Bloodguard

chapter 44

Maeve

My feet sink into the soil as I push to a crouch, body shuddering with pain, and pull my sword from the dirt. Knight sidesteps closer, and I use his mane to pull myself up to stand, then finally walk. It’s all I can do to remain steady, my normal gait impossible to maintain. But I am gaining some strength.

Knight lowers one of his front legs and bows his long neck, kneeling on a foreleg so I can mount. My motions aren’t graceful or easy, but they’re sufficient to permit me to ride.

Knight starts off slowly, trying to ease us into a canter. The guards hurt him when he fought back. No one would know it now. The way he chuffs demands war upon our enemies. We trot around the house. There’s no more house to save. But there might be family, servants, and workers who survived. Who need me. I struggle to control Knight. He’s desperate to attack despite the injuries he’s sustained. A war horse, indeed.

I’m not as ready until Neela cries out in defiance. I urge Knight onto the sprawling front lawn. The guards kicking Neela are larger and stronger than she is. She’s curled inward, using her body to shield a cluster of smaller estrellas.

I leap on top of one of them. One of the guards, an elf, catches me and tosses me away as if I’m nothing.

But I am something.

His dingy smile vanishes as he smacks at the back of his neck. He falls on his ass, struggling to remove my dagger from the base of his skull.

If he were human, he’d already be dead. And because the other guard is human, all it takes is one clean slice to the throat. They thought me weak and soft as a princess, and maybe I am, but not today.

As fast as I can, I hurry to where Knight sways in place. His head is down. He’s nudging Bethina, my tiniest estrella, encouraging her to run. It’s too late. Like the others, she’s already dead.

My pace slows. At least a dozen guards are running toward us—some whose faces I recognize and have known since I was a child.

I learned to fight, to protect, to lead. That doesn’t make me invincible. Nor does it grant me everything I need to bring down a gang of trained killers.

One lunges and knocks me off balance. My head strikes the ground first. There are voices. “Kill her or get out of my way.”

Aisling.

There’s a crackling sound that builds, and then I’m struck with jolts of magic, screaming as every nerve in my body convulses in pain.

“He needs her,” a troll rumbles.

“And I need her dead!” Aisling shrieks in return.

“No, no!” someone else yells.

A shouting match ensues, and the atmosphere is drenched with Aisling’s magic. I can’t prepare for this death blow, and I don’t. But it never hits me. Instead, she whips her power to the side at the last moment and destroys what remains of the library in one strike.

Aisling continues to demand my death. “Look at her! She isn’t worthy. But I am.”

“No!” the troll rumbles.

Aisling won’t stop. “I’ll give you gold. Is that what you want? All you must do is blame a dead guard.”

“No,” an old elven guard retorts. Isa is her name. “We’ll say it was you. The princess shall live.”

Princess. I laugh, sort of. It comes out as a pitiful, pained series of squeaks.

What kind of princess lies among the dead, too beaten to rise?

“Do it,” Aisling orders, a sick sort of glee in her voice, “or I’ll kill all of you instead.”

Hands clutch my throat and squeeze.

I should fight back. Except I can’t move.

It’s too late to save most of me, anyway.

I want to hold little Bethina in the Afterlife and run through the lush green forests. I smile again, picturing the estrellas chasing one another through gardens packed with blooms. I want to sit on that bench. The one I had here, watching the sun set over and over as I wait for Papa, Father, and Giselle to join me.

More than anything, I want to be with Leith.

Leith…

My vision clears.

My rage surges.

And my hands dart forward.

I dig my thumbs into the eyes of the dwarf choking me. He tightens his grip, and I sputter and wheeze and dig in harder. Our struggle ends with a squelching and splatter and two massive hooves to the head.

His body flies off me, and I lunge for the stunned elf who holds my sword. Air returns to fill my lungs from one gasp to the next. The fools who tried restraining Knight have been reduced to a bloody pulp in the grass.

Streaks of blood roll down my face as I stare in the direction where Father holds his bloody sword. He’s covered in bruises and cuts, and blood gushes from his left shoulder. But he’s still fighting.

“You will not hurt my daughter!” he yells.

I smile through my pain. I didn’t have a good father. I had two amazing ones.

More guards arrive on horseback in green-and-blue armor. At least ten more soldiers. With only two of us left, we’re ill-prepared for such numbers. Father and I exchange glances and run, sprinting across the lawn.

