Then something replaces the rage on my mother’s delicate face. The flush of battle pales from her sinking cheeks. She retches, grasping her stomach. The vines around her fall limp, dropping the strangled carcasses of the mere, but one survivor wriggles free from their grasp. It stalks my mother from behind, but she doesn’t appear to notice.
It lunges, but not fast enough. Not before I send a vine shooting out of a crack in the ground, puncturing the mere’s throat until a cluster of thorns protrudes from its eye socket.
The creature falls limp behind my mother.
She doesn’t notice.
Murmurs echo through the crowd. The king is dead the king is dead the king is dead, they seem to say.
The king is dead.
My father is dead.
The words ring in my head as if in a language I don’t recognize. As if I don’t have the ability to process them.
My body goes still, the Others’ corpses littering the courtyard.
The murmuring in the crowd grows louder, but perhaps it’s just the buzzing in my own mind.
My father is dead, and I’m unsure what to do with that information.
“Evander.” Ellie comes running up, her gown splattered with ink. Or no, it’s not ink. It’s ichor, the spray of blood from an Other she slaughtered with her still-dripping sword.
“Evander.” Her hands find my jaw, gently nudging my face to look at her.
I’m not sure what she finds in my eyes, but hers water. She blinks the tears away, setting her jaw.
The mutterings in the crowd grow louder, but I can’t hear them over the buzzing. Over the crunching that resonates through my mind, over and over.
I wish for another mere, another wyvern to fight, to strangle and bleed and slaughter, because then at least the noise of battle would drown out that awful sound.
Ellie turns to face the crowd, something like disgust and dread mingled on her face, but I can’t hear what’s causing her reaction.
She glances back at me, then my mother. My wife draws up her skirts with one hand, sword still dragging the ground with the other, and marches toward the place my father was slaughtered.
A hush goes over the crowd as she steps over the corpses of the fallen, as she grips her sword with both hands.
And separates the wyvern’s head from its body, one hack at a time.
By the time she’s done, Ellie is covered in ichor, the blood staining her blue gown with a silver that fades to midnight.
Carefully, with the precision it takes to etch an intricate design onto a glass goblet, Ellie carves the tip of her blade into the monster’s flesh, chiseling its skin and muscle away piece by piece, peeling off the scales that get in her way with her bare hands.
I hear very little of it. The only sounds I can seem to focus on are those of my mother’s sobs.
When she’s done, Ellie screws up her face in dreadful anticipation, then plunges her hand into the cavern she’s carved in the monster’s flesh.
She strains out a sob, covering her mouth with her other hand as she squeezes her eyes shut.
Then, through the hole she’s made in the wyvern, Ellie Payne withdraws my father’s crown.
It still drips with ichor, which she wipes with the hem of her skirt.
Then Ellie Payne marches back over to me, where I stand, ears still buzzing on the castle steps.
She looks into my eyes, hers saturated with pain and adoration. Something squeezes my frozen chest.
She ascends, the step making her of equal height to me, and places the crown upon my head.
“Long live the king,” she says, her voice trembling.
Another murmur ripples through the onlooking crowd, but no one moves. No one speaks.
Determination flashes over my wife’s stunning features, and a hint of icy rage as she looks out over the crowd.
Just barely, I hear my cousin Casper’s voice as he leans over and whispers something to his mother. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but Ellie must, because her nostrils flare.
Ellie squares her shoulders, takes my hand, and kneels before me.
“No,” I whisper to her. “No, I can’t.”
This crown doesn’t belong to me. It weighs me down, threatening to strangle me. Isn’t that why my father took to Ellie in the first place? Because I couldn’t be trusted with the throne? Because where I lack ambition, she possesses drive. Where I lack focus, she has vision.
But Ellie just lifts her eyes, shimmering through those beautiful thick eyelashes of hers. There’s no smile on her lips when she says, “Yes, Evander. You can. You can and you must.”
“Long live the king,” cries a familiar voice, the voice of my mother still weeping. Then she follows Ellie, kneeling. Even with her shoulders bowed, she gazes up at me with fierce determination.
Another thud as another pair of knees hits the ground. “Long live the king,” says Orion, a gash along his shoulder weeping blood.
