Page 70 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Aeri

The Palace of the Sky King, Khitan

Quilimar just murdered her brother.

It all happened so quickly, the guard yelling “weapon” and the queen pulling a saber. Euyn turned her breast to gold just as she struck him in the heart. The queen released the blade, her jaw dropping in horror when she saw Euyn was empty-handed.

Quilimar was immediately surrounded by guards and carried out by four of them. But now the doors have slammed shut. There is a guard blocking each of the two doorways to prevent us from escaping. The remaining eight slowly march toward us, swords drawn.

We are trapped in this grand banquet room. Now we will join Euyn in the Ten Hells.

Sora, Royo, and I back up behind the king’s table, but Mikail, the deadliest of us, is on the ground. He’s cradling Euyn’s body in his arms and stroking his hair, but the light has already left Euyn’s eyes. Quilimar struck a fatal blow, and he was dead within seconds.

I am not ready to die, though. Not when I have Royo. Not when I want so many tomorrows with him. I want to fight for us, but the only blade we have is the saber lodged in Euyn’s chest. I do have a hairpin dagger, but what is that against ten heavily armed guards? There’s my amulet, but with the cost escalating for each use, I’m not sure I can get us out of here.

Certainly not four of us.

“You have all colluded to assassinate the Queen Regent of Khitan, mother of the true king,” the guard says. I think he’s the captain. He is the older guy who took the messages to the queen earlier. “You have been judged guilty and sentenced to death. Surrender the ring now, and we will grant you merciful ends.”

That’s right—the ring. Euyn died with it on, and I can wield it! I kneel by Euyn’s body and turn his hand. Nothing. It’s gone. I scan his other hand, but there’s no ring. Is it somewhere on the floor? Did Quilimar manage to take it?

I’m about to ask Mikail if he has it when his face contorts. He changes from his normal careless expression to one of pure rage. Then he stands and lets out a soul-shattering wail. The drumming has stopped, but the room shakes from his cry. The vibrations make my spine rigid, an unholy terror flowing through me. And he is on our side.

“You want the ring? Come get it,” he says.

He sounds every bit a demon.

Two of the guards hesitate, falling out of step, but the other six continue toward us in the vast room. I run my hand over my hair and take my clip down. I unsheathe the small dagger. It feels impossibly tiny versus swords and axes. Sora shifts something out of her pocket. I’m not sure what it is—a vial, I think; maybe lipstick. But she’d have to kiss a guard to use her poison, and we don’t have that kind of time.

We’re all so screwed.

I reach over and hand the little blade to Mikail. It’s not much, but it’s what we have. He won’t disturb Euyn’s body to take the saber. I get it. I wouldn’t be able to if it were Royo. Still, heartbroken or not, I know any weapon is best in Mikail’s hands. He closes his fist around the hilt of my small blade and nods.

The guards approach us in a semicircle with the captain in the center. He gestures to us with his sword.

Without a word, Mikail pitches the hairpin dagger at the captain. My small blade flies through the air. One second. Two. Then it lands in the man’s eye. It’s an impossible shot, but the captain falls to the ground and starts convulsing.

Mikail and Royo use the confusion to flip the king’s table on its side, creating a barricade between us and the guards. Plates smash, wine spills, and desserts roll.

Royo slides to the floor next to Euyn’s body and bows his head. “Forgive me, my prince.”

He rips the saber out of Euyn’s heart. More deep-red blood gushes down Euyn’s already soaked chest. Bile rises in my throat, and I look away, but at least Euyn didn’t feel that.

Mikail watches Euyn’s body out of the corner of his eye, but then he leaps over the table and gestures for the guards to come to him.

My stomach twists as four approach at once, their swords raised. Two guards follow a few steps back. One stays behind, trying to save the captain. Mikail is empty-handed, waiting.

Royo pushes me back toward the painting as he stands partially in front of me, wielding the bloody saber. He moves from side to side, visibly torn between guarding me and helping Mikail.

I wait, breathless, my hand by my necklace. Mikail is looking to die, and I don’t know if I can save him. His calm is eerie as he stands with his arms out, like he’s ready to embrace Lord Yama.

The guards continue toward him until they can nearly cut him down. The men and women of the palace guard seem keen to do away with the spymaster, to claim the accolade of being the one to kill him. Their gazes are sharp; one is even smiling. And maybe Mikail is looking to be with Euyn—I don’t know, but it’s terrible to just stand here and watch this.

“Turn!” Sora yells.

Mikail spins around, his expression puzzled. She opens her palm. He takes one look at her hand and then ducks his face into the crook of his arm. I wonder what he’s doing until Sora leans over him. She takes a deep breath, then blows the pile of rose-colored dust into the faces of the guards.

