Page 139 of Merciless Is My Crown

“They should be impressed and afraid, Anaria.” She smoothed her hair back. “You killed the king, and their world is about to change even more in a few hours. Fear is the root of respect.”

“Both of those bastards ruled through fear,” I told her quietly. “That’s not what I’m going to do.”

I’m not going to rule at all, I didn’t say, because through all of this, that had been the one unspoken rule. That somehow, at the end of everything, it would be my arse sitting on the Shadow King’s throne, or the one in Tempeste, or some combination of the two, when I had no intention whatsoever of that being my fate.

“They should trust their leader not fear them.”

Torin shot me a look as if to say, you are so naive, but I just lifted my shoulders. “Where is Cosimo? Nothing is going to happen with the magic if he’s not here.”

“He’s just south of here. Been there since dawn, studying the soil, trying to find an answer for what happened to the magic.” Her face brightened. “Ah, here he comes now.”

I blinked in surprise. The astrologer strode through the crowd dressed in a flowing blue robe with silver embroidery and wide sleeves. Torin’s face glowed. “He’s always preferred robes to a warriors clothing. Says they’re more…freeing.”

I stifled my laugh. “Well, he certainly looks the part.”

Cosimo was imposing, dark hair pulled back into a sloppy knot on the back of his head, his eyes glowing with some blue, inner fire. He rolled his shoulders with a bone-crunching crack then swept those eyes over me with a fierce grin.

“Good job with the king today. You’ll make a fearsome queen, Anaria.”

I bit my tongue. Obviously, I’d be convincing everyone a throne was not in my future. And there was no reason to go into too much detail over what a fucking almost disaster our assassination attempt had been. I scanned the crowds again for a flash of red hair and my stomach twisted tighter.

“I’ve discovered the problem. As we suspected, the king spread a layer of iron over the entire realm, locking the magic beneath the earth,” Cosimo said with no preamble. “I spoke to my contacts in Southwell. The magic’s been slowly dissipating for centuries, which means this happened so long ago the damage won’t be easily reversed.”

“That’s good.” I blew out a relieved breath, remembering the shitestorm I’d caused in Caladrius with that devouring black wave of power. We’d discussed the consequences at length and still hadn’t figured out how to minimize the effects.

“Slow is good. Hard to tell what a wave like that would do to all these people.”

Tavion shifted nervously beside me.

Something lurked behind his expression, regret or fear or guilt, and I frowned. I’d seen that exact look on Raz’s and Zor’s faces every time we’d discussed this part of the plan.

“Is there something you’re not telling me, Tavion?”

Now he definitely looked guilty. “No, nothing.”

“We might not have the luxury of slow,” Cosimo interrupted as he knelt and picked up a handful of desiccated soil, letting the dirt sift through his hand. “With the help of some friends, I removed the iron from a small section of land outside the main portal in the wall. If we open that doorway and you call up the wild magic from Caladrius, I believe a chain reaction will occur.”

A dull sort of dread came over me. I didn’t like this feeling that we were starting down a path of no return.

I scanned the mass of people around us then the city beyond, trying to calculate how many souls lived within these walls. “What about all these people?”

“We’ll pack as many as we can inside the Keep,” Torin reminded me of our stopgap protective measures. “The Shadow King had mages in his employ. We’ll set wards around the city to protect everyone inside.”

That, too, had been discussed many, many times. But the Keep was stone and mortar—not capable of standing up to magic—and too small to fit everyone inside.

These were my people now. Mine.

Something fierce and savage pounded through me the longer I looked at them. Such hope on their faces when they pointed at us. Such awe when they looked at Zephryn.

I didn’t want to be their queen.

But I did want to protect them.

“You didn’t see what happened in Caladrius.” Fear scoured my bones, turning my lungs to ash. “That wave will crash through this realm like a battering ram, crushing every woodland village and town.”

Leaving life in its wake, yes, but…at a terrible cost.

A cost I was not willing to pay.

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