Page 9 of Caroline the Cruel
“How long has it been?” Caroline whispered, walking over, and dropping on the bed. The springs gave a slight whine, and he winced.Sorry, she mouthed.
“Three days,” the boy said in an equally quiet tone. “I think everyone who survived fled to the city. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Are they all dead? The king and queen?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
The boy nodded, sniffing as his eyes glazed. That must mean he’d lost someone that night, too. Caroline’s eyes burned and she blinked a few times, shoving down her own grief, which was attempting to rise at the confirmation of the truth she already knew.
Caroline envisioned her father’s kind eyes one last time before she erased the image of the man who’d been her only lifeline from her memory. If she thought of him, she would let it overwhelm her.
After what she’d been through, after what the Gods had expected of her, she no longer felt like a fourteen-year-old girl, full of mirth and innocence. Her father was gone, her sister had betrayed her, men had tortured her and tried to murder her. She had no space or luxury for grief. She took a deep breath and hammered that unwelcome sensation behind an iron clad wall where it would stay indefinitely.
“What is your name, and who were your parents?” Caroline asked.
“Angus, Your Majesty. Mum passed ages ago. Torac is…wasmy father.”
Another suspicion confirmed. If Torac was gone, most, if not all the guards would have perished with him. They’d be beginning from nothing. “And you know Roskide well, I assume?”
“Yes—”
“Then you shall be my eyes and ears. Congratulations on your new appointment.”
“Your Majesty?” The boy’s voice was a whimper, clearly unsure of Caroline’s expectations.
Caroline snapped her head up.Your Majesty, he’d said. Reality struck her like a boulder. She was a queen now—the queen. The Gods had decreed it by passing the Gift to her and not her older sister. She didn’t know what type of sick joke they were playing at, but she decided right then she wouldn’t be one to waste the opportunity. And she wasn’t one to forget, either. If the Gods were to demand punishment from her for the use of her power, then she would follow their image. Those who had hurt her, her family, herkingdom,would get their punishment too.
She thought of the Gods, the serenity in Love’s face as Justice sentenced her and Pain exacted the payment. Then she remembered how satisfying it was to compel the assassins to end their lives. Had that been worth the pain, the payment to the Gods? The answer was clear. It had been clear for generations of rulers before her too.
Yes, and she would do it again gladly for this power—the Gift.
“Are they still here, our enemy? In Roskide?”
“I think so, Your Majesty.” The boy wrung his hands, looking more sheepish than what she expected for his age.
“Was my sister among the dead?”
“I didn’t see her.”
Caroline narrowed her eyes, and the spot on her lower back blazed in her awareness. “Good,” she said, and a grin crept across her face. “We’ll have to find her then, won’t we?”
Caroline and her fledgling commander spent the next several days lurking in the hallways, setting traps for the assassins. They used her presence to lure them out, then Caroline used the Gift. There had to be a reason they were still in Roskide. They were still searching for Emmy.
They picked them off one by one until they’d gone a week without sensing another living thing in the many hallways and rooms of Roskide aside from Red, the collection of identically named castle cats. And that included her elusive sister.
She made nine kills and so far, the Gods had not extracted their payment. Caroline’s confidence was blooming, and she found the deaths she caused didn’t weigh on her like she might have imagined they would. These murderers hadn’t stopped at her family or the armed guard. Roskide was a wasteland, and she had a feeling she would fight an uphill battle to re-staff the castle after such a massacre.
Finally, Caroline and Angus mustered up enough bravery to enter the Great Hall. Eight bloated corpses laid in their own bloodstains across the room, in-between wilted flower sculptures and banquet tables. Caroline tucked her nose into the neck of her shirt to escape the scent of the rotting and foul food and the putrid smell of humans decomposing in the Everstal heat. An arrow protruded from the eye socket of a female guard she recognized, and her stomach churned so hard she had to turn away.
“They’re not here,” she called to Angus across the room. She remembered her first captor saying King Hollis wanted the bodies recovered.
Angus gasped and Caroline looked up to where he stood over the body of a large figure. Caroline approached and noted the man’s sable skin and familiar strong jaw. Torac. Wrapping her arm around Angus’s trembling shoulder, she said, “I’m so sorry.”
Angus shook his head and stepped out of her embrace. “It’s okay. He wasn’t a good man.” The grimace on his face contradicted his words. Good man or not, Torac was still his father. Angus gulped a quick breath crossing his arms over his stomach and fled from the room. Caroline found him throwing up behind a planter where they’d first met in the atrium.
“You okay, Angus?” She patted him on the back. Caroline vowed not to form any attachments, but poor Angus had slipped in right before she had made that mental decree.
He gagged, then heaved again.
“We’ll restaff Roskide, and we’ll have them take care of the bodies. Okay?”
