“I have already issued missives forbidding violence against the Yehuli in Király Szek.”
“They’re obviously not good enough,” I snap, flushing angrily. “Not with your own son undermining them.”
The king closes his eyes briefly. His eyelids are thin as onionskin; I can see his pupils rolling beneath them. Then he opens them again. “I will free this Yehuli man, and to the best of my ability protect the Yehuli of this city. But now you must offer something to me. I don’t suppose I can convince you to give up your fingernails.”
“No,” I say, stomach hitching in revulsion. I think of Nándor, his fingers inching closer and closer to the knife. I think of what Gáspár told me, that very first night by the Black Lake. He craves power more than purity, and he wants a way to win the war. I think of my father, soaked to the knee in pig’s blood. I think, for the briefest moment, about Katalin, her face cast blue in the light of her flame. This will prove her right for good. “But you can have my power. My magic.”
Confusion clusters like dark clouds over the king’s brow, and then realization breaks across it bright as day. “You would swear an oath of fealty to the Crown.”
“Yes.” The roar of blood in my ears is so loud I can hardly hear myself speak the word. “My power is yours, as long as you uphold your end of our bargain.”
“I swear by the Prinkepatrios, the one true and almighty God, that as long as you are in my service, no harm will come to Keszi or to the Yehuli man, Zsigmond.” King János’s arm shudders under my grasp. “What is your name, wolf-girl?”
I remember Gáspár asking me the same thing, lake water lapping at our boots. Saying it to the king now feels as if I am handing him something fragile and precious, like my own cut tongue.
“évike,” I say. “My name is évike.”
The king dips his head, swallowing my name whole. “Do you, évike of Keszi, swear to protect the crown of Régország? To be my sword where I have none, and to speak with my voice when I cannot?”
“Yes.” I am surprised by how lightly the vow leaves my lips, like an ember drifting out of a hearth. “I swear it.”
“To make this a true Patritian oath, you must kneel.”
I cast a glance at Lajos, whose gaze is burning holes in my back. “Call off your dogs first.”
“Stand down,” the king tells the Woodsmen.
Very slowly, Lajos lowers his blade. Beside him, Ferenc does the same, but I can hear him mutter something that sounds like a curse, close to treachery.
I relax my grasp on the king’s wrist, ?rd?g’s threads loosing. His skin is slick and red where I have grasped him, etched with four burn marks the length and breadth of my fingers. Keeping one eye on the king and another on the Woodsmen behind me, I lower myself to the ground.
“Father, this is madness,” comes Nándor’s voice, words slipped through the white grit of his teeth. There are murmurs of agreement from the guests, those who aren’t too slack-jawed to speak.
The king bends to pick up the pearled hilt of his blade, long sleeves pooling on the stone floor. He closes his eyes and another blade shimmers to life, shooting out of the hilt like a tree streaming up toward the sun. I wonder what Virág would think, if she saw it, the loathsome king suffused with pagan magic. I wonder what she would think if she saw me, shoulders bent under his blade. It shouldn’t rattle her at all. If she has taught me anything, it has been how to kneel.
King János lays his sword on each of my shoulders, one after the other. I can scarcely feel the press of it. All I can feel is the steadying of my heartbeat, like a wheel falling into a groove. I was cast out to the Woodsmen, but I have survived. I have come to the capital, but I have not met my mother’s fate. I am alive despite so many wishing me dead, pagan and Patritian alike. I feel as if I have crawled up from some black abyss, eyes flashing and wild as light fills them for the first time. The weight of their loathing lifts from me like a loosed cloak. Here in the capital, their words and their lashes cannot reach me, and I am the one who keeps the wolves from Keszi’s door. Even with my oath tethering me to the king, my life feels more like my own than it ever has before. Mine to spend as I see fit, and mine to lose foolishly, if that’s what I wish.
Gáspár is staring at me with a pale, stricken face, but he no longer gets to care what I do. Nándor pushes out of his seat and stalks from the room, footsteps brisk against the cold stone. When I rise again, I can scarcely hear the Patritians weeping.