the morning’s hardness. “You opposed to an energetic wake-up?”

“Nope,” Beau said quickly, heart picking up its pace.

“If you promise to come quietly,” Elias said as his fingers wrapped around Beau, worked along his length, “maybe we can let your tired wife sleep a while longer.”

“She’s incredible, isn’t she?” Beau stared fondly at the duchess, her hair a wild tangle of loose ringlets around her head, her lips parted in her sleep.

El’s hand tightened and began to move faster. “She really is.”

With a groan, Beau settled against El. “I want you both.”

“You have us,” El breathed. “All yours.”

With a tinge of bitterness, Beau laughed as he pressed his head back hard against Elias. “The wife I picked, the husband she picked; the guard I picked, and the…target he was assigned.”

Elias bit down hard on Beau’s shoulder and sped his hand, and Beau had to grit his teeth to keep his groans quiet. “I picked you, Beauregard. I marked you.” El’s hand slid up Beau to the left of his chest, tracing the tattoos inked there. He ran his finger over them again and again, two tattoos, side by side and intricately linked with whorls that matched the rest. He moved slowly, like he wanted Beau to follow the shape as he traced it.

One curling shape with three long arms running parallel to each other. A second that made a corner, one curving line up, and then a swoop across perpendicular. Almost like an ‘L .’

Beau jerked, sat up to look down at himself. His fingers pushed Elias’s aside. From Beau’s vantage, the one on the left looked like ‘E’. It was El, but made abstract and positioned so only Beau—or someone looking down at his chest over his shoulder—could read it properly.

“Did you tattoo your name on me?”

Elias laughed, dark and full of promise.

The surge of lust from Beau woke Penny like cold water, gasping and flushed. “What—ah.” She settled back. “Warn a woman before you throw that kind of horniness around, I beg.”

“Here’s your warning,” Beau said, as Elias’s injured arm wrapped him tighter, squeezed around his neck, and the jerking hand moved faster. “Care to join?”

Penny’s eyes flashed and her ring pulsed ginger. Before she could touch him, though, someone knocked on the door. Beau was preparing to tell them not to move or acknowledge the outside world until everyone had come at least once, when the door opened.

“S’all right, innkeep, Elias would want me to walk right in,” said a tall, blond man as he shoved Ma out of his path and shouldered into the room, grinning at the three surprised faces on the bed: Gerard. “Morning, lap candy! Pulling double duty these days?”

El rolled out of bed and already had a knife in his hand; Beau was suddenly grateful he hadn’t been able to persuade the man to take his armor off for bed. “Get out.”

“Oh that’s no way to greet someone who came to get you out of harm’s way. Bid the pretty princeling and his lovely wife the usual farewell, and we can be done here. But you look like you might’ve gotten a little attached this time.” He laughed, bright flash of teeth in his craggy face, and knives appeared in his hands, disappeared, appeared again, too fast to follow. “I’ll take care of it for you.”

“Get the fuck out, Carver.”

“Oho, you’re breaking character before your mark’s dead?” Gerard—or Carver, perhaps—laughed again, eyebrows high. “Never thought I’d see the day. Must’ve really pissed you off when I used your name last time. Sorry ’bout that.

“Speaking of last time, we already flexed, didn’t we? And you ended up paralyzed face down. So maybe we don’t need to go another round, yeah? Just scoot, let me clean up your mess, and we’ll send the rest of His Majesty’s men back off the island.”

The blond leaned far enough to meet Beau’s eyes. “Sorry ’bout your Pops, by the way. Don’t worry, King Alphonse’ll do your job credibly enough.”

Beau yanked his trousers on, watching Elias’s stiff back as his guard shifted to stay in Gerard’s way. “My father’s dead?”

His father had died, and his last words to Beau had been bitter disappointment and hatred. There was no correcting that now. Because he was dead.

The king was dead.

And Beau…was king. King .

“Snuffed it days ago,” Gerard said. “Lex, move. This is boring.”

“ King Beauregard didn’t invite any guests,” El snarled, and Beau barely heard it, wrapped in cotton and stuffed in a barrel as his mind was. “Out the window, royals.”

Then he whirled into motion, and he and Gerard locked into a fight faster than the one in the forest, blades whistling, hard strikes drawing sharp exhales.

