Page 114 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

“Garin was right. You…” Myrddin sputtered on his blood, wheezing, gripping his neck and cursing until he dropped to his knees. “Are a marvelously ruthless creature.” Then, he went pale and fell face first onto the stone floor.

Within seconds, his body stopped convulsing altogether, a large pool of red spreading rapidly beneath him.

“Is he really dead?” asked Yanna, trembling.

Lilac nudged his shoulder with her boot, once. Then twice. She wiped the warm blood drops from her face and resheathed her dagger. “Not for long.”

“ God . Oh gods, help me,” Myrddin gasped. His back finally inflated, rising as the warlock sucked in a sputtering breath. “You.” He turned his head to sneer up at them. “Really?”

Lilac bent and gripped him by the collar, lifting him all the way to his feet. “Take me to him. Now.”

“How, when I don’t know where he is? He didn’t tell me anything, only to keep watch over you.”

“You said that when you teleport into a building or structure, you can only teleport to a person’s location. Doesn’t it work that way regardless of where he is?”

“I can only do it with certainty when I’m sure my tethered person is at that location, or in that building.

The world is much too vast.” His hand ran over his face.

“Your Majesty, it’s harder for me to do if I don’t know where he is—there’s no promise we’d end up at his side.

We could end up on the rooftop of a neighboring establishment, or in the middle of someone’s hearth in the next town over.

We could land in a volcano, or worse—become separated. ”

“I’ll take the chance. I believe in your magic, however it works. I believe in you.”

He glanced at her in incredulous warning. “Out of all the terrible decisions you’ve made, that is by far the worst one.”

Lilac hated the desperation that had overcome her. She could be wrong this time, but she hadn’t been the last, when she’d found him trapped by his own hunger at the brothel. The pull was undeniable. Garin needed her—needed help. She felt like she’d explode if they didn’t go.

Lilac gritted her teeth and released him. “Fine. I’ll leave on foot.”

“You will not .”

There was a knock at the door, causing Yanna to jump and scuttle further into the room, her hands clamped over her mouth.

It was her mother. “Lilac!”

Another knock. A guard’s rough voice this time. “Open the door!”

Myrddin began to whisper frantically, a forlorn prayer to the arcane gods that had long abandoned him. “Modron, help me, I am surrounded by beautiful, terrifying women and a vampire who would delight in painting the trees in my blood for all of eternity if this goes wrong.”

Heart shattering her ribcage, Lilac held her hand out, bracing herself for the unpleasant sensation.

Myrddin grimaced, true doubt in his eyes. There was pressure at her palm, and the floor disappeared from under them as they were whisked away in shadow and smoke.

They stopped spinning, and she went careening sideways. Lilac splayed her arms out in front of her, only for her shoulders to slam against something rough and wide. She landed back on her ass, her head and shoulder knocking against Myrddin.

“My god,” she groaned, fixing her skirts and shoving off him. They were outdoors—in the shade, a cool breeze whipping around them, bringing with it a strange, unpleasant aroma.

Against her, Myrddin was dead still. Her heart dropped. Had he been knocked unconscious?

“Lilac?” Myrddin’s voice came from off in the distance.

Dizzy, Lilac staggered to her feet. Something was wrong, very wrong. They were in the woods, illuminated by the deepening sunlight of approaching dusk.

Panting, the warlock emerged from behind a birch trunk not twenty paces away, coughing and dusting himself off as he approached her. “That was much further than I’m used to.”

Then, he froze as he laid eyes on Lilac.

No, at her feet. She glanced down at the shoulder she’d landed against and nearly lost her footing. Her stomach roiled, threatening to loosen itself.

It was a pile of bodies—a torso, remnants of its head scattered nearby. Another beside it, his head intact but his torso crumpled in on itself.

She opened her mouth to scream, but was cut off by a high-pitched wail.

It was Yanna.

Lilac stepped out from behind the tree. They were several yards inside the treeline, the grass within and outside the forest border littered with bodies.

Human bodies—armored corpses—maybe thirty of them, scattered among the bluebells stained in red.

It looked like thirty, though there were probably more.

French and Breton alike, dead or on the verge of it.

Most of them were of the opposing party, some headless with a clean cut while others still had their heads intact but their throats and ribcages had been ripped open. Lilac put a hand to her mouth, speechless in her horror.

Yanna had moved; she was several feet away, crouched just in the shadows, picking her way over the bodies. She sobbed as she touched some of them, the ones with her guards’ plain uniform of leather and metals. Trembling, Yanna sniffled and grabbed one that laid face down, shifting to turn him over.

