Page 42 of The Beautiful Blade

"The dowager house?" My mother's nose wrinkled in disgust.

The dowager house was nothing like the summer palace that the Lioness Queen would retire to now that her son had taken the crown. The dowager house was a two-bedroom shack without indoor plumbing. Or what my mother would call a living hell.

"No. Give her a carriage, a gredane to pull it, and cast her out in the street to make her way in the world."

The servants looked hesitant. They had spent years under her rule and my silence. They would do well to send us both out into the world in a rickety carriage with only one slow beast to carry our load. Goddess knows I never did anything to lighten any of their loads or make their lives better. I'd only cared about one other person my whole life. And it wasn't the prince I'd been groomed for. It was the groom who came to rule my heart.

A heavy silence settled over the hall, thick with uncertainty. The servants—men and women who had bowed to my mother’s whims for years—shifted uneasily, glancing between us, weighing their loyalty.

Would they see me as their salvation? Or just another queen, cut from the same cloth?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

JORGE

“Move, you lazy beast.”

I didn't jolt out of my stupor when Uncle Maris snapped at me. I was stuck inside the anticipation, waiting for the pain. I didn't wait long. The slap… it barely registered.

His hand, once a thing of brute force, was nothing more than a brittle relic of my past nightmares. His fingers, gnarled and twisted from years of labor and age, could barely extend fully. The strike was weak, a ghost of the blows that used to send me reeling. It carried no weight, no real sting—just the memory of afrail, unloved boy who had cowered under this man’s shadow.

I wasn’t that boy anymore.

I was a soldier, a warrior, a man who had fought and bled for his place in the world. A man who had the love of a princess, the respect of a kingdom, and a strength Uncle Maris could never touch.

He couldn’t hurt me now. Not with his words, not with his hands.

He raised his hand again. I watch that gnarled thing come toward me. I had no interest in being struck. So I don't get struck. I shifted, so he hit air and tumbled forward.

My cousins looked murderous. But it was the guards who were smarter. They charged me. They knew it was me or them. My family hadn't a clue who they were dealing with. My cousins were too busy helping their father to his feet.

My blade extended with a whisper of steel. A sharp gasp escaped the first guard before he crumpled to the ground. The second guard was only just turning when I lunged, my prosthetic arm slamming into his chest with a force that sent him staggering back. The blade found its mark, and he slumped into the dirt beside his partner, the life draining from his eyes.

I wasn't even out of breath. I bent down to clean my blade on their clothing, giving my family my back. Itwas the ultimate show of disrespect when a warrior presents his vulnerable side to his enemy.

"Now you've done it, boy. Those were fae guards. You think your little flower skirt will get you out of a murder charge?"

Did everyone know about Charlotte and my affair? We'd thought we hid it so well.

"We should grab him. Might be a reward for turning in a killer." That was Olric's voice. "Grab the little crackling, Dain."

There was a dull thud and the sound of rocks kicked as boots stumbled forward and halted. The blood cleaned from my blade, I rose to my full height and turned to face them.

Dain was a step ahead of the other two males. He quickly stepped back. Olric clung to his father in what could be mistaken as a show of holding the old man up. But the way Olric's fingers curled into his father's shirtsleeves gave away his cowardice.

There was fear in their faces. I drank it in like a man starved for justice. Caution clung to the deep grooves etched into their overworked, malnourished faces, settling in the hollows of their gaunt cheeks and the nervous twitch of their hands. Their once-imposing frames, the ones that had towered over me in my youth, were now brittle with age and hardship. Their skin had taken on a sallow, sunken quality,stretched too tight over bones that no longer carried strength.

Once, they had been giants in my eyes, their presence casting long, suffocating shadows over my childhood. But now, stripped of the power they’d once wielded over me, they were nothing more than broken things—hollow and shrunken, their edges dulled by the same cruelty they had inflicted on others. But then their fear hardened into something uglier—resentment, bolstered by years of misplaced pride.

My uncle was the first to recover, his lips curling into a sneer. “You always were a freak, Jorge.”

Olric gripped a hammer so tightly his knuckles turned white, while Dain shifted uneasily, clearly wishing he were anywhere else. Once, they’d towered over me, their laughter cruel and their blows merciless. They’d been my tormentors, thriving on my weakness. But now… now I saw them for what they truly were.

Pathetic. Petty. Cowards.

The corner of my mouth twitched, but I didn’t smile. Instead, I lowered my blade and stood tall, letting them see me, all of me—scarred, enhanced, and unbreakable. My posture dared them to come at me.

No one moved.

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