KINGSLAYER

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All the suspects were rounded up from the rest of the university students. Some resisted their detainment, which met a swift end. Their heads were slammed to the ground, spines pressed into walls, bodies contorted painfully as they were chained.

Jaylah was faced by a woman who looked as though she had fought off her capture with her bare hands, as they were stained red to the third knuckle. She spat at Jaylah when she came near. And was promptly set on fire.

As they were set in a long line in the university's courtyard, most of them shrieked that they were innocent, that they did not know why they were being treated with such brutality. And they truly did not. Others stood motionlessly, for they knew what they had done. Blood was the price of stirring a revolution.

The oldest one yet looked down at Jaylah with knowing eyes. She was the only one not doing anything but looking at her, as if she had expected this fate and was sorry about it. Her frail body was consumed completely.

The boy at the front of the line had his throat cut. At the sight of red blood spraying outward, the rest of the students behind him became a writhing, fighting mass of bodies against the King's men holding them tightly in line. They cried and cursed the King's name, but he was not there to hear them. Feet caught against the ground as they were forced forward. Throat after throat after throat was sliced. Sometimes the executioner swung too powerfully and took off the whole head. When it was done, the university courtyard was an ocean of gore that rippled under the soldiers' shoes. Innocent blood always shone redder.

The same went for the fire that ate Jaylah's people alive. The flames became a bonfire that set the dreary day aglow. She went down the line, body after body, and sent each one to a hellish death. Soon, it became routine. Drop the firestick, let the flames eat their way up until they ignited clothing, and move on to the next. The smell of cooking flesh was so familiar to her now. It clung inside her nose and her mouth, so much so that with every breath, she could taste it.

The crowd of onlookers was screaming now—exactly what, it was too much of a buzz to decipher. But they were screaming at her. This is too much, they would say. Why would you not stop after the first few? This is unnecessary.

When she was finished, she stood and watched them die, a single dark figure against a hundred and seven raging human torches.

Was it unnecessary? Or had she been waiting to do this all along?

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The last night of pre-wedding festivities—in which Alexander was blessedly absent—were in full swing when one of Jaylah's aides came up beside her. It was so far against royal etiquette that Jaylah snapped, "Get out of my sight."

"Apologies, Your Majesty," she said. She sounded so much like Antinoch that Jaylah nearly wavered. "This is an emergency. We must speak in private."

Gods, what could it be this time? Ermalai and all the Navrikans were already under careful watch. "Pardon me," Jaylah said before rising from the head of the table.

She joined the aide in a side room. "Kyrisos was attacked from the sea. The stronghold was completely wiped off the face of the earth."

At the news, a cold trickle began at the top of her skull and washed down her limbs. That military stronghold had been the one used to train new troops—more specifically, training troops to use prototypes of the weapons Fotelis was creating. Twenty-five thousand men, their hand-picked instructors, and at least two sergeants all destroyed in the span of her dinner.

"It is the strangest thing," the attendant went on. "If there were ships off the coast to launch projectiles our men would have easily discovered them, but the attack did not come from our own soil either."