“Yanna,” Lilac said, her own voice a broken sob as Myrddin watched helplessly, his fingers intertwined above his head.

“Gwendal,” called Yanna. “Oh, Gwendal. Please, please…” She shook her head vehemently and heaved—the dead man flopped over, an oozing bullet hole in his forehead.

Yanna cried out in a mixture of horror and relief at the sight of his features, stumbling back into Lilac.

She caught Yanna under the arms and steadied her.

The forest edge overlooked a lush, grassy knoll covered in casings and blades among the wildflowers, guts, and blood. Between the bodies lay scattered swords and muskets, some still in-hand.

muskets .

They were a new advancement. Her father had a couple prized pieces in their armory that he’d used for hunting last winter—one, a gift from one of his earls, the other from a foreign king, but her own armies were never supplied with them.

A pair of hands clamped onto her shoulder and mouth; Lilac struggled against the warlock’s hold, but he held tight as she clung to Yanna, who’d slumped into shoulder-tremoring sobs in Lilac’s arms.

“ There’s someone still here ,” whispered Myrddin, tugging them back into the shadows.

He was right. There was rustling near, on the outskirts of the treeline—and more noise, she realized, between her own labored breaths. Voices and rustling. The restless whinny of horses and clomping of hooves.

Someone was shouting in the near distance.

“Albrecht!” It was Henri. Her father’s broken voice, somewhere between a somber moan and a wail. “ Albrecht! ”

Lilac’s heart thundered in her ribcage. Yanna turned her head to them, her eyes terrified and questioning, but Lilac slowly shook her head.

Henri’s calls were met with silence.

“He left, Your Grace,” said someone else. One of their guards. His voice shook so hard, Lilac could barely understand him. “Was that Maximilian’s emissary? ”

“Yes.” A quiet sob from her father. “Yes, it was.”

“He was—w-was a monster?—”

“He spared us,” Henri spat, sounding broken with disbelief. “ Saved us.”

“Are you all right, Your Grace?” asked another guard. “Did you get hit?”

“No. No—get off of me!”

There was another beat of silence, followed by labored breathing.

Then, the second voice again. “He got shot, didn’t he?”

“Twice,” said Henri. “It didn’t stop him.”

“ Ma Doue ,” said the first guard. “Thirty men. Just like that.”

There was a muffled sound—a high-pitched moaning at Lilac’s feet, making all of three of them jump.

It was one of the two bodies, presumably the one with its head still intact.

Blood soaked the ground beneath their boots; the sound wasn’t a cry for help.

It was the last broken sound his body could manage. A cry begging for the end.

There was movement, closer now. “Hello?” one of Henri’s guards fearfully called out. “Do you hear that?”

“Can you glamor us, Myrddin?” whispered Lilac. “Make us invisible?”

“Not with them this close. Not with them already looking this way. Plis, I feel my arcana growing fatigued. I don’t want to waste it if I have to get us out of here fast.”

Lilac looked down and spotted the rapier handle her heel rested against. She grabbed it, prying the handle from the man’s still-warm fingers.

He whined again at her touch, this time louder.

She held her breath and placed the tip against the middle of his back, forcing herself to think of the chateau courtyard and sitting upon the warm grass with Piper, counting the ducks and clouds as she exhaled—and sank the blade into him. All the way through.

His moaning tapering off.

Despite the abrupt ceasing of the man’s wailing, it didn’t seem anyone in her father’s party was willing to go see what it was.

“Don’t mind the dying. Say nothing of this,” Henri demanded. He sounded nearby, just outside the trees. “ Nothing . Understood?”

The other voices murmured in agreement.

Henri grunted, and she knew from the sound he had mounted his horse. “We’ll head back and arm the castle. Mark it, the forests just northwest of Montfort-sur-Meu on the map. ”

“Yes, sir.”

Henri cussed into the wind. “Barnabaz, ride into town to warn them, then head to Rennes and do the same. Right away. Cadwethen and I will go back to the castle, where we’ll ready the ceremony and send word to Austria.”

Lilac’s stomach dropped. Her ceremony wasn’t for another two days. More guests would start arriving between tomorrow eve and the morning of her coronation.

“But what of the festivities?” said Barnabaz.

“Has she officially accepted?” Cadwethen asked, sounding shocked.

“It doesn’t matter. Francois will eventually send more and more of his men.”

“Sir,” Barnabaz said. “Might I rally the towns’ militias? I can direct them to the castle.”