Numbly, Beau grabbed Penny, threw the window up, and hurled her out, following immediately. A few people made their way from homes to boats this early, but the inn’s yard should’ve been empty. It was, instead, populated by two armed and armored men.

“Is that him? That’s the prince, isn’t it?”

Everything crystallized, clearing into discrete, understandable realizations: His father was dead. He was king. His crown was being stolen. These men had come to kill him. Elias couldn’t help him, locked in his fight with Gerard. His wife—the queen —would die if he did nothing.

Beau had to fight them. He had to kill them. He had to move .

Beau’s eyes darted around the yard as the pair approached, searching for a weapon. “Did you say prince? Afraid not,” he said flatly, and one actually paused as if he believed Beau. “I’m not a prince. Common misconception.”

There —the woodchopping axe, still embedded in the stump. Beau snatched it up, swung it experimentally once. Not a sword, but it’d do in a pinch.

He gave the soldiers a gallows grin. “I’m actually the fucking king. Feel free to kneel.”

They didn’t fight like Watchers, thank the Twelve, and they mustn’t have been expecting a shirtless, barefoot man to be particularly skillful with a woodaxe. He caught the first across the throat with a vicious slash that half decapitated him, then let momentum spin him into a second strike at the other, who barely dodged.

“We found—!” he shouted, but the brief attempt to communicate was enough distraction for Beau to lop his sword hand off at the wrist, and the man’s words jolted into incoherent noise before the king’s next blow took him in the chest.

Panting, Beau tossed the axe in Penny’s direction and snatched the man’s sword and belt knife instead. He briefly contemplated their armor, but he didn’t want to be picking it off the bodies when reinforcements arrived. “You all right?” he asked his wife, throwing her a quick glance.

Her cream chemise stuck to her where Beau had spattered her with blood, and she looked half wild with her hair in a loose halo and a gory axe in her hands, but she nodded.

From the ring, a steady pulse of determination forcefully tamped down terror. She tried to push confidence and calm to him, but Beau didn’t need it; the adrenaline pumping through him slowed things down and made every move progress logically one to the next.

Four more soldiers rounded the hedges. “Over there!” Four . Too many. With a sword, he’d fare better than with the axe, but not well enough to fight four men at once.

“Run!” Beau said. He stepped forward in time to block one blow and parry a second before he could dance out of range. Thank fuck for the knife; with it, he turned a jab from a soldier trying to flank him that just missed separating his ribs.

Barely too slow, he hissed as he almost dodged a sword point, catching a glancing blow under his collarbone. His knife took a chunk of the man’s quad and sent him to his knees, where he tripped up a second. They were bunched up; Beau’s sword slice caught one in the eyes, the second in the belly. He stumbled back, trying to maintain space to fight, hoping Penny had gotten out of sight.

Another stab, another soldier dropped, but even the gut-cut one kept fighting, teeth bared in a rictus of determined hate that nearly flooded Beau with despair. They’d keep coming. He wasn’t fast enough or practiced enough.

He dodged further and further back until he was pinned against the wall of the inn; they were relentless. One stabbed a burning hole through his left shoulder. Another raked a cold-fire line across his thigh. He was only going to get slower.

Beau heard the whoosh of something in the air just before it impacted, and he jerked out of its path too late to have dodged, had it been coming for him. It wasn’t; it struck one of the soldiers fighting him in the throat—the axe. Beau glanced over his shoulder: Penny had thrown it.

A soldier took advantage of his distraction to hammer down on Beau’s wrist, knocking his sword from numb fingers. Beau barely got the knife up in time to deflect a stab for the heart. Blindly, he backed up toward Penny, cold with terror.

Two on one, and he had only a belt-knife.

A man-shaped blur hurtled out of the inn window, and then a bloody blade-point sprouted from the chest of one of his pursuers; a spray of red foamed from his mouth as his eyes went wide. The second squawked in surprise, and Beau slammed his knife up under his chin. The man’s weight, as he fell, nearly pulled the blade from Beau’s hand, and he staggered.

Elias caught him. “More?”

“That was the last I saw. Thank you. Penny?” He fought for breath as the queen appeared, bloody and beautiful and terrified.

