“Explain to me how we were told that we took Cliffhelm this morning, only for you to now inform me that my men were all slaughtered!” Fulke snarls. “Tell me how Ravinger’s men were able to overtake both my soldiers and Midas’s without us knowing!”
Fulke’s guards close in on the messenger, like a pack of wolves sniffing out a traitor. A liar.
But they’re closing in on the wrong man.
The messenger tilts his chin up, a proud stance widening his feet even as resignation flashes in his eyes. “They didn’t overtake King Midas’s men. Because Midas’s army never met ours. Sixth’s army never went to Fourth’s border. Your soldiers were there to face King Ravinger’s men alone, and the earlier messages were a deceit.” Accusatory eyes cut over to my king. “Midas betrayed you.”
Chapter Thirteen
For a span of a breath, no one moves.
Shocked silence fills the room at the messenger’s declaration. Then both sets of guards tighten formations around their kings.
King Fulke frowns, confused. “You are mistaken, soldier,” he says to the messenger.
“He’s not.”
My eyes shoot over to Midas at his bold declaration, but he only looks steadily back at Fulke with pleased arrogance. Fulke’s face changes from confusion to shock and then into budding fury as the world settles in, shaking with the aftershocks of the shift.
“You betrayed me?” King Fulke asks, his voice like a whip.
His guards tighten their hands around their blades, purple pommels with their kingdom’s sigil of jagged icicles carved through the hilt. Just minutes ago, these men were all drinking and laughing together. Now, tension radiates through them as they face each other.
Allies to enemies.
Enemies from allies.
“Let this be your last life lesson, Fulke,” Midas replies calmly, not the least bit threatened despite the deadly menace hanging in the air. “True kings don’t give out their armies for cunts.”
I don’t know who looks more shocked—Fulke or myself.
The monarch of Fifth Kingdom stares hard at Midas, like he’s truly seeing him for the first time, like he’s no longer being blinded by all the gleaming gold, the immeasurable wealth. “You were never going to take Fourth Kingdom,” he says, a flat understanding braced in his tone.
Midas laughs. He actually laughs at the other king. “Of course not. Everyone knows you don’t attack Fourth Kingdom. King Ravinger decimates anyone who dares.”
All of the faces on Fulke’s guards fill with bleak hate. It darkens their brows, makes their eyes flash.
Horror fills my veins as I realize the extent of what he’s done. Midas has been forming a bond with Fulke for years. Seducing him with riches and filling his coffers, and Fulke has lapped it all up greedily. Happily.
It always made me curious—what Midas was getting out of it. But now I know. Midas was never making Fulke rich. He was treating Fifth Kingdom like his own secondary vault. Fulke was simply transporting the gold for him, while Midas bided his time.
It’s brilliant. It’s brutal. And I know without a doubt that there won’t be two kings who walk back out of this letter room.
Fulke’s lips thin, a bead of sweat collecting at his left temple as he nods—in either understanding or resignation, I don’t know which. He shows no fear, only wears a cold glare as the pieces fall into place. “Your army was never going to Fourth Kingdom to attack. You lied and drew my own soldiers away to be slaughtered so that you could invade my kingdom.”
Midas’s eyes glitter with satisfaction. Fulke’s harden with enmity.
Allies to enemies.
The bead of sweat starts to fall off Fulke’s temple, an invisible line down, like the one Midas crossed.
I don’t get a warning, and I don’t know which king gives the order to attack first. I just know that all at once, a battle breaks out.
I’m dropped hard onto the floor by someone before I can blink. The breath is knocked out of me, a woven rug the only thing to break my fall.
Purple and gold clash in an explosion of metallic clangs.
Red comes next, in violent splatters.
I hear the short shouts. The swords meeting in vicious swipes. And the abruptness of it acts like a shock to the brain, dredging up memories as my past and present meet.
Fighting is too close and too loud, and I’m sprawled on the ground just like I was on a different day, during a different fight.
A fight under a yellow moon, its shape like a fingernail scratching at a dark sky. Ten years ago, when raiders came to the tiny town where I was living. Raiders doing what they do—taking. Taking everything that didn’t belong to them. Money, livestock, grain—women.