Lucky Rabbit

“Kill her,” Lawrence said, the sheer offhandedness of it sending a chill down Preston’s spine. The poor woman – a simple farmer who had come to ask for recompense after the army trampled her fields – stared in horror, then shrieked as one of the armored figures flanking her drew its sword. She tried to scramble away, but she was already kneeling, and she didn’t even manage to reach her feet before the end came. Preston was a hardened soldier by now, having spent two long years fighting Lawrence’s war, but even he struggled not to flinch as a crimson tide flowed toward his feet.

Lawrence leaned back in his throne, absently scratching his fingers against the velvet arm of the ornate chair. He did this so often that the fabric was threadbare, a grayish rust color amidst the bright red of the rest of the material.

Swallowing hard, Preston tried to keep the fear and loathing from his voice as he said, “Don’t you think that was a bit much, Your Majesty? You could have just had her whipped and sent her away.” Which still would have been a far worse punishment than she deserved for simply having the temerity to speak up against the callous disregard of the military that was meant to serve people just like her, but at least she would have been alive.

“Why?” Lawrence asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “Her farm was destroyed. She was only another useless mouth to feed.”

The woman sitting on the throne beside Lawrence laid a hand over his, stilling the incessant scratching for at least a moment. Her red fingernails matched the crimson fabric that padded the throne. “I think your cousin is saying you made a mistake, husband.”

Lawrence frowned, though the tight, dry skin stretched over his skull barely moved in response. “Preston wouldn’t do that, Cyra. He knows I’d just have him killed, too.” His eyes, once so bright and earnest, slid over Preston as if he was a stranger, not someone who had grown up alongside him, close as a brother.

Hating himself even as he did it, Preston sank down, resting his gauntleted knuckles against the stone floor. The pool of blood crept closer, slowly expanding to surround him as he said, “My king knows he has my utmost loyalty, Queen Cyra.”

Though you seem to be doing your best to convince him otherwise. All of our friends, our family, anyone who spoke out against this, gone. Only I remain, and only because I was sent away at the very beginning of this madness, he thought bitterly. He’d known nothing about what was happening – no, he hadn’t wanted to know – until it was far too late.

No one else seemed to want to approach the throne, not with the reminder of their king’s mercurial temper still draining into the flagstones. Lawrence passed his eyes over the gathered courtiers, in their bright finery, only there because when they didn’t come, the queen told the king it was because they were traitors who no longer loved him.

“Is that all?” Lawrence asked, beginning to pick at the patch of bare velvet again. Everyone looked down, avoiding his gaze with a show of false respect, and the king sighed, levering himself up onto legs that shook with the strain.

When Preston left, his beloved younger cousin Lawrence was a newlywed, hale and hearty and love-addled, but now it looked like sticks had been thrust into his clothes, rather than a body. Instinctively, Preston started to reach out to support his cousin, but his fingers curled and fell back before they touched the man before him.

Queen Cyra stood, as cold and lovely as the day Lawrence and Preston saved her from a bandit attack, her black hair falling around her body in a waterfall of silken waves. Laying her hand on her husband’s arm, she looked around. “Everyone out,” she told them, her voice stiff and emotionless. The only time any warmth had ever touched her, voice or face, was when she spoke to Lawrence in those early days. Now, she didn’t even bother with that.

The courtiers scurried from the room, clearly grateful simply to have survived another visit to court. The armored guards stood next to the fallen body, unmoving, until the room was empty of all but them, Lawrence, Cyra, and Preston.

Gazing at Preston, Cyra lifted her brows in something that might have been curiosity in someone else. “Why do you wait, cousin?”

He shuddered internally. He hated it when she called him by that familiar title. She had picked up the habit from Lawrence, but it made Preston queasy every time. The only blood that lay between them was smeared on the cold stone floor. Slowly, Preston straightened from his kneeling position, prepared to sink back down if Lawrence so much as twitched. No such thing happened, however, so Preston gestured to the body and said, “I thought I might take her… away.” To her family, if he could find them, but to be given a proper burial if not.

The queen’s red lips curved in a mockery of a smile. “The guards will handle it.”

That was a dismissal, and Preston backed away, heading for the nook where the door leading to the royal family’s personal wing stood, hidden by heavy gold and red brocade curtains. He opened the door, but then, rather than passing through it, he closed it again before shifting back to hide among the curtains. Drawing on his elemental, Nox, he gathered the darkness around himself. Lawrence was a Dark elementalist, too, but Preston had become very, very good at hiding over the last few years. Just this should be safe enough.

Peering back out at the royal couple, Preston thought at first that they were planning to perform some private act right there in the blood on the throne room floor. Cyra’s fingers unbuttoned Lawrence’s shirt as the king’s breath began to come a bit faster, a feverish flush giving some color to his sallow cheeks. Then the queen pulled out something that had been tucked beneath Lawrence’s clothes, raising it so she could press it against his forehead, just beneath the crown that sat so awkwardly on her husband’s wasted brow.

“There, husband,” Cyra murmured. “Once more.”