“Are you all right? Your shoulder looks—”

“You did amazing,” Beau said, cutting her off, trying not to feel the injuries she’d brought to the forefront of his mind. “I’d have died if you hadn’t thrown that axe.”

Elias’s hands slid efficiently along Beau’s body, checking each of his wounds, assessing the threat. El had a couple slices himself, though none as bad as the king’s. “Let’s get inside, rally the other guards,” he said. “I didn’t manage to kill Carver, and he’s not the only one here.” He met the royals’ eyes briefly to ensure they both understood he meant other Watchers.

“So Gerard is actually Carver?” Beau clarified, wincing as Elias picked up his pace, rounding the inn to enter through the front door and catch a good view of Leau on the way.

“Carver’s the name I knew him by in training,” El said absently. “I need you to magic me up, Highness. Tell me I’m the best fighter alive, tell me I’m unkillable. Believe it. I think there are four of them altogether, and that’s…” He let out a shaky breath, then said more resolutely. “I can fight them. Tell me I can.”

I don’t know the first thing about magic. I’m not convinced I have magic, whatever you and Penny seem to think, Beau thought, but he could see Elias believed it and needed to believe it.

So he pulled El to a stop, set his forehead against El’s and his hand on the back of El’s neck, and said, “You are the best fighter who’s ever lived. You could kill four of them one handed without a scratch.” He willed that thought through his guard like he could make it true on hope alone. “You will , in fact.”

When he pulled away, Elias’s pupils were huge, but instead of black pits, they glowed gold. Beau took a startled step back as the Watcher inhaled deeply, smile tipping up, then exhaled a sigh. “That felt good.” He cracked his neck once, then resumed his jog.

He pulled up again almost immediately. “Oh fuck .”

Penny and Beau came to his side, seeing what he saw. Everywhere , in groups of three or four, soldiers walked the streets, milled among the houses, called to each other, but they were starting to assemble at one end around a tall, blond man and drift toward the inn. Beau realized they’d been spread to search for him.

The bell in the center of Leau began to jangle a wild alarm and shouts rose. Beau spotted a small form bouncing away from it, scrambling up the wall on the other side with two soldiers in pursuit: Nate .

“Nate!” Beau darted down the hill, shaking off Elias’s attempt to snatch him back.

Climbing was hard, given his injuries, but he scaled the side of Viv’s house, tripped across her roof to Jordy’s, and dropped down to run along the wall until he could make the short leap up onto the angled roof over Delphine’s forge. Nate, tiny legs pumping, face red, darted between hedges. The soldiers were close.

“Come here, you little fucker,” one of them called, and Beau’s vision went red.

With a growl, he leapt down onto one with a painful impact, though not as painful as the crack of the man’s skull against a stone planter. The other spun, and Beau had a knife to his throat, ready to slit it, when he caught sight of Nate’s wide eyes.

“What’s that?” Beau said urgently, looking past the boy so he’d turn. As soon as his head swiveled away, Beau cut the soldier’s throat and dropped him, ignoring his dying gurgles, by the broken-necked corpse of his compatriot.

“Angel!” Nate wailed when Beau picked him up, throwing his little arms around the king. “You’re all bloody. They get you? Gramma Corlia said it looked like they were going in every house looking for you. They didn’t think you’d stay with her.”

“Why aren’t you hiding with your Mum?” Beau panted, sliding between houses, glancing both ways up the street, and darting across into the next alley toward Bunny’s.

“Gramma Corlia said somebody needed to ring the bell so Leau would wake up and fight.”

“She sent you ?”

“No,” Nate said, unperturbed by Beau’s alarm. “You’re not gonna tell her I went, are you? I don’t wanna be in trouble.”

So Leau would wake up and fight. These weren’t trained fighters. Most didn’t even have weapons , and Beau had brought danger to them. He felt sick. He was back on the fucking ship, everyone he cared about dying around him because he was a prince, because he was a king. Beau’s hands shook where they held onto Nate.

“S’okay, Angel,” Nate said, burrowing his cold little nose against the side of Beau’s neck. “We’re not gonna let them hurt you.” Something like a sob came out of Beau’s mouth.

