Page 26 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
“I made a bargain with my mother.”
“See! It’s a trick! She’s the monster’s daughter! Kill the bitch!” Cael’s hand shot up, pointing first at Bristol, then circling to the other recruits, his finger poking the air like he was hitting each one of them in the chest. “Seize them! All of them! Kill them! Do something!”
“But, Your Majesty,” Eris said, “it appears they just rescued you. Are you certain—”
“They threatened to kill me! Regicide! They pushed a sword into my back. Execute them! Especially that one,” he said, pointing at Bristol. “Kill her! Why aren’t any of you following my orders? Get this damn collar off me!” he shouted, pulling at the ward around his neck. “I’ll take care of them myself!”
And then he fainted.
Dalagorn caught the king, scooping him into his arms. Eris turned back to Bristol for answers. She blinked slowly. “In the last two days, I’ve had a knife held to my throat twice—both times by the Trénallis brothers. I am done for the day.Done. He’s all yours. Keep him under wraps. Kormick doesn’t know we have him, and he’s not likely to find out. It’s best to leave it that way.”
Bristol turned, and Sashka looped an arm through hers as they walked away. The other recruits followed, leaving Eris and the knights to deal with their returned king.
“What bargain did you make?” Eris called after her.
A bad one, Bristol thought, but she only shook her head in answer.
CHAPTER 20
The waiting was killing Tyghan. He strapped on his sword, centering it on his back, and lashed out with his hand, for no reason at all. Magic flew from his fingertips like shimmering darts, shattering a vase. It didn’t ease the energy straining inside him. What had he been thinking? It was madness to let Bristol leave to meet a monster who had just beheaded his officer. He was going after her, even if he had promised not to follow.
He cursed under his breath and threw open his door. Eris was there, his hand raised to knock. “She’s back.” Eris was breathless as he explained. “They’ve just returned. Bristol’s completely fine—not a scratch on her—and has gone with her friends to the dining pavilion.”
Tyghan doubted there was anything else that Eris could say that would keep him from flying to Bristol’s side, from holding her until it hurt, but he was wrong. When he added who she had brought back with her, Tyghan didn’t believe it.
Cael?Impossible.
Eris assured him it was true. Bristol had made a bargain with her mother.
“The even better news is that Kormick doesn’t know, and we must keep it that way. But we still have a problem.”
Tyghan recognized Eris’s sigh. It was always provoked by some boneheaded thing his brother had done. “Well?”
“Your brother has demanded that Bristol and the other recruits be executed.”
“He’s resting now,” Madame Chastain said when Tyghan and Eris entered Cael’s outer chambers. She paused, noting Tyghan’s and Eris’s identical scowls, the angry dimple in the exact same place on their left cheeks, and wondered how no one else had ever noticed. The older Tyghan got, the more the similarities surfaced. “His lucidity comes and goes,” she explained. “Olivia, Esmee, and I have done every cleansing spell we know, but we don’t dare remove the collar yet. He is . . . unstable.”
Unstable?Tyghan thought. That was an understatement. If Cael was ordering Bristol’s execution, he was within an inch of his own. Tyghan took a step toward Cael’s bedchamber. “I’ll speak to him—”
“He’s still sleeping. I wouldn’t—”
And then there was a crash. Cursing.
Get out! Everyone! Out!
Are you all idiots?
I can piss on my own!
And bathe myself!
Three servants streamed out of Cael’s bedchamber, including his groomer with a foamy razor still in hand.
“I guess he’s not sleeping anymore,” Tyghan said as he headed for the chamber door to knock some sense into his brother’s hard skull.
Tyghan hadn’t been in the king’s bedchamber since before Cael was taken. It was triple the size of his own quarters, lavishly appointed, and in perfect order—except for a rumpled bed, an overturned tray on the floor, and a broken bowl beside it. There was no sign of his brother.
“Cael?” Tyghan called.
