Page 15 of The King’s Man #5

The king continues, “Your father has suggested a marriage alliance between our kingdoms, and has proposed Frederica marry your younger brother. She has written to me pleading to be spared this duty, and I wish to indulge my only daughter.” Finger pinched atop his black vitalian, the king rocks it back and forth on its square.

“I can do so with a counterproposal.” His gaze meets Prins Yngvarr’s directly.

“You will marry into one of Lumin’s most influential families. ”

Yngvarr snaps his head up.

“That’s correct,” the king says. “One of those participating in the selection.”

“What of the Crown Prince?”

“There are ten noble daughters remaining. Enough for both of you to choose from.”

Prins Yngvarr looks right back at the king. “Then I shall accept on one condition. I want the daughter of your God of War.”

A shadow flickers at the other end of the room and the prins stares tightly in its direction. I shiver; the way the memory lingers here, how sharp the shadow is against the wall behind the partially open door. I look over at Quin, who has noticed it too. His lips curl into a grimace .

When this memory finally fades, Quin and I silently make our way out.

I drag my heavy limbs over soulblooms and over the next threshold. It’s night in this memory; there’s a chill to the wind, but it’s not the reason I’m shivering.

Under strings of warmly lit lanterns, finely dressed nobles are seated around an outdoor feast. The two Lumin princes have their own tables, closest to the king and queen, with Prins Yngvarr’s just behind theirs.

Surrounding the royal brothers in an arc of tables are the ten still left in the selection.

And in the space between them, one of those young ladies is making a toast.

Quin speaks quietly beside me. “Nicostratus’s mother.”

She’s pretty, with a smooth tongue that quickly earns a laugh from the queen. She lifts her cup and drinks. The royal family indulge her and gesture for all the girls in the selection to drink along.

Prins Yngvarr glances at Casimiria as she reluctantly lifts her wine.

Immediately upon setting the cup down, she winces and rubs her temple, then shakes her head like she’s struggling to keep her focus.

The prins stiffens, and when the next lady insists on a toast, he speaks up.

“So many toasts. Even a man would soon struggle to stand upright. Are we perhaps asking too much of our guests?”

Prince Anastasius smiles widely. “Father, perhaps you can allow the royal vitalians to treat their headaches before bed?”

The king agrees heartily, and the toasts keep coming.

An aklo slides up to Yngvarr’s side and whispers in his ear. The prins politely excuses himself, and Quin and I share a look. We follow him inside to his rooms. Chairs are tipped over, books have been ripped apart and strewn over the floor, clothes flung across the room. His carved masks, smashed.

He picks up a shard of the mask that he and Casimiria had bonded over and closes his eyes. Blood drips from his hand where he squeezes the sharp edge. He finds all parts of this mask and sets about gluing it together. When it’s done, he calls in his aklos and returns to the banquet.

Only, Casimiria is no longer there.

Neither are the princes.

Yngvarr asks the aklas where she went, and sniffs her abandoned cup as they tell him she needed to rest. “The prince sent his personal aklas to help her.”

He stiffens and drops the cup. We rush to keep up with him as he charges through connecting courtyards to a side building shrouded with flowering vines.

A warm glow spreads over the pink flowers from indoor lanterns.

Two silver-robed vitalians emerge. One is a young Chiron, Florentius’s father, and he’s frowning, clearly displeased.

Prins Yngvarr stops them. “Why are you... Is she here? Have you given her the antidote?”

The other vitalian sneers at the hostage prins and drags Chiron away.

A wild gust of wind sweeps magenta petals around us; Quin steps sharply forward and stares hard in all directions. “We should go. Cael! ”

But I’m right behind the prins as he swings open the door.

Casimiria is half undressed upon the bed, held in Anastasius’s arms. Her head lolls back, exposing her throat and the top of her bodice, and her dress is riding up one of her long legs to her naked thigh.

But that is by far not the worst of it. Light is swirling around the crown prince as he absorbs her lovelight, his eyes slammed shut.

He crushes Casimiria against his chest, murmuring something in her ear.

Quin calls my name again but I’m rooted in the doorway, watching as Prins Yngvarr staggers into the room and grabs a decorative sword from the wall.