Then they were in Bunny’s yard, scattering chickens, and Bunny made a similar sound, hauling Nate out of Beau’s arms with tears pouring down her cheeks, almost incoherent with terror. “Thank you for bringing—don’t scare me like—” She was too busy clutching Nate closer, trying to kiss him and check whether the blood all over him was his, to finish a sentence.

“He’s not hurt,” Beau said. “That’s all mine. Get out of sight, Bun, please.”

She seemed to realize for the first time who had been carrying her son. “ You get out of sight!” she said. “They’re here for—”

“I know. I’m going. Hide , please. Don’t fight them: tell them where I am . Please, please don’t get hurt on my account.”

“I’ll tell them exactly where you are,” she said fiercely, shoving Nate inside. “In my back bedroom asleep, and if they want you, they can eat a few of my kitchen knives first. Just like everybody else is telling them. You get out of here, Angel, you and your lady wife, and get patched up. Our boy will be a hell of a king, but he’s gotta be king, first. Go .”

“Bun—” She’d already disappeared inside after Nate, and Beau was standing in the open, chickens pecking unbothered around his bare feet. Quickly, he reversed course, going high again to scramble over rooftops. He hadn’t seen any bows yet, and if the soldiers saw him and chased him instead of harassing Leau, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Viv was waiting for him when he dropped into the street in front of her house. “You’ve gotta let me look at—”

“Where’s Elias?” Beau demanded, shoving aside her attempts to bandage him.

She jerked her chin toward the ferry side of the island, where Beau had seen the soldiers gathering. “Carving a path off Leau for you. Now hold still so—”

Beau took off, ignoring her angry demands, and picked up another sword off a dead man. Shouts to his left drew Beau’s eyes toward fighting: Nicky’s voice. Beau easily spotted the man in the flurry—and felt a cold spike of horror as he saw Nicky hit the ground in two pieces.

“No,” he choked out. Adrien was fighting, too, and he was about to be overwhelmed. Beau slid down the short grade to them, killed two soldiers, and yanked Adrien, who wielded a pair of fileting knives that had no business in a fight against swords, out of range.

Beau caught two overhead strikes along his sword, kicking at the inside of a soldier’s knee. A slice across his hip made him grunt, stagger. He barely brought his hands around to sweep aside another jab. The two cuts in his right leg meant it was no longer trustworthy, shaking under him when he tried to put weight on it. His shoulder, too, screamed when he moved his left arm too quickly.

“For Lord Courdur!” one of them shouted, lunging forward over-ambitiously. Beau side-stepped him, slashed backward with his sword and missed. He had no time to pursue; the other two were much more competent, and each nearly skewered him a half-dozen times as he threw everything he had into defending. They pressed him back, each dodge and sidestep turning him until his back was to a hedge, hampering his movements.

One swung for his head. The king hurled himself forward, getting inside the blade but taking a crushing slam of the pommel to the temple.

All went white; Beau dropped, scrambling blindly back and to the side.

When he lurched to his feet again, he spared a fraction-of-a-second’s glance over his shoulder. In disbelief, he saw Adrien on his knees, clutching his guts with both arms, knives abandoned. The soldier raised his sword to stab down into Beau’s old friend.

No , Beau thought and shouted and willed , but magic didn’t work the way he wished it did. From eight feet away, Beau’s shout did nothing but make noise, and then Adrien was dead too. Beau barely kept the two swords harrying him from taking pieces.

On a dodge, Beau leaned too far into his right hip, and it dropped him. He rolled out of the path of a stab that drove the soldier’s sword half its length into the earth. The second sword he kicked at, managing to disarm the soldier at the cost of a long, shallow cut down his shin.

As the first soldier pulled his mud-streaked blade from the ground, Beau stabbed at him, but Courdur’s man seized his wrist, twisted, and the knife fell out of his grasp.

Another twist, and Beau fell to his knees in agony, fingers wrenched back like the man wanted to fold them into his arm.

He fought harder, half feral. The second man had retrieved his lost sword, and easily blocked Beau’s attempts to stab up at him from where he knelt.

Fuck. I’m going to die. And then…and then…and then Penny and Elias and everyone else I’ve ever loved.

Something changed in the air. The pressure dropped, like a storm front moving in. Cold wind swept through the yard.

The men before Beau came apart.

The whirlwind of blood and steel that dismantled them was barely recognizable as a man, much less as Elias, but Beau knew him.

