Page 43 of The Crimson Throne (Spy and Guardian #1)

Alyth

Mary is determined to keep the festivities alive with wine and music if nothing else, and neither cold weather nor the threat of death will stop her.

Darnley’s gone at least.

Only a few hours’ hard ride away, at Kirk o’ Field in Edinburgh.

Not nearly far enough. I want Darnley out of Scotland.

I want him out of this entire realm. If my father believed me, then perhaps he will take Darnley to be tried by the Seelie Court.

That would be the only way I could feel safe with that man still alive.

That or if Beira swooped down and took care of him, but I cannot rely on the fae goddess to step in.

She will no doubt help, but I cannot dictate in what way.

And once Darnley’s dealt with and the wall fully secured, I’m…

Leaving.

Not Scotland. I can’t leave Scotland with the wall. But I don’t have to stay at a court I’m miserable in, doing a job for a father who doesn’t care about me.

It’s time for me to live the life I want to live.

I just have to survive long enough to claim it.

I scan the crowd again. Music swells, almost inaudible with the noise the guests make, but several people dance in one part of the hall.

I watch as an older couple slowly moves together, hands touching.

Younger dancers draw more attention, but it’s the way the old man supports his wife’s back, the way she steps closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder that makes my eyes burn.

The man lifts his wife’s hand to his lips as the music fades, kissing her knuckles.

The moment shatters as a drunk lady stumbles into me, slurring out an apology. There are more people here than at last night’s revelry. More wine too. Which means, of course, more trouble.

The decorations look woeful now, the wooden castle partially broken, the boughs of greenery already wilting, the reused costumes bedraggled.

“He’s not here.” The Green Lady was gracious enough to bring the glaistigs back tonight.

“Who?” I ask.

“That red lad of yours.”

My fury rises, a defense of him, of me—but then I realize she’s speaking of Samson’s hair, not his nature.

Does she know? She recognized he had more power than most other Leths but not what type.

Moyra wouldn’t have told her—not out of loyalty to me but merely because she avoids most fae, making exceptions only for a few Leths.

“Is he off with that other man, the tall one?” the Green Lady asks.

“Darnley? Yes.” I scowl. It occurs to me that while Queen Mary told me her husband had retreated, I didn’t have time to confirm that for myself. And I’ve not seen Samson since the stables. He wasn’t in his rooms when I knocked on his door earlier. I thought he’d be here already.

It’s nothing. Darnley probably took too long to retreat to Edinburgh, or Samson is chasing after some clue he left behind. Still…

I shouldn’t have sent Samson after Darnley, I think.

As far as I know, the king consort still believes Samson is on his side, but what if that’s changed?

What if Darnley somehow knew Samson didn’t support him?

I shouldn’t have sent Samson to the man.

He shouldn’t have listened. He should have argued with me.

He should have fought. That’s what men do—they argue and don’t listen and—

And Samson respects me too much to treat me the way Darnley treats Mary or my father treats me.

The Green Lady makes a sound in the back of her throat. A group of men dressed as centaurs, their backsides lumpy cushions with broomstraw for tails, prances by.

The Green Lady frowns. “I do not understand humans.”

“Neither do I,” I mutter.

I scan the Great Hall anxiously. Where is Samson? I give myself a physical shake. I trust him. And that means I trust he can handle himself.

Regardless, I can’t really lose myself to the revelries at the moment. I drift along the edges of the party. While Mary is usually one for dancing, I’m surprised to find her tucked into a quiet corner, holding her baby while nurses and maids wait nearby. I suppose the party is technically for him.

I have been loyal to Queen Mary since she first arrived in Scotland, dressed in mourning white, so pale and sad, she looked like a ghost. I stood beside her when she chose Darnley as her next husband, despite disagreeing with her.

I watched as men opposed her, berated her, used her, and abused her, and I begged her to take action—for herself and for her country.

But in this moment, as she bends her head down to her cooing baby’s face, whispering promises to him, for the first time since I met her…

She looks happy.

Then her eyes lift. She sees me, and the joy falls from her face. I cannot help but feel the sting of that, bitter and sharp.

“Come to berate me more?”

I cannot tell if her tone is tired or frustrated.

“No,” I say quietly.

She huffs, not satisfied.

There’s some sort of disturbance near the corridor, but I keep my focus on Mary. The Green Lady and the other glaistigs will protect us from any harm tonight.

“Mary, I only care about—”

“Your duty, I know.”

The air leaves my body. She’s right.

“I care about you too,” I offer weakly.

She smiles, and it’s clear she doesn’t believe me.

A shout from across the hall, the sound of pottery smashing on the stone floor. That’s not the first goblet that will be sacrificed to clumsy drunkards tonight.

“We should be friends,” I say. For all the years I’ve known her, I’ve kept the queen at a distance. Perhaps I have judged her too harshly before. We have had very different lives, but our goals are the same.

Much like me and Samson.

Besides, perhaps I have been closing myself off too much. Samson saw right through me, but he wasn’t wrong. It has been lonely, seeing every person as a threat to be assessed rather than a friend to be made.

Mary looks down at her baby’s face. “That would be—”

Whatever she is going to say is cut off by a nearby scream. The baby instantly wakes, screeching, and the nurse rushes to him at the same time as two of the queen’s maids shout for a guard. I whirl around, prepared to attack Darnley, magic sparking in my fingers, but—

It’s not Darnley.

It’s Samson.

Samson with a dagger raised high, the tip glinting in the firelight. He’s a dozen or more paces away but coming fast.

And his eyes—a horrid, plain, dull green, empty of all light and emotion.

Something tugs inside me, an alarm ricocheting through my system, a warning, a reminder of the oath he made me swear—

I push it away.

