Kylar turned and jumped for the top of the stairs, but he was too slow. Even as he left the ground, he saw a blur of light streaking toward him. There was no time to draw a throwing knife. Kylar hurled his sword at the last wytch.
The bolt of magic blasted his left shoulder. As the momentum of his leap carried him up and forward, the blast made him flip end over end backward. He crunched into the marble floor at the foot of the throne and felt his left knee shatter.
For a long moment, his eyes refused to focus. He blinked and blinked and finally cleared the blood away. He saw Retribution buried to the hilt through a wytch ten paces away, its blade black with his ka’kari.
He realized that he was viewing the dead wytch through a pair of legs. His eyes followed the legs up to Roth’s face.
“Stand up,” Roth said. He plunged his long sword through Kylar’s lower back.
Kylar gagged as Roth twisted the blade in his kidney. Then the hot metal lifted away. Something pulled Kylar to his feet.
The pain was like a cloud making everything fuzzy and indistinct. Confused, Kylar stared at the dead wytches. Who picked me up?
“All the aethelings of Godking Ursuul are wytchborn,” Roth said. “Didn’t you know?”
Kylar stared at Roth dumbly. Roth was Talented? The invisible hands released him and he folded as he put weight on his destroyed left leg. The marble floor jarred him once more.
“Get up!” Roth said. He stabbed Kylar’s groin and cursed him. Kylar dropped his head onto the marble as Roth’s screaming became inarticulate. The sound of Roth’s voice faded to a murmur next to the roaring voice of pain.
The pain flashed in another bar through his stomach as Roth stabbed him again. Then he must have picked Kylar up again, because Kylar felt his head lolling to one side. If he’d felt pain before, now it became agony.
Every part of his body was being scoured with fire, dipped in alcohol, packed with salt. His eyelids were lined with crushed glass. His optic nerves were being chewed by little teeth. And after his eyes, every tissue, sinew, muscle, and organ marinated in misery in its turn. He was screaming.
But his mind cleared.
Kylar blinked. He was standing before Roth, and he was aware. Aware and dismayed. He must have landed on his left knee when he’d crashed to the marble, because it was demolished. He was bleeding inside—his intestines leaking slow death into his viscera, stomach acids scorching his intestines, a kidney pouring black blood. His left shoulder looked like it had kissed a giant’s hammer.
“You won’t die easy,” Roth said. “I won’t allow it. Not after what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done! My father will be furious.”
There it was. He was dying. Kylar could perch unsteadily on his one good leg, but he had no weapons. His sword and the ka’kari were ten paces away—they might as well have been across the ocean. No weapons, and Roth was—even now—careful not to come within range of his hands. Kylar didn’t have so much as a belt knife.
“Are you ready to die?” Roth said, his eyes glowing malevolence.
Kylar was staring at his right hand. Of all the beaten, sliced, and smashed places on his body, his fingers were healthy, perfect, healed. Wasn’t that the hand he’d cut on the window last night? “I’m ready,” he said, surprising himself.
“Any regrets?” Roth asked.
Kylar looked into Roth, and understood him. Kylar had always had enough darkness in his soul to understand evil men. Roth was trying to wring anguish from him. Roth wanted to kill him while he thought of all the things he hadn’t done. Roth reaped despair. “Dying well is easy,” Kylar said, “it only takes a moment of courage. It’s living well that I couldn’t do. What’s death compared to that?”
“You’re about to find out,” Roth spat.
Kylar smirked, and then smiled as rage washed over Roth.
“Killing Logan was more fun,” Roth said. He rammed his sword into Kylar’s chest.
Logan! The thought cut through Kylar more cruelly than the sword in Roth’s hand. Kylar had lived by the sword. Dying by it was neither unexpected nor unjust. But Logan had never even wanted to hurt anyone. Roth killing Logan wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just.
Kylar stared at the steel stabbed through his chest. He took Roth’s hand in his own and pulled, pulled himself up the sword, impaling himself to the hilt. Roth’s eyes widened.
“I am the Night Angel,” Kylar said, gasping on the steel through his lung. “This is justice. This is for Logan.”
There was a ting and the sound of metal rolling on marble. The ka’kari leaped for Kylar’s hand—
And was caught squarely by Roth. Triumph lit his eyes. He laughed.
But Kylar grabbed Roth’s shoulders and stared him in the eye. “I am the Night Angel,” Kylar repeated. “This is justice. This is for Logan.” Kylar lifted his right hand.
Roth looked confused. Then he looked at his left hand. The ka’kari was turning to liquid and gliding through his fingers. His hands scrambled as they’d scrambled across the wood floor of the boat shop, and found nothing. The ka’kari slapped into Kylar’s palm and formed an enormous punch dagger on his fist.
Kylar slammed his fist into Roth’s chest.
Roth looked down, his disbelief turning to horror as Kylar drew the dagger out, his horror turning to fear as his heart pumped blood directly into his lungs.
Roth shrieked a shrill denial of his own mortality.
Kylar released the prince and tried to step away, but his limbs refused to obey him. His knee buckled and he crashed to the ground with the Khalidoran prince.
Roth and Kylar lay eye to eye on the marble at the foot of the throne, staring at each other, dying. Each trembled as uncontrollable twitches ran through his limbs. Each breathed terrible, labored breaths in time with the other. Roth’s eyes brimmed with fear, panic so intense it paralyzed. He seemed to no longer see Kylar lying inches away. His gaze grew more distant and filled with soul-deep terror.
Kylar was content. This Night Angel had apportioned death—and death was his portion. It wasn’t nice, but it was just. This sentence was deserved. Watching Roth’s eyes finally glaze in restless death, Kylar wished there were something more beautiful to find in death than justice. But he didn’t have the strength to turn away from this life, this death, this terrible justice.
Then someone turned him over. A woman. She came into focus slowly. It was Elene. She pulled Kylar into her lap, stroked his hair. She was crying. Kylar couldn’t see her scars. He reached a hand up, touched her face. She was angelic.
Then he saw his hand. It was perfect, whole, and amazingly, unbloodied. For the first time in his life, his hands were clean. Clean!
Death came. Kylar yielded.
66
Terah Graesin had just paid a fortune to one of the prettiest men she’d ever seen. Jarl said he spoke for the Shinga, but he carried himself with such assurance, she wondered if he might not be the Shinga himself. She hadn’t liked handing over so much money to the Sa’kagé, but she hadn’t had any choice. The Godking’s army would arrive with the dawn, and she’d already spent too long in the city.
The coup had not gone according to the Godking’s plan. The Khalidorans controlled the bridges, the castle, and the city’s gates, but some of them had only skeleton crews. That would change when the rest of the army arrived, and Terah Graesin and her nobles needed to be gone when that happened. If she hadn’t paid half her fortune to Jarl, she would have had to leave behind all of it. A queen made the hard decisions, and with everyone else dead, a queen was what she was, now.