“Leave her be,” Gáspár says. His gaze flickers to me briefly, just one caught-breath moment that loops between us like black thread. “You’re going to lose, Nándor. Most of your Woodsmen have already been slain, and it will take weeks for the rest of the army to make its way here from Akosvár. If you surrender now, and call off the rest of your Woodsmen, I will spare your life.”
Nándor laughs and it’s an awful sound, like water breaking over rocks. “I don’t need your mercy, brother. You’re unarmed.”
Gáspár doesn’t reply. Instead, he walks over to the statue of Saint István, with its blank marble stare, still wreathed in white flowers. Gáspár draws the sword out of Saint István’s hand—the real sword, rust-flecked—and holds it up, a silvery bolt against the cloud-dark sky.
“Megvilágit,” he says, his voice as clear as a bell. And then a flame bursts across the blade.
“You dare wield the sword of a saint?” Nándor snarls.
“I wield the sword of a king—my sword by right,” Gáspár says. “I am the only true-born son of Bárány János and heir to the throne of Régország.”
Nándor’s colorless lips curl. “You’ve never managed to best me before.”
“I’ve never really tried,” says Gáspár, and for the briefest moment I see his lips twitch too. “This time, I won’t show you any restraint.”
Nándor growls out a prayer, and a sword glimmers to life in his good hand, coin-shiny and as bright as gold. When their blades meet, flame against steel, it is with a gonging sound that echoes somewhere deep in my chest. Their battle dance is almost too fast for my eyes to follow, and nothing like their previous dalliance, with wooden swords. All the playful cunning has drained from Nándor’s gaze.
“And why do you think the people of Régország will ever welcome you as their king?” Nándor spits as his blade darts toward Gáspár’s left shoulder. “A mutilated half-breed, tainted by his mother’s foreign blood and poisoned by his love for a wolf-girl. Is it any wonder why Father balked at handing you the crown?”
I don’t expect Gáspár to rise to his taunting, but a volley of fury goes through me, and I push myself up onto my knees.
“The crown was always mine,” says Gáspár evenly, between breaths. “I only lacked the strength to claim it.”
“Strength?” Nándor crows a laugh. “You had the kingdom’s finest tutors, and all of Father’s kindnesses—”
“Kindness until he cut out my eye,” Gáspár breaks in, but his voice is measured in a way that Nándor’s is not, matching his pace and his blade’s steady scything. “Kindness until he banished me to the Woodsmen.”
“The day he cut out your eye was the happiest of my life,” Nándor says, face shining with a jeweled dampness. “I remember it well. I had come from the chapel with the érsek, and I still had a child’s mindless zeal, eager to show Father some new trick of swordplay. But when I came to him in the hallway, he brushed right past me and took you inside. I was weak enough that I sat there outside the hall and wept at his rebuff, until I saw them drag you out with blood running down your face. And then I was the most elated I’ve ever been.”
Nándor’s recounting of it makes me bristle with rage. I can see the blood soaking through the back of Gáspár’s dolman now, his lash wounds opened over and over again with every roll of his shoulder, every leap and lunge. Slowly, my mouth still aching, I get to my feet and limp toward my abandoned bow and quiver. My bloody fingers close around the bow’s grip.
“You’ve been lied to all your life.” Gáspár advances on Nándor with a series of quick jabs, sending him stumbling back several paces. Nándor’s left arm, ruined by my magic, flaps between them like a flag of surrender. “Made to fit some false sainthood—”
“False?” In the lick of orange light cast by Gáspár’s sword, his eyes look like they are pooling with fire. “You’ve seen what power I have. Real power, by which I have claimed the crown. By what right do you claim the throne of Régország?”
“Birthright,” Gáspár answers. “Blood.”