All six of the guards suddenly start coughing and wheezing. The four closest to her clutch their throats and fall to their knees, silently choking. The other two move back, covering their faces.

Poison. She created an aura of death by blowing poison at them.

Mikail looks up at her, stunned and grateful. It’s the most genuine I’ve seen him be. She places her clean hand over his.

“Kill them all,” she whispers. “For him.”

“Stay here,” Royo says to me.

He’s coughing, but he pulls his shirt over his mouth and nose, moving forward. Even though Sora blew the dust in the other direction, there’s still enough poison in the air to burn my face. I put my sleeve over my nose and mouth, but my eyes sting.

Royo leaps over the barricade and grabs the sword off the nearest guard—the one on his hands and knees, dying from the poison dust. He tosses it to Mikail before reaching down and slitting the guard’s throat with the bloody saber.

The spymaster comes alive with a sword in his hand. He swings it and nearly decapitates the guard who rushes at him with an axe. The guard crumples, his head lolling grotesquely to the side. Mikail kicks the axe out of his hand and sends it skittering on the marble floor over to Royo.

Before Royo can get it, though, another guard swings a sword at him. Royo ducks, and the guard hits the table instead. The palace guard is beet red, choking, and off aim. I flinch as the sword dents the wood, and I move back a step. Royo punches his face, his fist landing with a solid crack, and then he takes the guard’s sword and finishes him. Royo stoops down and picks up the axe.

I hold my necklace, watching, ready to freeze time to protect Royo and Mikail, but neither needs it. Once they have their preferred weapons in their hands, it’s a chaos of blades, blood, and screams. Royo grabs the last two guards who were closest to Sora and are nearly dead. He bashes their heads together, their skulls hitting with a sickening sound of bone striking bone. Then he kills them with a final stroke of his axe.

Sora sneaks out from behind the table and grabs a sword that fell a few feet from her. I’m about to do the same when two guards attack Mikail right by the blade I was eyeing.

“What did we talk about?” Royo shakes his head at me as he passes.

I hate just standing here, feeling useless, but I can’t kill like they can. Royo puts two hands on his axe, running to back up Mikail, but the spymaster simply waits, sword casually hanging by his side. Then the first guard gets close enough that Mikail can grab his wrist. He gets ahold of him and suddenly twists, bending the guard’s arm at an unnatural angle until it breaks. A wail of pain echoes through the room. Using the man’s body as a shield, Mikail attacks the second guard. That woman swings, but her sword gets stuck in the first guard’s neck. In her shock, she releases the blade. It’s a mistake. Mikail arches back and then headbutts her unconscious. Then he slits both guards’ throats, pulling their hair to create deep gashes in their necks. He moves at the frightening speed I remember from the warehouse, fluid and deadly accurate.

“Is this all you have?” he roars. His sword drips blood. “Is this all?”

He screams with the pain of losing Euyn, of taunting Lord Yama himself.

No one attacks. The guard who was standing at the far door has thrown down his axe and is desperately trying to pull the doors open.

I think he’s soiled himself. His pants are suspiciously darker in the front. But the doors remain locked. It doesn’t even dawn on him to use the axe to open them.

Mikail takes a second sword from the ground and strikes them together. He runs full speed at the guard and then launches into the air. I gasp as he impales the man on the doors, shoving the blades through the man’s lower abdomen, where the chest armor doesn’t protect. It’s a painful, horrible way to die.

The only two guards left alive are on the floor in the middle of the room. There is one kneeling next to the captain and the captain himself. The latter is still convulsing on the ground. Mikail walks up to them, slowly, intentionally, but seething. He stares at the captain for a second, and then he raises his boot.

“Who is sentenced to death now, captain?” Mikail mutters.

He stomps the hairpin dagger all the way into the man’s skull. I grimace at the sound of bone breaking, but the man stills, dead underfoot.

Mikail then faces the last guard, who puts his sword on the ground with his head bowed. He raises his empty hands.

“Mercy,” the man says.

I hold my breath, waiting to see what Mikail will do. Sora and Royo are watching as well.

Surprisingly, Mikail nods.

“Thank you, spymaster.” The guard bows his head again.

Mikail’s expression changes, hardens. A chill runs through me right before he reaches out. He takes the guard’s head between his hands and twists hard until there’s a snap. Mikail lets go, and the guard’s body falls limp onto the ground.

The room is silent. Mikail just killed a man he agreed to spare.

But I guess this isn’t the time for mercy. The same way it wasn’t for the barmaid in Oosant.

Only, if not now, then when?