Relief rushed through him, so overpowering it sapped the last strength from his limbs. He sagged, fingers loosening so his sword hit the grass.

Then Elias groaned, and his knees hit the ground, and tension snapped back into Beau’s body. Relief fled, replaced with fear as the strongest man he knew collapsed. “El?”

“How much of that blood is yours?” Elias asked with an unsettling slur, like his tongue was too large for his mouth. The guard was soaked head-to-toe, hazel peeking out from a mask of red pouring from a cut on his scalp. Beneath the red, he was pale as a sheet.

“How much of that is yours?” Beau asked, reaching out to touch a particularly dark spot on El’s torso and grimacing as Elias gasped in agony.

“A lot.” His eyes flicked up past Beau, and the king turned to see Penny and Viv running toward them, Viv’s limp made more pronounced by her heavy leather bag. “Back to the inn! It’s not safe.”

“Oh aye, we’ll leave our king and Ellie to bleed out in the street,” Viv said dryly as El stabbed through each of the bodies on the ground, ensuring they were dead. He’d managed to get one leg propped up but couldn’t lift himself out of his kneel. “Fine fight you’d put up, when you can’t even stand.”

Beau took one of Elias’s arms cautiously, looking for injuries, and pulled it up across his shoulders. “You’re heavy as hell,” he said as his right leg trembled under the added weight. “Can you get your feet under you, or…?”

“Yeah,” El said breathlessly, “just…give me…a second.”

“Are there more?”

“Yeah, but scattered.” Elias gritted his teeth, then stood straight, summoning energy from some deeper well than Beau had access to. He put a heavily bleeding arm out toward Viv. “Slap a bandage on…and let me…get back to it.”

Penny ducked under El’s other side to help, but he shook his head. “Stay clear, Duchess. We’re not done.”

Viv made a rude sound and pressed fiercely on the gash in his scalp with a rag, trying to stop the bleeding so El’s eyes would be clear. Elias staggered and gasped in pain.

“You’re not doing any more fighting,” Beau said, stating the obvious, and both women nodded resolutely once. Viv’s face slowly drained of color as she took in Elias’s injuries.

“I’ll do what I have to do.” Elias’s voice was flat, and he had to suck in wet, harsh gasps between phrases. “Can you get the necklace…out of my pocket? I need to…put it on.”

“The necklace? The artifact?” Penny’s voice grew sharper. “You know what it does?”

“I know enough. Get it out for me.” He grew heavier, putting more and more weight on Beau, who faltered. Beau’s eyes raked over Elias’s body, counting slashes in the fabric that revealed broken flesh beneath. So many. Too many. Fuck, so many. Viv met Beau’s eyes and swallowed hard. She put the rag away, picked up her bag, and gestured toward the inn.

Why wasn’t she helping? Why wasn’t she taking care of the worst injuries? Beau’s heart beat in his throat, cutting off his air with each swell.

Penny reached into Elias’s pocket and fished out the hideous amulet they’d found no description for. The Watchers must know more of what it did. Had Elias tried it on? It was insane to play with mysterious artifacts, especially something Penny had described as corrupted. Her fingers curled around the thing, then peeled away as if in disgust. “Elias, tell me what this does.”

“Just put it on me,” El gasped. “ Hurry . It’ll keep me on my feet. In fighting shape.”

Penny stopped short on the path. “Elias. Tell me this is not a Revenant Chain.”

El’s jaw flexed, and he nudged Beau away from him as two soldiers emerged from between the houses ahead. He swayed. How the fuck was he standing?

“All right. It’s not a Revenant Chain.” The dryness of his voice came through even in his breathless state. “Give it to me.” When he lifted his sword, it shook terribly.

“I’ll fight them,” Beau said. “You don’t have to do anything. You’ve done enough. I will fight them. Don’t do whatever it is that artifact does.” He didn’t like the horror in Penny’s face, didn’t like the way the amulet glinted in her hands.

“ Elias ,” Penny said sharply as El tried to snatch it and stumbled. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Make up your mind,” El muttered. The soldiers trotted their direction, shouting, pointing. “Every minute you delay…more die. I can hear them.”

