Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

arm, and cut a shallow slice across his bicep with a small copper blade he must’ve hidden in a pocket. The audience cried out, but not on Tal’s behalf; in the morning sunlight, the silver trickle of blood running down his arm shone brightly.

Albinus held up the blade that was now dripping silver. “The requisite evidence, Your Highness,” he said, one eyebrow raised in triumph.

Nyx had stolen a cloak this morning. She pulled it closer over her shoulders now as if she were cold, in actuality using it to cover the crossbow as she unfolded it.

She wanted to growl when she heard the Destroyer defend Tal. The bitch didn’t care about Tal for his own sake; she was possessive of him like a spoiled child with a favorite toy, not liking anyone else to break it. But even as Nyx thought it, she heard the waver in the Destroyer’s voice, saw the way her magic flared around her and made the air sizzle with violence, and she was pierced with a needle of doubt. The Destroyer didn’t sound petulant. She sounded worried, and furious.

The people around her caught on her tone too, whispering and staring, wondering if the new empress was either even more unstable than they had thought, or perhaps—somehow, unimaginably—cared for her bodyguard as she had displayed care for no one else before.

Nyx hesitated as she unfolded the last wing of the crossbow. She watched Albinus, and she watched the Destroyer, and she wondered which one looked like a petulant child and which truly cared about Tal’s life.

She steeled herself then, pulled the shattered bits of her cocoon back around herself, glued them in place with will and determination. She made herself remember how she had felt in the prison car, with the smell of burnt hair singing her nostrils, her hands spasming on the floor like dying creatures as the Destroyer loomed mercilessly above.

She finished unfolding the crossbow. She loaded the arrow.

Tal barely listened as Albinus continued the list of accusations, comparing him to past traitors and revealing that he had dug up the records of Tal’s parents, who had been among those ill-fated silver Smiths who had attempted to lead a coup on the eve of Elodie’s seventh birthday. As the audience shifted their wide-eyed attention from him to Elodie, Tal scanned the audience, searching for the assassin who would end his life.

He recalled his vision, trying to judge from the angle of the small crossbow bolt where it would originate. If Tal himself had come here to kill someone on the stage, he would hide in one of the taller trees where the foliage would shelter him. There was a strong wind today, though, which was likely to impact the aim of even the most experienced archer from so high up. Plus the guards had certainly done a security sweep of the entire garden before they had let anyone in. That left lying in wait amongst the audience as the best option for an assassin. They would need to be close to the front for the wind to not affect their aim. He narrowed his search to the first five or ten rows.

At his back, Albinus finished speaking. Elodie spoke next, each word carefully weighed and delivered as she spoke of Tal’s service to the crown, naming the assassins and Saints he had killed in defense of her, the plots he had unmasked within the high courts themselves. He steeled himself against the memories each name jarred loose. Perhaps the arrow that would end him today belonged to a family member of someone he had killed. He hoped so. That way, maybe his death might begin to pay the blood debt against him, and bring some form of justice. That wasn’t promised to him, though, and most of all he wanted what had been promised. If the price he had to pay for that great goal was his death, so be it.

But he couldn’t deny, even to himself, that he was afraid.

Nyx watched the Destroyer rise from her throne. She paced to the traditional spot of the defender, standing just behind Tal. She spoke of his virtues. In a clear, even voice, she spoke of his oath as if it were still intact. She wondered aloud if his silver blood might be of benefit to the empire, if perhaps it would be hasty to end the life of someone so loyal to the crown, someone sworn on metal to defend it, someone who could give the country and its ruler a remarkable advantage against their enemies. Skillfully, with subtle turns of phrase and thoughtful questions, she led the audience to wonder what made Albinus so eager to kill a loyal subject who could give all of them such benefits.

Nyx listened as the crowd rustled, pondering their empress’s words, peering now at Albinus with narrowed eyes, wondering where his loyalties lie—and where they wanted their own loyalties to lie. It was a dangerous game the Destroyer was playing now. She was leading her subjects to question Albinus’s motivations, but in so doing, she was giving them the chance to potentially ally themselves with him—with a would-be ruler who had healing magic instead of the unstable and destructive magic of mercury, who was older and therefore more experienced.

Nyx hesitated, the loaded crossbow on her lap hidden by her cloak. She could think of no reason why the Destroyer would risk such a thing for Tal’s sake…unless her feelings for him could possibly echo the same care that Tal seemed to feel for her. Nyx had not been willing to believe such a thing of her enemy before, but now, with an assassin’s weapon in her lap and the end of her own life fast approaching, she wondered if there might be another way. If she might have missed something, or been unwilling to see it.

What would Helenia say if she were here? Probably something annoying