“Bribery,” she accused on a weak breath, trying to catch my mouth with a kiss. “Chivalry.”
“Which was it?” I asked, and though my lips were curled with amusement, I was starting to feel a renewed itch of arousal deep in my stomach. “Would you like me to be chivalrous?” I slipped my hand out of her dress.
The action was met with a protesting whine, and to remedy it, I slid my hand down the front of her, until I’d reached the bottom of her dress and could slide it back up underneath, along the inside of her thigh. Ava’s blue eyes were locked on mine as her legs parted, but I stopped halfway above her knee.
“Bribe me,” she pleaded. I raised one eyebrow, inching my hand up a little higher as if to ask if that’s what she wanted. “Kiena,” Ava breathed, one corner of her mouth tugging into a smirk, “keep teasing me and I’ll make you beg so hard you’ll forget the very word dignity.”
For a long second, I just blinked at her. That was the best kind of threat. The kind of threat that barreled straight to my core. The kind of threat I’d have loved to see her make good on, but that filled me so instantly with need that I couldn’t hold out on giving her exactly what she wanted. I kissed her, and I bribed her. I bribed her so thoroughly well that afterward she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and she fell asleep on my bare chest.
Chapter 13
I woke early the next morning with a shiver. It was cold, and the sun had yet to make a real appearance through the single window in our room, so it was a dark gray throughout. Ava was on her side next to me and, without opening my eyes, I rolled over and wrapped my arm around her waist. I scooted into her for warmth and nuzzled my face into her hair, taking in a deep and comforting breath of her scent, still tired enough that I was prepared to fall right back asleep. I nearly did, but in my half-woken state, I sensed something was off.
There was a soft clipping noise that I recognized as Albus’s nails against the stone floor. After listening for a few moments, I could hear that he was pacing back and forth in front of the door. There was a commotion from the garden outside too—shouting, and the distant clanking of a dull bell. I inhaled again, finally recognizing the sharp, metallic smell that filled my nose. Blood.
My eyes shot wide at the same time as I understood the first distinct words from outside. “The king and queen are dead!”
While I sat up, Albus stopped his pacing, putting his nose to the door and letting out a low growl. But my eyes hit Ava, and my heart dropped. The pungent scent of blood was coming from her—her white underdress was covered in it. It stained her hands and was smeared up her arms.
“Ava!” I exclaimed, turning her onto her back.
She gasped deeply, and her eyes flew open as she hurled herself into a sitting position. She didn’t so much as look at me. The only thing she did was hold her hands out before her, taking in the red that tinted them.
“Ava?” I said again, grabbing her hands in mine so I could move them out of the way, so I could examine her for the source of blood. There didn’t appear to be a single injury. The blood wasn’t hers. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she whispered, but she wasn’t talking to me. Her eyes filled with tears, and she pressed her balled fists to her face and rocked forward, murmuring, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Another distant shout of, “The king and queen have been murdered!”
My heart was hammering away in my chest, pounding wildly with a sudden shock of adrenaline. I was surprised and confused, and I couldn’t make any sense of this, but I knew what it looked like. Knew what everyone would think if they came in here, if they saw Ava covered in blood that wasn’t hers while people were yelling that the king and queen were killed. It wasn’t my concern right now what really happened. All I could think was that this was bad, and I had to focus on keeping us alive, and that meant running.
“Ava, get up,” I muttered, throwing myself off the bed to put my tunic on. “We have to leave.”
She didn’t move. Just kept rocking back and forth with her hands over her face. Sobbing. With my shirt on, I hurried to the window, pushing it open just a crack in order to see what was happening outside. Troops were gathering in the garden. There was shouting and organizing, and people looked frantic and angry. I shut the window again and hurried back to Ava.
“Look at me,” I said, taking her face in my hands. I wanted more than anything to comfort her for the loss of her father, but there wasn’t time, and the longer she sat there without so much as looking at me, the more I began to panic. “I need you to focus. I need you to be strong.”
She wouldn’t. She shook her head, eyes locked again on her bloodstained hands. I released her and rushed to the door, opening it enough for me to stick my head out. There were three exits from our room—the stairwell to the ballroom below us, and two different halls that veered off to separate wings of the castle. We could take any of these, but the chances of us being seen with so many people scurrying about the castle were great. I couldn’t be sure which direction to go in order to guarantee safety. The risk to Ava was high, and with the way she was acting right now, I wasn’t even sure I could get her in a clean dress before someone came to the room.
I shut the door and paced back to the bed. “Ava, please,” I begged. “We cannot stay here.”
She glanced down at the blood on her dress, taking in the stutter of a horrified breath as if finally recognizing that she was completely covered in it. Her hands shot to her back, prying at the strings to undo them so she could get out of the clothing, but her hands and fingers were shaking so badly that she didn’t even manage to undo the tie before there was a soft knock on the door. My face paled at the sound.
“Kiena?” said a muffled voice.
It was too quiet to tell who it was, and Albus was sniffing at the crack under the door like he couldn’t tell either. It took a swift moment of searching around to find my dagger. It was on the floor on Ava’s side of the bed, just as covered in blood as she was. I picked it up and hurried to the door, ready to strike if someone was here for Ava. There was another knock, harder and more impatient.
I opened up just a crack to see who it was. The king’s physician. “Sevedi?”
“You must come with me,” she muttered. “Now!”
“Why?” I asked, suspicious of her motives.
Sevedi slammed her hand against the door to force it open, motioning to Ava. “A witness saw her in the halls last night.” She reached into the neck of her shirt, pulling up a chained pendant that matched the one around my own neck. It matched the one Kingston had given me. “They’re coming for her. We must go now.”
Our options were so limited that trusting Sevedi was the best and only thing I could do, especially because Ava was nearly incapacitated with grief. I darted over to the bed while Sevedi waited at the door, and wrapped an arm around Ava’s waist to pull her off. “Please, Ava, let’s go,” I begged, pausing for only a moment to make sure she’d stay on her feet.
There was no time to take anything else. No more clothes, no more weapons, and we certainly couldn’t go and find Maddox. I grabbed Ava’s hand to drag her through the door, but the moment we took a step out, Sevedi shoved us back in. I heard why, too. A handful of heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs, and I grabbed Ava by the torso, pulling her back through the doorway and plastering us beside the entrance.
“They’ve escaped toward the north wing,” Sevedi told the group, pacing toward them with a convincing amount of urgency in her voice. “I believe they’re going to find the children.”
The moment Sevedi said ‘children,’ Ava took in a soft gasp of recognition, as if suddenly realizing that her siblings were probably more grief-stricken than she was. The gasp was shaky. The kind I knew would preface a louder sob, and probably one that would give us away. Though it killed me to do this to her, I slapped my hand over her mouth to muffle any noise she made.