Chapter 67: Blood on the Courtyard Stones

Karina was running before she had even decided to move.

Her feet carried her across the garden, through the archway, down the corridor, skirts bunched in both fists, her heart hammering so hard it hurt. Why am I scared. Why am I panicked. He’s nothing to me, he’s just—

She didn’t finish the thought.

Valen was right behind her, small legs pumping to keep up, his earlier annoyance about husbands and nightmares completely forgotten. Zarek had gone ahead of them both, already shouting orders down the hall before Karina had even reached the front steps.

She burst through the doors into the courtyard and the world tilted sideways.

There was blood everywhere.

The carriage sat crooked in the drive, one wheel half off its axle, the driver already scrambling down to fling the door open. Guards swarmed around it, shouting over each other, someone yelling for healers, someone else yelling for more guards, someone simply yelling.

And there, being half-carried, half-dragged out of the carriage by two men who looked like they might collapse under the weight themselves, was Leonidas.

Karina’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.

He looked like something that had been through a meat grinder, his shirt shredded and soaked through, a wound in his side she could see from ten feet away, his face gray, his eyes closed.

"Leonidas—" His name tore out of her before she could stop it, before she could remember she was supposed to be furious with him.

He didn’t answer. He ha already passed out, his head lolling to one side as the guards eased him down onto the stone steps, too afraid to move him further without a healer present.

Behind him, another figure stumbled out of the carriage under his own power, barely.

Rafael.

Blood matted one whole side of his hair, his steps uneven as he half-fell out of the carriage and caught himself against the door frame.

"The man—" Rafael’s voice came out cracked, darting between Karina and the guards like he couldn’t quite make sense of where he was. "The— the man, he—"

"Rafael, what happened, who did this—"

"He—" Rafael’s knees buckled.

He hit the ground before anyone could catch him, collapsing in a heap beside Leonidas, and this time he didn’t get back up at all.

Karina’s hands flew to her mouth.

"HEALERS!" Zarek’s voice cracked, all trace of his usual detached calm gone entirely. He was already crouched beside Leonidas, two fingers pressed to his throat, counting something under his breath. "NOW! I need healers here NOW!"

Servants scattered in every direction. Somewhere behind her, Karina heard Fayora shouting for Joan, heard Aldric’s voice organizing the guards, but all of it sounded muffled, like she was hearing it from underwater.

She couldn’t stop staring at the blood.

So much blood. Pooling beneath both of them, soaking into the stone, dripping steadily off the edge of the carriage step in. Leonidas’s chest rose and fell in shallow breaths.

"Is he—" Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "Is he going to—"

"I don’t know." Zarek’s hands moved fast, tearing at the ruined fabric around Leonidas’s wound to get a better look, his expression stoney even as blood soaked into his own sleeves. "This is deep. Whatever did this wasn’t trying to wound him. It was trying to gut him."

Karina’s stomach turned violently.

"Get them both inside," Zarek barked at the servants hovering uselessly nearby, apparently done waiting on healers that hadn’t arrived fast enough. "Now. Careful with his side, don’t jostle the wound— MOVE."

The servants scrambled to obey, and Karina found herself stepping back automatically to let them through. Her whole body was strangely numb, as she watched them carry Leonidas’s limp form up the steps like she was watching it happen to someone else.

A small hand fisted into the fabric of her skirt.

She looked down. Valen had gone silent, which was worse than any amount of screaming could have been. His face was pale, his wide eyes fixed on the blood-soaked steps where his father had just been lying. His small fingers gripped her dress tightly.

"Mama," he whispered. "Is he going to die?"

Karina’s throat closed around whatever answer she was supposed to give him.

She crouched down instead, and pulled him against her, feeling him shake, feeling how small he still was underneath all that indifference he liked to wear around his father.

"I don’t know," she admitted quietly, because she refused to lie to him, not about this. "But we have good healers. And he’s stubborn. He’s the most stubborn man I’ve ever met."

A tear drop slipped down his face surprisingly, but he quickly wiped it.

Zarek straightened, wiping his bloodied hands on his own ruined shirt, watching the servants disappear through the doors with Leonidas and Rafael both. The Snake ruler looked worried, much to her shock.

"I need to go with them," he said, already turning. Then he paused, glancing back at her, at Valen still clinging to her skirts, at the blood staining the stone beneath all their feet.

"He’ll be fine," Zarek said softly, nodding at Valen. "I’ll send word the moment I know something."

Karina nodded, unable to find her voice.

Zarek disappeared through the doors after the healers, and the courtyard fell into a quiet, broken only by Valen’s uneven breathing against her shoulder and the distant sound of someone shouting for more bandages somewhere inside.

Karina swallowed hard, tasting blood at the back of her throat, and held her son a little tighter.

~

Behind him, Shadow’s Edge burned with screaming. Dorian had left a trail of bodies, most of the guards who had tried to stop him already dead or dying, and even he had to admit the effort had cost him.

Exhaustion pulled at every limb as he shifted, bounding low across the courtyard in his panther form, desperate to put distance between himself and what remained of the palace guard.

He never saw the second panther coming.

It slammed into him from the side, white fur flashing, sending him rolling hard across the stone.

The creature shifted, resettling into a man with a smirk.

"Where do you think you’re going?"

Dorian snarled.

Cassian.