“Samson!” I shout. I have forgotten about magic, about everything. Because this is Samson but not the Samson I know, not the man full of wonder who seeks joy despite all hardships. There’s no smirk quirking up his lips, no crinkle on his brow, no…no anything.

He is nothing but a shell, empty. Just like in Moyra’s cabin, but worse somehow, moving like this, with such purpose.

He’s holding a blade.

Aimed for my heart.

And I, fool that I am, cannot even move.

Samson, I want to say, his name choking my throat, trapped there so that I cannot even breathe.

He looks dead. It’s not just his slack face, his empty expression…

He has no aura. None at all. That realization stills me. I have never seen this before. Asleep, yes, there’s nothing but a wisp, but this hollow space around him, the utter lack of color, of life…

Samson’s arm crashes down on me, the tip of the blade sinking into my skin. Sharp, metallic pain bursts through my senses, and I stumble back at the same time as something fast whizzes by, glancing off Samson’s arm and helping to deflect the blow.

An arrow. Blood blossoms over the new cut on Samson’s forearm, but it barely stops him. Dimly, I’m aware of the arrow striking the wall behind us, a woman screaming, the sound of hooves as the glaistigs rush to us.

But my attention is focused on the way Samson steps closer, the way his blade rises again, preparing to deliver the killing blow. He shows no pain at his injury, nor any mercy before me.

“This isn’t you. This isn’t you.” The words pour out of my lips, a prayer I cannot stop chanting.

Nothing.

He had control before. Something must have happened. Must have changed.

I sent him to Darnley. The last thing I said to Samson was an order to go to the most loathsome man in the country.

The man who knows what Samson is. Who has had Red Cap weapons before.

Maybe he’s used some other weapon on Samson, something to trigger his Red Cap bloodlust…

Or maybe Samson was the weapon all along.

Rage brings my magic back to me. I raise my hands as Samson strikes, the blade sliding off the shield I make.

Behind me, I’m aware of Mary and the baby being dragged away by guards.

Samson shifts his weight, attacking again ruthlessly, slamming the blade so hard into my shield that I feel it start to give way.

At least he’s distracted by attacking me, allowing the queen to get to safety.

The Green Lady slams into him from the side, and Samson goes flying, the silvery glint of his blade catching in the firelight as it clatters to the floor.

Another glaistig leaps up, grabbing Samson by the shoulders and driving him into the stone floor so hard, his body goes limp.

I stagger forward, reaching for him, but a rush of men pushes me back like stormy waves beating a capsizing ship. They’re all shouting:

“Darnley’s man tried to kill the queen!”

“Seize him!”

“Protect Scotland!”

The glaistig melt away, letting the men take Samson now that he’s incapacitated. I catch the Green Lady watching me, and my hand goes to my chest, blood smearing but already dark and thick; that wound will heal. She nods at me and backs away.

“Those costumed players were quick to help,” I hear one of the men mutter.

“Let me through.” I push past him, struggling to get to the center of the crowd that’s formed.

Samson is already bound with ropes wrapped around his middle, prone on the floor, but by the time I get to him, his eyes blearily open and lock instantly with mine. His aura has returned, a sickening green shade of guilt.

“Alyth,” he whispers.

One of the men kicks Samson, swift and hard, right in the stomach. The breath wheezes out of him. “Don’t you dare talk to the lady,” he snarls. Joseph.

I know without any words exchanged between us that he’s thinking of his brother’s murder. The rage snarling across his twisted face is palpable.

I put my hand on his elbow. “No one was seriously hurt,” I say in a soft voice, but my eyes are on Samson, on the way he visibly melts in relief even as his eyes seek mine. There’s no malice in them. Only confusion and fear.

Other men reach down and grab Samson’s ropes, dragging him up roughly. Samson doesn’t seem to care; he stares at my chest, at the blood streaked across my pale skin. He looks as if he’s going to vomit, his eyes wide, his expression filled with horror.

As he’s dragged away, Joseph draws closer to me. “What is happening?” His voice is low.

I raise a small bubble of privacy around us. “I don’t know.”

“Darnley again? With Red Cap weapons like before?”

My face goes slack.

Samson was the weapon this time.

“He’s never going to stop, is he?” Joseph asks. “He’ll keep attacking the queen, and he doesn’t care who is killed along the way.”

I nod again, but my mind is racing.

When Darnley used the weapon at Holyrood, it made the men mindless murderers. David threw himself in front of the queen, and the men succumbed to bloodlust.

It was chaotic, but it wasn’t a direct attack.

This time though…

Samson walked through an entire crowd of people. That dagger had been gleaming bright, not stained with blood. When he lifted the blade, he struck with purpose.

He attacked me.

Not the queen.

Darnley used Samson as a weapon because he could give Samson a target. Not Mary. Me.

What did that letter say?

The royal bitch needs to be brought down.

We thought that was about Queen Mary. Of course we thought that. But…

My father is a prince.

I am royalty among the fae, even if a bastard.

I close my eyes, forcing myself to remember that night when David was killed. He was outside my protective bubble, one I threw up around me, the queen, and Lady Argyll. We had all assumed Darnley’s target was the queen…

But it could have been me. Just like the needle in the sewing box could have been passed to me, same as the other weapons I’ve intercepted. Darnley knew I would be the first line of defense to anything sent to the queen.

I have no doubt that Darnley would not mourn Mary’s death if she were caught in the cross fire like David was, but…

He’s a puppet on Cecil’s strings. And while Cecil, as the English spymaster, would have a vested interest in killing Queen Mary, if he really is a Red Cap, he’d also have a vested interest in killing me.

Because if I fall, so does the wall.