At the slide of metal being released from its sheath, the crown prince snaps his eyes open and calls for his guards.

I lurch to the side as uniformed men sweep into the room and restrain the charging prins.

“You’re despicable,” Prins Yngvarr spits out. “You drugged her. You stole her light.”

“She was always going to be mine.”

A roaring wind tunnels viciously inside, rattling the bones of the memory.

The air is thick with swirling pink petals and razor-sharp leaves, their vibrant colours fading as this reality fractures around us.

Crumbling walls groan and splinter, and the once recognisable manor morphs into a chaotic whirlwind.

Debris hurtles around us and Quin grabs my hand, pulling me out of the way of falling beams. I gasp against his chest. This is what Prins Lief meant when he said the dromveske could be dangerous.

Quin urges me ahead, left and right, zigzagging past hurtling objects. If we’re not fast enough, these winds will swallow the path to the rune door whole and we’ll be flung into the recesses of this memory, a place it may be impossible to come back from.

Quin protects my back tightly, the only steady thing around me, his pulsing heart between my shoulders warm, real, unchanging. It, and the sudden glow of the rune gate in the distance, has my heart hiccupping.

Suddenly, I feel something tug my leg, coiling tighter with each frantic try to escape. Panic bubbles in my belly. Quin is already curling around me, yanking and pulling with urgency. “Hold on, I’ve got you.”

His voice is a song amidst howling winds. He snatches a stone brick walloping past him and smashes it against the vine, slicing through its hold on me.

I fall forward with the sudden freedom and Quin steadies me; with a fierce look across the splintering courtyard, he hauls me toward the shaking door.

Winds wail and I glance at a banquet table cartwheeling towards us.

I shout and try to shove Quin out of its path, but he refuses to let go; he rolls with me, further from the rune door.

Debris smashes down around us and dust sprays into a gust, and Quin takes the second to curl his lip. “I won’t let you go.”

He pushes his frame against the force of the storm, to where the door glows like a throb, a heartbeat .

Hopefully one not about to go out—

With a roar against the wind, Quin surges forward. He slams against the door, forcing it open, and we narrowly slip through to the glade on the other side.

For a heartbeat, silence surrounds us. We sag against the stone arch as we steady our breaths and our racing hearts.

Tendrils of fear still twine around my chest.

My gaze drops to our hands, gripped tightly together. I swallow and try to loosen mine, but Quin narrows his eyes and doubles his grip. His eyes train in on my cheekbone and he lifts his other hand; drops it again, along with my other. “Your cheek,” he says gruffly. “It’s cut.”

I can feel a ticklish line across my cheekbone, and dab at it.

Quin turns away from me. “Avoid a headache in the real world. Heal it here.”

He waits for me to find calming herbs in the glade and once I’ve pasted my cut with their balm, he reluctantly leads me to the fifth rune door. “Does it hurt?”

I shake my head and push against the door, but it barely budges. I frown at it, and try again.

Quin presses his palm to the runes and it opens a fraction. “Ah,” he says, as if this is something he understands. “We’ll need to push together for this one.”

“What is it? Why is it so stiff?”

“Some doors are like this, hard to open. Some secrets need to be locked away.”

Together we push and slip inside—into a lookalike glade, sparkling in the dewy morning light. Prins Yngvarr is sneaking quietly up to the cabin, where he can hear Casimiria’s sobbing. A twig snaps under his foot and a warning arrow flies from the open door over the glade. “Who’s there?”

“Forgive me,” Yngvarr says, and retreats.

Casimiria rushes to the door. With a graceful leap and supporting breezes, she glides to the prins standing in the soulblooms. Her eyes are puffy from tears but she still looks beautiful as she stands before him.

He stares down at her, saying nothing.

“Why did you come?” she finally asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be disgusted by me like everyone else? I tricked the prince into selecting me, after all.”

“They did this to you.” Prins Yngvarr’s hands are shaking at his sides, like he’s holding himself from reaching out to her. “Don’t ever blame yourself.”

She stares at him for a long time. “You’re the only one that believes in me.”

