❝ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɪꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴡᴏ ᴋɪɴɢᴅᴏᴍꜱ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴀʀ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴇᴀᴄʜ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ? ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ꜱɪᴅᴇ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ? ❞
Ever since she was sold to the Kingdom of Racaea as a young child, Sabre has grown up on the castle grounds as a blacksmith's apprentice for the roya...
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"What do you mean?" The lies that left his mouth made no sense at all. He was the ruler of Icrodeia? Mace looked like no king or prince to me, nor could Kayne have ever killed someone. "Kayne hasn't even left Racaea before, that's impossible."
"He doesn't need to leave his kingdom in order to slay one of our own. Our queen took an arrow to the chest, shot straight through the border and into her heart." Anger flared in his eyes at the memory. "That arrow was shot by your little pet."
"And how can you be so sure of that?" I spat. How dare he accuse Kayne of murder when he was innocent in this mess. "Do you have evidence or proof, your highness?"
"Oh, please, there's no need for formalities when you haven't been using them until now." He rose from his crouch, stretched out his back, and motioned over one of the people watching us. "Ridley, could you let the poor lady know what you discovered?"
"Of course." The woman who had tackled me to the ground and tied me up in front of my parents' home stepped forward, a wicked grin on her face. "The whole Racaea royal family were present when your prince killed our queen, meaning there had to be several guards present too to protect them. It didn't take too long to find one of these guards and give them a few wounds here and there to get them to talk."
Bile rose in my throat. They had to be wrong. That guard had to have seen the wrong thing, or perhaps they just told them what they wanted to hear so they would stop torturing them. Kayne would never kill anyone.
"She still doesn't believe you," laughed another cloaked figure. "Those fae have had her tightly wrapped up in their lies."
"As long as she knows the truth now." Mace shrugged, pulling out his pocket watch to check the time. When I had first seen it when he pulled it out at The Lost and Found, I had wondered how he could afford such an expensive piece. Now it all made sense. He had access to Icrodeia's royal coffers.
"What about the king?" I questioned. "You only mentioned the queen dying but Icrodeia had a king too."
"The king didn't die that day, but his love for Queen Iona was so strong that he couldn't live without her." He didn't have to explain further for me to understand what had happened. The king couldn't live without his wife around, so he didn't.
"When did this even happen?" I panicked for pieces of information to pick at, for questions I could ask so his lies would unravel. They had to be lies. "And why had nobody even heard about the royal family of Icrodeia dying? Surely the deaths of such important people would have left a mark on your kingdom."
Mace brought a hand to his chin in thought. "This happened just under a decade ago, if I'm not mistaken." He turned to his friends to make sure he had gotten the timeline correct. They all nodded in agreement. "It was a few months before King Vandran of Racaea passed away."
Kayne's father. This had all happened when Kayne's father was still alive.
"What about my other question?" I pushed. If nobody had heard of the royal family dying, then they had to be making it up, right? They had to be fabricated lies to get me to join them.
