Chapter 15: He Bleeds Red

Bastian's POV

I pushed the great doors open with my good hand and walked into the hall where I had been crowned.

Every head turned.

Merrick came in half a step behind me, limping, with his torn coat and his split lip.

Nobody in that room made a sound.

My cousin stood on my dais in a white coat with my ring on his finger.

"Majesty," he said, and his smile did not move. "We were told you were dead."

"You told them."

"I was misinformed."

"You were holding my body in a hallway under a sheet, Gerard. I saw the photograph."

A ripple went down the rows.

He spread his hands, sorrowful.

"Friends, this man wears His Majesty's face. But look at him."

I knew what they saw.

I was gray, and sweating, and my shirt was stuck to the dressing on my shoulder.

I was walking like a man twice my age.

"My cousin was shot at a lodge in the mountains," Gerard said. "Yet he stands here, bleeding through his clothes, with no color in his skin."

"I was shot by your hunters."

"By the bride's accomplices, you mean."

"By the men you sent up the road."

"Prove it."

I took the ceremonial dagger from the rack beside the door.

It was silver-edged and sharp, and it was for oath-taking.

I held my left hand over the stone floor and drew the blade across my palm.

The blood fell.

It hit the floor in bright, quick drops, and it was red.

The sound the hall made then, I will remember until the day I die.

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