“Get to that wagon,” he says. I follow his gaze to a covered wagon spilling with looted art and valuables. It’s not far. Just across the lawn, abandoned near a copse of wizard’s elm. “If we take out the guards, we can take Neela, the horses, and the surviving estrellas to safety.”

“Yes, Father,” I answer.

Despite his weakened state, he’s faster than me, the way he powers over the grass appearing effortless.

No longer do I see the man with the broken heart. He’s long gone. Nor is this the man who played with me as a child, who read to me every night, who held me when I hurt. This is the famed warrior he was before.

I push myself harder, trying to close the distance between us while every inch of my body screams in protest.

I want to share his strength, his wisdom, his kindness.

He is my father, the man who pledged to love me as his own.

And he is a wonder.

Father reaches the wagon.

I swing my sword, straining to help him. But the guards are many, and I don’t see the one with the spear aimed at my back.

Father does.

He doubles back, leaping in front of me.

And spares my heart…

With his.

I drop my sword, trying to catch him in my arms. We fall together, the torment he feels reflecting in his dulling eyes.

No…

No…

No!

“Become the queen,” he says. His words waver, each one barely above a whisper. “Arrow needs you.”

“Father…”

I’m yanked away from him as a mountain troll breaks through the dense crowd of guards, rumbling obscenities through his jagged teeth. “Fools! You could have killed her,” he says.

“If you kill the princess, Soro kills you, understood?” Another voice. Loud. Human.

I know that voice. Lord Ugeen. That sniveling opportunist.

The troll lifts Father by the spear and holds him up and away. Father straightens his feeble arms, his hands opening and closing as if trying to reach me across the several yards between us. His lips move, and his last words almost break me. I love you.

“Finish him,” Ugeen spits.

An elf appears on horseback, coaxing his steed into a canter, his sword raised high.

It takes a moment.

Just a moment.

For him to swing, and for my father, my hero, to die.

Someone screams. And screams. And screams.

That someone is me.

I break loose from the arms holding me, slowing my pace to a jog as I near Father’s unmoving form.

No. This can’t be right.

Father isn’t— I mean, he can’t be . This is too impossible to be real.

Father—he isn’t dead. Well, he’s hurt, yes, but I can fix him. I fix people all the time. One of my potions should help. I must figure out which one. It shouldn’t take long. We have time.

Yes, time.

A sob burns through my throat.

Please, let me have more time, with him, for him.

I stop short and look around, trying to make sense of how his head lies so far from his body. We almost made it. We almost won. The wagon isn’t far away. I can still reach it. That’s right, reach it. Escape is still possible. We earned it after how hard we fought.

“Father?” I plead as I hold back my tears.

Tears are useless.

“Father,” I say again. “ Please . We need you. Giselle and Papa and Neela and me . We need you .”

My eyes sting. No. No crying. Tears are fucking useless.

But they fall anyway.

No matter how hard I tell myself that Father isn’t gone.

I leave his body just long enough to retrieve his head and position it with his torso, where it belongs. I stroke the side of his face. His skin is cool. “We’re better together. All of us were always better together.”

Thick fingers clutch my shoulders. Neela is here, her presence all the permission I need to scream.

And I do, until my vocal cords are raw with pain.

Neela kisses the top of my head. Like me, she’s aware the guards have us surrounded. Like me, she doesn’t care.

She lowers her bruised and bloody body beside my father, her arms wrapping around his torso. It’s then I see the hilt of a dagger protruding from the center of her back. “I never had a friend before him,” she says.

“Neela…”

“He chose me,” she continues, her blood saturating the soil. “When no one else would have me.”

I know what’s happening. But she can’t leave me. Not after everyone I lost today.

“He took me in and fed me my first real meal.” Large tears zigzag down her face. “It was terrible. Burned fish and half-cooked potatoes.” She sniffs. “I couldn’t tell him, though. I couldn’t offend him. I ate every last bite like it was the best. And because my friend made it for me, it was.”

“Neela, don’t ,” I beg.

Her tears run faster, coloring her face as her blood drains out of her. “My dear child. I must join him in death. Who else will take care of him if I don’t? It was my time long ago. I only stayed for him. Now…now it’s time for me to go.”

And she does.

I’m numb, unable to feel anything.

Empty space is all that remains.

They’re gone. They’re all gone.

And they’re never coming home.

My arms are brutally wrenched behind me and shackled, and then I’m thrown without care into a different wagon. It jerks forward, the squeak from the old wheels growing to a shriek as the guards force the horses to a gallop.

The last thing I see is Aisling unleashing her rage and her magic…and what’s left of my home crumbling to dust.