Chapter 11: The Truth

Asher stared at Aaron’s still body while the physicians continued their useless efforts around the bed. The mirror held to the prince’s mouth remained clear. No breath, no pulse, and no signs of waking up. The vision that had haunted him since the previous night had come true despite everything he had tried to do.

Then Marcel’s words rose in his memory with sudden, sharp clarity.

"Your blood is not like the others, it’s special."

Asher did not give himself time to doubt. He snatched a small surgical knife from the nearest physician’s open case. The man made a startled sound and reached for him, but Asher was already drawing the blade in a clean line across his own left palm. Pain flared bright and immediate. Blood welled up in a vivid red line and began to drip between his fingers.

"What do you think you’re doing?!" one of the physicians shouted.

Asher ignored him completely. He stepped to the side of the bed, used his uninjured hand to part Aaron’s slack lips, and let several drops of his blood fall directly into the prince’s mouth. He watched them disappear over the tongue and down the throat. His blood had managed the damaged heart of a vampire lord, perhaps it could do something for the prince. Asher wasn’t entirely sure it would work, but he at least had to try.

For a terrible stretch of seconds nothing happened.

Aaron remained motionless. The color of death still clung to his skin. King Eric made a broken sound and sank heavier onto the edge of the mattress, both hands clenched around his son’s limp fingers. The physicians had frozen, staring at Asher as though he had lost his mind.

Then Aaron’s chest jerked.

A deep, desperate breath tore into the prince’s lungs with a raw, wet sound. His back arched off the bed, and a violent cough exploded from his throat, followed by another, and another, until he was gasping and choking on air he had not drawn in long minutes.

The chamber erupted.

Physicians surged forward with cups of water, clean cloths, vials of stimulant. Hands reached for the prince from every direction. Asher moved faster than any of them. He shoved the nearest man backward hard enough that the physician stumbled into two others.

"Don’t touch him," Asher snapped, voice cutting through the noise. Blood still dripped steadily from his cut palm onto the white sheets, but Asher didn’t mind that. He turned to face King Eric fully. The King’s eyes were wide, locked on his son’s coughing form as though afraid to believe what he was seeing.

"Do you want to save your son?" Asher asked.

King Eric’s answer came out hoarse and immediate. "Yes. Gods above, yes."

"Then arrest your elder brother."

The words dropped into the room like a blade. Every head turned towards Prince Reginald who stood near the foot of the bed, still in the same composed posture he had worn all morning. For a single heartbeat his face remained carefully blank, then something ugly flickered behind his eyes.

"You insolent, low-born—"

"Shut up." Asher did not raise his voice, but the command landed with enough force that Reginald’s mouth snapped closed out of pure surprise. Asher kept his gaze on the King, though every word that followed was a direct attack on the older prince.

"When I grabbed him this morning, my gift triggered for a second. I saw fragments of what I believe are the prince’s motives. I couldn’t quite piece them together then, but now I’m certain that he’s the monster behind all of this."

He drew a slow breath, and prayed he had managed to connect the dots correctly, otherwise he could be accusing someone of what they hadn’t done.

"Twenty-one years ago, when Aaron was born, everything changed for Reginald. He is impotent. He has always been. That single fact is why he devoted his life to becoming a physician in the first place—he spent years traveling, studying, searching for any cure that might let him produce an heir of his own, but found nothing. Then his younger brother produced a healthy son, and the line of succession shifted permanently away from him. He never recovered from that."

Color immediately drained from the old physician’s face. The information Asher had just relayed was not new to anybody in the room. But unless the fortune teller had researched him beforehand, he definitely shouldn’t have that information.

Asher continued, relentless. "He is far too intelligent to simply murder the King first. If Eric died, Aaron would be crowned within days. A young, healthy king falling mysteriously ill right after his father’s death would raise too many questions. So Reginald chose the cleaner, slower path: remove the heir first. Once Aaron was gone, the King could be handled afterward and the death blamed on age, grief, and a broken heart."

Aaron’s weak, persistent coughing was the only sound for a moment. The prince’s eyes were open now, glassy and confused, but he was breathing.

"With his position and his knowledge it was easy," Asher said. "He mixed poison with darker workings I don’t fully understand yet. He could stand at this bedside every day, pretend to treat his nephew, and quietly sabotage every real effort the other physicians made. The King trusted him, and no one looked twice at the devoted elder prince who never left the sickroom. Everything was proceeding exactly according to plan."

Asher’s eyes cut to Reginald at last.

"Until I arrived. I was the one piece he never calculated for. That is why he hated me the moment he saw me. That is why he wanted me locked away or discredited as quickly as possible."

Silence held the chamber.

King Eric had turned slowly to look at his brother. The expression on the King’s face was something beyond anger—something closer to betrayal.

Reginald stood motionless for several long heartbeats. Then a low laugh scraped out of his throat. The sound rose, cracked, and became something raw and ugly that echoed off the stone walls.

"Clever bastard," he said, almost in admiration. His right hand disappeared into the folds of his physician’s robes and came out holding a thin, wickedly sharp blade. The silver ring on his finger flashed as he moved. "You really did see it all, didn’t you?"

Guards along the walls reached for their swords. King Eric took an automatic step forward, one hand still locked around Aaron’s.

Reginald’s smile was wide and broken, eyes glittering with years of buried hatred. "I will never be ruled by my younger brother. And I will certainly never live long enough to watch his son wear the crown that should have belonged to me." He looked from Eric to the weakly coughing Aaron and then, finally, to Asher. "All of you can rot in hell."

Before the nearest guard could close the distance, before King Eric could shout an order, Prince Reginald drove the blade hard and deep across his own throat.

Blood sprayed in a bright, arterial arc across the floor and the edge of the bed. Reginald’s body crumpled without grace. The knife clattered from his fingers, and the silver ring struck the stone with a small, final sound as his hand went slack.

Screams erupted, physicians recoiled, and guards surged forward too late. Someone was calling for clothes, for pressure, for anything that might stop the bleeding, but the cut was far too deep and far too deliberate.

Asher did not look at the corpse for long. He looked only at Aaron.

The Crown Prince was still coughing, still dragging air into his lungs in shaky, painful pulls, but the terrible stillness was gone. Color continued to return to his face in slow degrees. His eyes, glassy and wet, found Asher’s and held on as though the fortune teller were the only solid thing left in the room.

Asher’s cut palm throbbed. Blood still dripped onto the sheets in bright drops that looked almost black in the firelight. He was thankful his plan had worked, otherwise the king would have likely locked him up for good. But he had saved Aaron, and since his work here was done, he’d soon be returning to the man he claimed was his lover, Marcel Thorne.