Chapter 66: On the Verge of Death

"Protect the King!"

The shout tore through, followed immediately by the sound of something tearing. Leonidas heard it behind him as half-carried Rafael’s dead weight against his shoulder, blood streaking down both their bodies in twin dark trails.

He didn’t stop moving.

Several guards had already converged near them, weapons drawn, formation tight. It wasn’t going to be enough. Leonidas knew that the second he heard the first scream cut short.

"Get me a carriage," he snarled, shoving past two guards who tried to steady him, tried to insist he sit, insist he let the healers look at the gaping wound in his side first. He shrugged off every hand that reached for him. "Get me a carriage! Now!"

"Your Majesty, you’re bleeding out, you need—"

"I said NOW!" His voice cracked through the hall, and the guard flinched back, immediately barking orders down the corridor.

Behind them, the screaming continued.

Leonidas turned his head, and even through the haze creeping over his vision, he saw it. Dorian, moving through the guards, tossing armored men aside. One guard’s spear snapped clean in half against Dorian’s forearm. Another was flung bodily into the stone wall hard enough to crack the plaster, and didn’t get back up.

"Impressive, aren’t I?" Dorian called out, not even bothering to look winded. Blood, not his own, spattered across his bare chest. "Do give my regards to your empress, Leonidas. Tell her I’ll be along shortly."

"Someone get word to Cassian," a guard shouted, voice cracking with panic as he dragged a fallen comrade back by the collar. "We need Glacier’s Crown, we can’t hold him alone—"

"We’ll stop this beast," another snarled, closing ranks, though the tremor in his hands said otherwise.

Leonidas didn’t have the strength left to watch how that ended. The world had narrowed down to two things: the carriage rattling to a stop in front of him, and Rafael’s limp weight sagging further against his shoulder with every passing second.

"Your Majesty, please, let the healers—"

"There’s no time." He all but threw himself toward the open carriage door, dragging Rafael with him, his vision swimming black at the edges with every jolt of movement. "Karina. I need to reach Karina."

"Sir, you can barely stand—"

"SHUT UP." His voice broke on the last word, more animal than man, and the guard scrambling to obey went white and silent.

Leonidas hauled Rafael up bodily, his friend’s head lolling uselessly against his shoulder, blood still weeping steadily from the gash at his temple, and shoved him into the carriage first. Rafael’s body hit the seat with a heavy, boneless thud, and for one terrible second Leonidas thought—

No. Breathing. Still breathing. Barely.

He climbed in after him, collapsing more than sitting, his own blood pooling dark beneath him on the carriage floor. Outside, guards were still shouting, still fighting to hold a line against something that didn’t care how many of them stood in its way.

"Go," Leonidas coughed. "Go, go, GO—"

The driver didn’t need telling twice. The carriage lurched forward, wheels tearing across stone, and Leonidas slumped back against the seat, one hand clamped uselessly over the wound in his side, the other gripping the collar of Rafael’s shirt.

Behind them, faint and getting fainter, Dorian’s laughter still echoed through the walls of Shadow’s Edge palace.

Leonidas closed his eyes, blood soaking into the carriage seat beneath him, and thought only one thing, over and over.

Karina. Hold on. I’m coming.

~

"I don’t much like him."

"Neither do I," Karina admitted, not looking up from the teacup Joan had just set in front of her.

Valen sat close beside her on the garden bench, small arms crossed, glaring across the lawn at Zarek, who was currently attempting, and failing, to coax Soren into sitting still for longer than four seconds.

It had been three days since the throne room. Three days since Zarek had simply... stayed, taking his morning walks through the gardens, showing up to meals uninvited, radiating the exact same infuriating calm he always had.

Karina wanted to be angry about it. She really did.

But she also wasn’t stupid enough to pretend she had any high ground left to stand on. She had been neglectful too, once. Distant. Wrapped up in her own misery while her children grew up around the edges of her grief.

At least he was trying now. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

She sighed into her tea.

A few feet away, Sophie laughed at something Aldric said, the two of them tucked together near the roses. Fayora sat cross-legged on the grass nearby, letting Rynan climb over her shoulders.

Joan moved between them all with a tray of tea and biscuits, refilling cups before anyone had to ask. Valen reached over and swiped two biscuits off the tray the second her back was turned, stuffing one whole into his cheek like a small, scandalized squirrel.

"I heard that," Zarek called from across the lawn, not even looking up from where Soren was currently trying to climb his leg like a tree.

Valen froze mid-chew, biscuit crumbs on his chin.

"He wasn’t talking about the biscuits, sweetheart," Karina murmured.

"...Oh." Valen swallowed, unbothered, and reached for a third.

Soren shrieked with laughter, finally succeeding in scaling Zarek’s leg enough to cling to his hip. Zarek made a face like he had personally wounded, though he didn’t try to pry him off.

"So," Valen said, turning back to Karina. "when are you going to leave him and the dragon?"

Karina choked slightly on her tea. "Excuse me?"

"My tutor Winchester said you want to leave the Dragon king. I know he is a nightmare to deal with." Valen bit into his biscuit like he hadn’t just detonated a small emotional bomb in the middle of her tea break. "And Zarek’s already here all the time. That’s two nightmares."

"It’s not—" Karina pinched the bridge of her nose. "That’s not how this works, Valen."

"It’s a lot of husbands."

"I’m aware."

"I’m just saying." He shrugged.

Karina didn’t have a good answer for that, mostly because he wasn’t wrong, so she simply sighed again. She let her gaze drift out past the hedges, toward the mountains in the distance, toward Shadow’s Edge somewhere beyond them.

They had gotten the cure out there, apparently. A letter had arrived some days ago, confirming the plague had finally been stopped. That was good. That was one less thing keeping her up at night, imagining some poor panther dead in some ditch from a sickness she couldn’t do anything about.

Beside Soren, Zarek suddenly went rigid.

His head snapped up, nostrils flaring, every trace of his earlier ease vanishing in an instant. He turned, fully, scanning the tree line beyond the garden wall.

"Panther," Zarek said.

Karina flinched. "Panther? Do you mean Valen?"

"No." His jaw tightened. "Panther. And blood."

The words hadn’t even fully settled in the air before a servant came sprinting through the garden archway, skirts hiked up in both fists, face bone white.

"Your Imperial Majesty!" the woman gasped, nearly stumbling over her own feet. "King Leonidas is here—and he’s on the verge of death!"