Far from convincing her, this made Penny balk, and she held the amulet farther from him, eyes narrowing. “You know what will happen when you put this—”

“ I’m already dead, Duchess ,” Elias hissed, hand stretched urgently out toward her, palm up. “Do you want the same for him? There is no time !”

“What?” Beau demanded, but El didn’t answer. Viv made a small, choked sound, and she wouldn’t meet Beau’s eyes. “You’re not going to die, Elias. I won’t let you.”

Penny’s eyes flooded with tears, and her horror and sadness poured across the ring as she slowly, hesitantly handed the amulet over. El’s eyes flicked to the soldiers, nearly on them, and he awkwardly lifted the chain with his broken hand.

Numb, shaking, Beau turned away to step between his family and the soldiers, silently inventorying his injuries, forcing all thoughts of Elias away. If he could keep attackers from rounding his weakened right side, he’d do all right. He readied himself to block and eyed the men. One was shorter; Beau had the advantage of reach. The other held his sword awkwardly, like he’d never fought with it or his grip had been injured. Either way, a good sign.

Both men stopped well short of him. Their eyes widened, looking past Beau. They stumbled back a step, then another.

Behind him, Elias made a sound. Not a human sound.

Every hair on Beau’s body stood.

A jolt fired through Beau at the way his guard stood, like something had pulled him straight with invisible strings; at the way his wounds poured wisps of green light now instead of blood; at the way the amulet pulsed magic that felt like pure death in the air and made it hard to breathe and made Elias make that unholy sound, a growl and a groan and a demon’s condemned scream all at once.

No. No, this is wrong. Something is wrong.

With a jerk, Elias’s eyes fixed on the two soldiers. He sprinted past Beau, nothing but a green-lit blur. The men didn’t have time to turn and run; they were already in so many pieces Beau couldn’t make sense of them as bodies when they hit the ground. A twitch running through him, Elias made the sound again.

Penny grabbed Beau’s arm tightly. Hand pressed over her mouth, she watched Elias like nothing so abhorrent had ever walked the earth. Her horror was his horror was hers—they stared after Elias together, spiraling. She hauled Beau toward the guard.

“Elias,” she breathed, “take it off. You have to take it off.”

El’s eyes were not hazel anymore. When they flicked to Beau’s, then back to Penny, they left a ghostly trail of green after-image between. “Too late, Duchess.” Something was wrong with Elias’s voice, making it echo like words thrown down a well or whispered in a cold cave. Behind them, Viv began to whisper a prayer.

Beau wanted to be glad Elias was on his feet, standing straight and moving like he’d never been injured. But El’s skin writhed with the verdant energy beneath it. Beau could smell it, like an ancient tree gone up in flames or a temple ravaged and smashed to powder. It smelled like the destruction of something sacred.

“What’s wrong with Ellie?” Viv’s voice came out shrill and strangled. She stopped short of Beau with her eyes on Elias, visibly afraid to go closer to the guard.

“Nothing’s wrong with Ellie now,” Elias said, too flat, voice echoing up from some dark place. “Stay close. They’re converging on the inn.”

Beau tried to catch up to him, but Elias’s glare made him drop back. Something was so deeply wrong in the way the amulet’s magic twitched and juddered through the guard, and Beau was shamefully scared to get too close. Instead, he caught Penny’s fingers and brushed the back of her hand against his lips. “Are you all right? Have you fought? Your knuckles are torn up.”

“They’ll heal fine,” she said quietly. Her eyes followed Elias. “I’m not hurt at all, love. You? You’re bleeding everywhere. Here, lean on me if you need to.”

“Can’t. We’ve got to hurry. If they’re at the inn—”

Dread swelled up in his throat, cutting off his words, and Penny nodded. “Whatever happens, Beau—” She shook her head like she wanted to recall the words, then pressed forward anyway. “This is not your fault. This is Courdur’s fault, and the…the people who support him. You’re the rightful king, and we’re all fighting for that. It is worth it.”

Why are you saying this? But he knew why. Once the adrenaline drained away, once he looked at the wreckage of his isles, once he saw the bodies—gods, Adrien and Nicky had died for him. How many more? Once the fight left, he’d have nothing but the horrible guilt for what he’d brought here.

For the moment, though, there were sword clangs and distant screams and green-edged wounds on the person he trusted most in the world.