Abisai
I get to my feet at the sound of a noise on the balcony. I throw the doors open and the cold night wind rushes into the room.
"Zabina… but…?"
I try to approach, but she takes two steps back, her back pressed against the railing. She won't look me in the eyes.
Then I see her hands. They're stained with fresh blood.
"What are you doing here?" I ask, my voice low and tense.
She lifts her gaze. In her eyes burns a mixture of rage and pain so deep it cuts off my breath.
"I don't want to hate you… but I have no other choice."
Before I can react, she pulls a dagger from her belt and launches herself at me. I dodge the first blow on pure instinct. The blade cuts through the air where my neck had been a second before.
"Zabina. What did you do?" I whisper, my heart pounding hard.
She tightens her grip on the dagger with trembling hands and attacks again with a shattered scream.
I grip her wrist firmly and twist it until she drops the weapon, which falls with a metallic clink onto the floor. I pin her against my body while she struggles with blind fury.
"Stop this, Zabina!" I exclaim, holding her tighter.
Suddenly she goes still. Her entire body trembles and, without warning, she bursts into tears. A broken, deep cry that destroys me.
I hold her against my chest, wrapping my arms around her as if I could protect her from everything — even from myself.
"Tell me what's happening," I murmur against her hair. "Come on… tell me."
"I hate you…" she whimpers.
I pull her closer.
"Why?" I take her by the shoulders and search for her eyes, which are red and swollen. "Why, damn it?! Talk to me!"
"You killed my mother!"
I release her as if her words were fire. I take a step back, stunned.
"What?" I murmur.
"That… the white dragon from thirteen years ago. Grace. She was my mother."
No.
The world stops for a second.
"There's a cemetery of white dragons in that temple," she continues through her teeth, her voice laden with venom. "I saw you. I saw you bring the dagger down on her. I saw you murder my mother!"
"Zabina… things aren't that simple."
"No?" She clenches her fists. "Of course. It was all for the 'greater good.' And now you'll have to kill me too to close the breach, won't you?"
She crouches, picks up the dagger from the floor, and forces it into my hands with violence.
"Go on! Kill me! Do it!"
I hurl the dagger away in rage. The metal strikes the floor and slides under a chair. I grip her by the nape of her neck, pulling her toward me until our foreheads press together. My breathing is heavy, uneven.
"Let this go, Zabina," I plead, almost begging. "That's the past."
"I'm sorry," she whispers, her eyes full of tears. "For me it's not the past. It hurts. It hurts so much."
Our gazes collide. The pain, the rage, and something deeper — that damned bond — crackle between us like a fire about to devour us both.
"But it's you… or it's me…" she tells me, her voice broken.
"Prince!"
The knocking at the door is insistent.
I grip Zabina by the wrist and lead her to the adjoining study. I sit her carefully in the armchair, crouch down to her level, and point at her.
"Don't move from here." My voice comes out low, almost a plea. "When I return we finish this. No lies. Both of us."
She looks at me in silence with eyes bright with tears and something else I can't tell is hatred or exhaustion or both mixed together. She says nothing.
I stand. I straighten my suit. I breathe.
I leave and close the door behind me.
"What's happening?" I ask the guard.
The man's face is white. He takes a second too long to respond and that second puts me on alert before he even opens his mouth.
"Your father… the emperor… he…"
"Speak."
"He's dead, sir. In his bed."
The hallway falls silent in a way that has nothing to do with noise or the absence of noise. It's an internal silence — the kind that settles when the world has just changed permanently.
My father is dead.
No.
I start running.
I enter my father's chambers with three guards behind me.
Thymá stands beside the bed with his hands behind his back as if he's calculating the consequences of something that has already happened. Higmer is in a corner, quieter than usual, his eyes scanning me from the moment I entered as if measuring how much I know.
The healer looks up at me.
"No more than twenty minutes," he says, and covers my father's body with a silk tunic that immediately stains red.
I stand motionless for a second watching the blood spreading across the fabric.
I clench my fists.
Thymá opens his mouth.
I don't give him the chance.
"Get out," I say.
"Abisai, we must talk about—"
"I said get out!"
The tone leaves no room for argument. Thymá knows it. He leaves with that calm of his that's worse than any protest. Higmer follows without a word, but in the doorway he stops for half a second and looks at me over his shoulder with something in his eyes that isn't condolence.
It's satisfaction.
The door closes.
One of my men approaches with his eyes fixed on the floor.
"Vacul is dead, prince. They found him an hour ago in the temple," he says in a voice so low I have to lean in to hear him. "It was her."
I straighten slowly.
It was her.
Zabina killed Vacul.
I process that in silence while I look at my father's body under the stained silk and understand that in the space of one hour my world has changed shape three different times and none of the three has any going back.
I turn my back on everyone and leave without another word.
I open the study door.
Empty.
The armchair where I left her sitting is empty. The balcony window is slightly ajar and the breeze moves the curtains with that indifference the wind has toward the things that matter to men.
I stand in the doorway for a second.
Then I cross the room and slam my fist against the wall. The pain in my knuckles is the only concrete thing I feel right now and I let it stay because I need to feel something with clear edges.
I turn to the guards who followed me here.
"Don't follow me."
"Prince, protocol requires that—"
"I said don't follow me."
I step out onto the balcony.
I remove my cloak.
I shift.
The cold air strikes my scales when I open my wings and rise above the castle. From up here the kingdom looks small. From up here everything looks manageable.
From up here I lie to myself better.
I fly north.
I'm going to find her.