Lawrence groaned, though Preston couldn’t tell what emotion drove the sound. His cousin’s eyes were closed, and he trembled. Pale lips moved, though Preston couldn’t make out what he said, if the sounds formed anything so coherent as words. Cyra nodded, tucking the object away again. At their feet, the body of the farmer stirred.

Preston felt his bile rise as the corpse did, the blank stare of the dead woman uncannily similar to that of the queen. “Take her to have armor made,” Cyra said to the four guards who remained in the room. As one, they nodded, then spun, with the new-made Bound close on their heels, though her limbs jerked and shuffled as the thing within learned to control its new body.

No. No, no, no, no. Preston had known that his cousin had changed, perhaps even gone mad, but to do this? Binding Demons to the dead was the one thing forbidden even to the royal family. The things needed no food or rest, were entirely and unfailingly loyal, but only so long as the elementalist kept them Bound, paying for their existence with his own life force.

Any Bound who remained trapped within flesh when their master died would go insane, killing anyone and anything nearby until a powerful enough elementalist was able to free it from the decaying corpse. The last time it had happened, it took three Fire elementalists and almost a dozen Earth elementalists to stop it long enough for a Light elementalist to free it. Of those who went to face it, only two survived uninjured, and almost half had died.

But Preston had never heard of a Dark elementalist who could Bind more than one or two Demons at a time. The magic took a terrible toll on the elementalist’s body, and most freed their Bound almost immediately, finding that even a tireless and perfectly loyal servant wasn’t worth their own slow death. How was it that Lawrence seemed to have at least four of the things, and had probably just created another? No wonder his cousin looked like a stiff wind would knock him over!

Once the four perfectly synchronized figures left the room with their twitching compatriot, Cyra and Lawrence turned toward the door where Preston hid. He needed to go, and he needed to talk to Felicity.

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Gently, Preston’s wife took his hand, stroking the back of it with a tenderness most people would never see from her. She was a strong woman, and had only become stronger over the past few years while her husband was away at war. Her strength shone through in everything she did, but never so much as in the restraint it must have taken not to say, “I told you so.”

“Lawrence has the roads closed. Just a few days ago Lord Montgomery tried to leave, claiming he and his family wanted to spend some time in the country. Lawrence had them thrown in jail and stripped Montgomery of his land and title. No one has seen or heard from him or his family since. I’ll gather what we need tonight and tomorrow. We can flee tomorrow as soon as full dark falls,” she said.

Preston could tell from the look in her eyes that she was already figuring out which of their belongings they should pack, knowing they would have to leave the carriage behind and take only what they could put on their horses. Thankfully, their son Pierce was almost four now, old enough to remain silent when told, and could sit in front of Felicity on her mare.

Preston’s fists clenched at his sides, but he didn’t argue. Ever since he returned home after being injured badly enough that the healers couldn’t simply magic him back together, his wife had been filling him in on everything that had happened in his absence. He knew she wasn’t prone to exaggeration, but she also spent as little time at court as possible, so he thought she’d been listening to overblown tales from her friends. Now he knew every word was likely true, and in good conscience, there was only one thing he could do.

“I’ve heard a lot about a woman named Nora, who’s been leading the uprising in the west,” he said, his voice heavy with resignation. “She’s a Light elementalist with amazing healing powers. Everyone says she’s charismatic and intelligent, and she’s not a noble, so the commoners have rallied around her. She might have a chance of stopping this.”

Felicity’s eyes dropped, but she smiled a bit. “I’ve heard the same. Lianna has a cousin back west, and she says things are almost normal there, thanks to Nora. Lianna even thought about visiting until this is over, but her husband doesn’t want to leave the estate, and he won’t let her take the children.”

Lianna’s husband was a fool, and not because he didn’t want to leave their lands and everything they owned behind. Preston had grown up with the man, and he was as stubborn as a mule, but only half as intelligent. Which was exactly how Preston felt as he said, “You and Pierce will have to go without me.”

“What?” Felicity’s fingers tightened around his hand, and she leaned closer, green eyes fierce as she said, “You can’t be thinking of doing something yourself. There are guards with Lawrence all the time, and if not them, that woman.”

Preston almost managed a chuckle. Felicity had loathed Cyra on sight, even when the other woman had seemed to be nothing but a shy and ethereally lovely waif, recently orphaned and clinging to the man who had rescued her. As smitten as Lawrence had been, Felicity hadn’t felt she could say anything, but she had told Preston to watch out for the strange young woman, and she had been right.

If Preston had only listened to his wife, instead of believing Lawrence when the king insisted Felicity was only jealous of Cyra – a woman who was both younger and more beautiful than she – they might not be in this position now. Not that Cyra had ever had a tenth of Felicity’s allure, not to Preston, but he had only been glad to see his cousin finally taking a serious interest in someone. The kingdom needed heirs, and Lawrence was nearly twenty-three when they met Cyra.

Turning his hand over, Preston wound his fingers through those of his wife. “I have to try, Fel. You know I do.”

Her face crumpled, but only a single sob escaped her throat before she nodded.