“I saw vitalians leave that room. I know very well.” He curses. “I’m to blame for this. He overheard my conversation with the king. I asked for you. I wanted to marry you. He hated that I might hold more power than him.”

Casimiria is blinking hard.

He looks at her. “Can you ever forgive me?”

She laughs like this is unexpected—touching and tragic. “And now I’m being forced to become his.”

Prins Yngvarr steps closer, shaking his head. “We don’t have to submit to this fate. ”

“My lovelight has been taken. I’m ruined.”

“I don’t care for your Lumin traditions. I don’t need your lovelight. I know the truth.”

She catches her breath and her hand trembles as she reaches up and strokes his cheek. She smiles sadly.

He clasps the back of her hand, holding her fingers to him.

She shakes her head softly. “You’re Iskaldir’s eldest prince. You cannot run away.”

He finally slides his fingers off hers and she drops her hand. He knows she’s right. He knows he has responsibilities. He knows the two of them cannot be.

He steps back with a gentle bow and Casimiria snags him boldly by the arm. “We can’t have a future,” she says, and he folds to her pull, “but we can have this moment.”

I stare at them sharing delicate smiles as they disappear into the cabin, and Quin clasps his hands behind his back and slowly follows after them.

“What’s the point?” I mutter aloud, and he pivots to face me. I look at him, frowning, my voice pinching and eventually breaking. “If they can never be, why make it harder to say goodbye?”

Quin holds my gaze with such tender intensity and frustration, I’m afraid he can see me trembling.

I jerk a finger to the cabin, to them , but he doesn’t follow my hasty attempt at deflection.

He crosses the glade and I can feel the vibrations of a deep roar that he only just holds in check.

Yet despite the thrumming tension, his fingers are gentle as he peels back the silver ribbon that’s fluttered over my face, and his voice even gentler.

“Perhaps they’re just as torn. Perhaps they know they shouldn’t.

Perhaps in their life they want a single stolen moment of joy. ”

I stare up at him, my palms clammy, my stomach diving.

Our gazes lock, and I’m rising on my toes with a hammering heart and an uneven breath—

I’m startled back by a blast of tracking magic darting between our faces; it’s followed by a rush of redcloaks, aklas, and vitalians marching into the glade. The magic hovers over the cabin and the soldiers call out for Casimiria to receive the king’s decree.

With a bowed head, she slinks out of the cabin and drops to her knees on the dewy grass.

The decree declares that the crown prince has chosen her to be his consort, and their wedding ceremony shall be held at the end of the month.

Casimiria bows her head and murmurs her acceptance, but there’s a tremor in her voice as the aklas flank her, gripping her arms like she’s a criminal. Her gaze darts briefly to Yngvarr, and something unspoken flickers between them before the redcloaks drag her away.

Yngvarr’s hand twitches at his side, his fingers curling into a fist, but he doesn’t move—not until the silver-sashed vitalian smirks and barks, “Bring him out.”

His protest is raw with fury, but the slap of a gauntleted hand silences him. Blood trickles down his chin as the redcloaks shove him to the ground.

I lurch forward on instinct, as if I can stop this, but Quin hauls me back by my middle. My muscles quiver and strain to be released and he whispers urgently in my ear. “It wouldn’t change what happened. He’ll only know someone’s been in here.”

I glance at him, his clenched jaw, his hand gripping mine like he’s holding himself together. For the first time, it strikes me that watching this might be harder for him than it is for me.

I sag and stare with gritted teeth as the redcloaks pause in beating the prins bloody and the vitalians heal him only for the redcloaks to start over again.

They’re torturing him, not leaving a single bruise of proof.

I feel ill with anger.

No wonder he loathes Lumin. No wonder he despises magic. No wonder he wants revenge.

I slam my eyes shut and turn away, ducking my head against Quin’s shoulder.

“Get me out of this dromveske.” But even as I say it, the image of Yngvarr’s bloody face won’t leave me.

The silent way he endured it—the same way Quin does when the world presses too hard against him. .. How do they hold on?

Or perhaps the point is, eventually, they don’t anymore.

I shiver.

“Don’t end up like him,” I murmur. “Be stronger. Promise me.”

Quin’s hand presses briefly against my back, steadying, reassuring. But I’m still shivering.